Valkyrie: The Women of the Viking World

by Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir

Genres: History, Non-fiction
Pages: 280
Rating:

Synopsis:

Valkyries: the female supernatural beings that choose who dies and who lives on the battlefield. They protect some, but guide spears, arrows and sword blades into the bodies of others. Viking myths about valkyries attempt to elevate the banality of war - to make the pain and suffering, the lost limbs and deformities, the piles of lifeless bodies of young men, glorious and worthwhile. Rather than their death being futile, it is their destiny and good fortune, determined by divine beings. The women in these stories take full part in the power struggles and upheavals in their communities, for better or worse.

Drawing on the latest historical and archaeological evidence, Valkyrie introduces readers to the dramatic and fascinating texts recorded in medieval Iceland, a culture able to imagine women in all kinds of roles carrying power, not just in this world, but pulling the strings in the other-world, too. In the process, this fascinating book uncovers the reality behind the myths and legends to reveal the dynamic, diverse lives of Viking women.

Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir’s Valkyrie attempts to give us a pretty comprehensive picture of the position of women in Norse society (I don’t say “Viking”, because “Vikings” are the ones who went out trading and plundering, and this is a more complete picture than that), using evidence from archaeology, from any written sources we have, and especially from the sagas.

It may sound weird to take evidence from sagas, but there are two reasons this is justified. First, as anyone who has studied the Icelandic sagas knows, they contain detail which has been verified. Oral histories passed down through generations have, in many different societies worldwide, proven astonishingly accurate in general, and archaeological evidence has verified things previously considered fanciful (like the fact that the Vikings made it to North America, now a matter of historical fact).

That said, such sources need handling with care, and the author does that pretty well, always explaining what seems a reasonable inference and what isn’t. She leans on the sagas a lot, though, and that can get pretty repetitive (especially if you’ve read them).

Overall, I found I didn’t learn a lot, but I did start with a fairly high degree of knowledge. I think it might be a bit dry for a lot of readers, but there’s a lot of interesting stuff discussed, albeit sometimes crushing to one’s hopes of bands of Viking warrior women.

Rating: 3/5 (“liked it”)