An Examination of the Concepts of Sex and Gender and their Application to Viking-Age and Old Norse Society

This chapter examines the concepts of ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ and their usefulness for the study of Viking-Age and Norse society (ad 790–1300). Through an examination of previous research, archaeological evidence, and written sources, it is argued that both concepts need to be included in research and analysis. Icelandic sagas and Old Norse laws overwhelmingly show that people of the Viking Age and Norse period had firm ideas about sex and gender roles and there is very little indication of a third or other gender(s). Both sex and gender are naturally also important for osteological and DNA analyses of human remains, where sex forms a starting point, on which an examination of gender roles can be built.

The aim of this series is to shed light on not just the outstanding and extraordinary women who were trendsetters of their time, but also the not quite so outstanding women, often overshadowed by outstanding men, and the ordinary women, those who simply went about their everyday life and kept their world turning in their own quiet way. This edited volume, Women of the Past, Issues for the Present, is the inaugural volume of the series and shows the wide span of the series chronologically, geographically, and socially in terms of the research presented. From Roman slaves to Viking women, and from medieval wet-nurses to the nineteenth-century wives who supported their archaeologist husbands on excavation, this ground-breaking volume opens a new vista in our understanding of the past.