#Scandinavian history

[queenfredegund]

Women in History Month (insp) | Week 1: Leading Women

[city-of-ladies]

“In discussing all these diverse images of armed and actively fighting women of Old Norse literature, and in critically acknowledging that many of the accounts that concern them were created several centuries after the events, it is easy to relegate them all to the sphere of fiction and to regard them as having no basis in historical reality whatsoever. But if we turn to other medieval sources, created independently of Old Norse literary tradition and stemming from different cultural milieus, we will find within them very similar patterns of the occasional female participation in martial activities. The two case studies reviewed above – namely that of Æthelflæd of Mercia and of the women who fought in the siege of Dorostolon – strongly support the idea that there could be some reality behind the stories of armed women that survive in Old Norse literature. Also other historical women of the Viking Age, especially those who stemmed from the highest echelons of society, were occasionally compelled to engage in endeavours associated with warfare and would oversee military operations. For instance, the great Princess Olga, who was the wife of Igor of Kiev, led her army against the Slavic tribe of Derevlians, devised her own impressive strategies and through all these initiatives gained recognition among her companions, regardless of her biological sex.

It thus feels highly unlikely that all these medieval accounts, including the famed descriptions of female warriors in Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum, were only inspired by legends of the ancient Amazons and served as curiosa and literary embellishments to entertain the audience. As we shall see in the following chapters of this book, archaeological finds from across Scandinavia provide support for the idea that some Viking Age women did wield weapons and in one way or another found their place in the martial sphere.”

Women and Weapons in the Viking World: Amazons of the North, Leszek Gardela

[axololtls]

The ruins of Åhus Borg, a castle / fort built circa year 1000-1100.

[wonder-worker]

"Ælfgifu of Northampton appears, in both medieval sources and modern scholarship, to be a figure who exists mainly on the fringes of the authors’ interests. She lived in decades for which we have very sparse source material and, unlike Cnut’s second wife, Emma of Normandy, never found her anonymous encomiast. There has been in recent decades significant interest in Emma, and yet to my knowledge, no single publication devoted to Ælfgifu has appeared. This is not the fault of the evidence. Few sources mention her, but those that do often do so in context which are intriguing and suggest a powerful and ruthless Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who played a number of significant roles in the English and Scandinavian political scenes. [In particular, Ælfgifu weathered the disgrace of her powerful Mercian family in 1006], survived a career in the administrations of Denmark and Norway, and re-emerged in England in order to [successfully] secure the throne for her second son."

-Timothy Bolton, "Ælfgifu of Northampton: Cnut the Great's Other Woman", Nottingham Medieval Studies LI (2007)

[er-cryptid]

Typhus in Saga-Era Iceland

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[the-mighty-fenrir]

Raven ❄️

In Germanic-Scandinavian mythology, the raven is a revered bird, images of which adorned the banners of Viking ships. The ancient Germans deliberately left those killed in battle unburied so that their flesh could be eaten by the messengers of God - wolves and ravens.

[loki-was-framed]

Today's Old Norse Word in English:

scathe

verb

to harm or injure, especially by fire.

Old Norse: skaða, to injure.

[rabbitcruiser]

The Kalmar Union was formed under the rule of Margaret I of Denmark on June 17, 1397.

[magicae]

In the 1600s to 1800s, the poorest of the poor in Sweden would live in backstugor (slope cottages). These were built on unusable land, often built into hillsides or rocky areas. The people living there didn't lease nor own the land, and only owned the building in itself. Often most of the inside area of the cottage would be used for crafting equipment such as a loom.

[image ID in alt text]

1. Lima parish, Dalarna, ~1920. (G. Renström, Nordiska museet) 2. Klevshult, Småland, 1890-1910. (A. Steijertz, Nordiska museet) 3. Torsås parish, Småland, 1903 (J. E. Thorin, Nordiska museet) 4. Östmark, Värmland, august 1916 (N. Keyland, Nordiska museet) 5. Väne-Ryrs parish, Älvsborg, 1911 (O. Jonsson, Vänersborgs museum) 6. Halleböle, Högby parish, unknown (unknown, Kalmar läns museum)

[radiantbastard]

Vikings on their way to sack Northumbria

[admiralnelsoniii]

