During the Viking Age, Pregnancies Were Political, Precarious—and Violent

Pregnancy has perhaps been particularly overlooked in periods we mostly associate with warriors, kings and battles—such as the highly romanticised Viking age (the period from AD800 until AD1050). By exploring such “womb politics”, it is possible to add significantly to our knowledge on gender, bodies and sexual politics in the Viking age and beyond. Despite dating to the centuries after the Viking age, sagas and legal texts provide words and stories about childbearing that the Vikings’ immediate descendants used and circulated. This pendant, found in a tenth-century woman’s burial in Aska, Sweden, is the only known convincing depiction of pregnancy from the Viking age. Together with recent studies of Viking women buried as warriors, this provokes further thought to how we envisage gender roles in the oft-perceived hyper-masculine Viking societies.