Women, War and Words: a Verbal Archaeology of Shield-maidens

Abstract

Scholarly discussions of the question of the participation of women in war in the Viking Age
have based their arguments on a variety of evidence, including both archaeology and texts.
However, even those scholars who make substantial use of the textual evidence have not
paid sufficiently close attention to (a) the vocabulary used in the representations (whether
historical or fictional) of women acting in the supposed male role of warrior and (b) the
literary-historical
contexts in which the texts were produced, including potential relationships
between texts.
To further these discussions, this paper proposes a method which might be called the
‘stratigraphy of texts’ to demonstrate how a careful sifting of the cumulative textual evidence
can enrich discussion about this important question. With close attention to the
vocabulary used by the texts, and by considering the date, genre and sources of, and –
importantly – the relationships between, texts in Old Norse, the discussion will demonstrate
what can and what cannot be deduced from these textual representations of female warriors
in the Viking Age.
The paper will focus on tracing the development of the Old Norse concept of the skjaldmær,
‘shield-maiden’, through a variety of texts in which this term occurs, and also suggest
a probable origin for the concept. There will also be a brief consideration of the term ‘valkyrie’
(ON valkyrja).