Was watching a documentary where these researchers built and sailed a viking longship. As they talked about her (the ship) qualities and the things they were discovering about how she sailed they kept asking things like "How we're they able to do this or that?" or "We don't understand how they could, blah blah blah..." And I just thought that the answers were very simple. The men and women sailing on those ships had the experience and knowledge of generation upon generation of previous sailors and adventures on how to handle those ships! And at least some, probably most, of the people on board were experienced sailors themselves! They could make those ships do anything they were capable of doing. The scientists were especially puzzled as to how the Vikings would keep large fleets together, considering they would be made up of many different classes of longship. And each type has different builds, riggings, trims, etc. But, as before, the people knew their individual ship well, and knew what must be done to hold their place in the fleet. Idk, it just seemed that these "experts" were pretty ignorant about their supposed subject of study.

[city-of-ladies]

“The archaeological, iconographic and textual sources thoroughly assessed in this book show unequivocally that the idea of the armed woman was not at all foreign to the population of the Viking world, and that such women warriors may have really existed. Some perhaps died during their first encounter with the enemy, others might have lived to see more than just one battle, while others yet might have engaged in armed conflict in indirect or symbolic ways, devising strategies, orchestrating the construction of defensive architecture, performing magic spells intended to influence the outcome of the fight and so on. 

Regardless of the different scenarios of their lives, this does not make such women in any way lesser than their male Viking counterparts. What is remarkable about them, however, is that these same women probably engaged in a whole plethora of other activities, which ranged from performing various domestic chores, raising children and taking care of animals to craftsworking, trading and travelling. In trying to reconstruct their lives, let us therefore abstain from seeing the armed women of the past merely as ‘warriors’, ‘sorceresses’ or ‘functional sons’, but let us embrace them as humans with all their wonderful complexities and contradictions.”

Women and Weapons in the Viking World: Amazons of the North, Leszek Gardela

[nickysfacts]

Easily one of the coolest Pokémon from the Galar Region!🇩🇰

🪨👻🪨

[wonder-worker]

"[Blanche of Namur] would seem to mark a turning point [in Swedish queenship]. The institution of the morning-gift had until then functioned as a personal insurance for the queen. It now became much more; to some degree it became an active share in the powers and prerogatives of the Crown: it became separate property, separately administered by the queen.

Originally Blanche was enfeoffed with the castle of Tønsberghus, the town of Tønsberg and the districts belonging to the jurisdiction of Tønsberghus, i.e. Vestfold and Skiensysla at the western side of Oslofjord. In Sweden she was enfeoffed with the bailiwick of Lödöse and the castle of Linholm at Hisingen, near the mouth of the border-river Götaelv. In 1353 her Norwegian fiefs and benefices were exchanged from the western part of Oslofjord to the eastern, i.e. she surrendered the castle of Tønsberghus to her husband acquiring instead the very important border-castle of Båhus, including the jurisdiction of the town Marstrand and the counties of Båhus len (Elvesysla, Ranrike, Vetteherred) and Borgarsysla, in other words the region between Oslo and present day Gothenburg. It is possible that she also acquired the Swedish territories of Dalsland and Värmland on this occasion, and which she certainly possessed in 1358.

From now on Blanche in fact was ruler of a Norwegian-Swedish domain - we could call it a 'queendom' of her own. In addition to this her husband had granted her in 1341 an annual rent of 2 marks of gold, and in 1346 he added an annual sum from the royal revenues of the Scania fair At the very latest Blanche took charge of her 'queendom' from 1353. As we see, the queen's morning-gifts changed radically from being a life insurance to becoming a political guarantee for the royal house, a sort of dynastic demesne under queenly rule, so to say. [...] She also took over the administration of the castle and bailiwick of Tønsberghus on behalf of her husband. In fact Blanche and Magnus controlled all Eastern Norway south of Oslo, including the adjacent Swedish regions."

-Steinar Imsen, "Late Medieval Scandinavian Queenship," Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe : Proceedings of a Conference Held At King's College London, April 1995 (Edited by Anne Duggan)

[er-cryptid]

Viking Age

-- lasted from 793 to 1066 CE

-- starts with the raid on Lindisfarne

-- ends with the Norman invasion of England

.

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