During the viking era, what were the gender ideas of Scandinavians? What did they think was a woman's role, and how strict was this?

by The_Manchurian

As a secondary question: I read that vikings thought that magic was for girls, seeing it as something unmanly. Is that true?

bloodswan

Sorry for the delay getting this put together. Real life and all that fun stuff kept getting in the way.

Due to the nature of the sources available to us this answer applies most directly to Iceland. Overall it is likely that things in the rest of Scandinavia (especially Norway) were not too dissimilar, but it is something to keep in mind.

In general, women were considered to be in charge of the work inside the house while men were in charge of the work outside the house (this distinction shows up in the Icelandic law code Grágás). While not necessarily obligatory, this separation of labor was set into the culture to a strong enough degree that there are many cases in the various writings that survive where an unmarried man hires a woman to manage his household while he deals with the rest of the farm. The reverse is also not unheard of where a landowning widow will hire a man to handle the running of the farm itself while she continues to run the household. But there are a few cases that crop up with a wife or widow taking over complete management of the farm.

So what sort of tasks were involved in the upkeep of the household?

  • Milking the animals and creating and storing the various dairy products produced (Butter, cheese, curds, whey).

  • Doing laundry.

  • Washing hair. The women in the household would wash the hair of their husband and children. They also could potentially be tasked with washing the hair of male visitors. Women washed their own hair.

  • Serving meals.

  • Assisting with the removal of clothes. This would have been a task especially important in Iceland. The cold and wet weather would have required thick clothing, layering, and potentially caused the fabric to stiffen, requiring assistance to remove outer layers upon entering the house.

  • Brewing. For small scale household production evidence points towards women being in charge of the brewing.

  • Butchering. Men slaughtered the animals, but the women were in charge of cutting up and preparing the meat for cooking or storage.

  • Cooking. "It is not for men to get mixed up in the preparation of food" (Njal's Saga).

  • Weaving cloth and all that entails. Women sheared the sheep (potentially with help from the male shepherds), spun the thread, wove the cloth, and produced all the various textile goods. This included sail cloth, outerwear such as rain jackets, pants, shirts, wall hangings, blankets, etc.

Men were involved in the more physical jobs around the farm. This included building fences; planting, cultivating, and harvesting hay; shepherding animals; slaughtering animals; etc. Yet it was not unheard of for women (especially in poorer households) to assist in those tasks. Especially common would have been assisting with the shepherding duties and the harvesting duties. For example: the men would scythe the hay while the women would follow behind to rake it. There were also circumstances where men would be in charge of traditionally female tasks. An obvious example would be when the men went raiding they would need to prepare their own meals and perform their own sail repairs (it was common for ships to carry extra homespun specifically for that purpose).

Women did not participate in most leisure activities that information survives about. There was a variant of chess that they are depicted as playing, but they did not participate in, or in many cases even spectate, more physical contests. They are often depicted as serving the drinks at feasts with them occasionally being granted the opportunity to imbibe (there are actually some pretty interesting drinking set-ups that appear in the literature but there is a lot of variance so I won't delve into them in the answer here). In terms of public prosody and story-telling, women were only allowed to spectate unless they were a völva (seeress) giving prophesy.

Before marriage, women did not have much say about their marital prospects during the Viking Age. Marriages would be determined by their father (if alive) or by another male relative or, in especially rare cases, a widowed female relative. These marriages were more or less purely political. They were meant to tie families of similar social status together and increase the wealth of the families. Once married though, a woman had much more say. Divorce was a fairly easy process and could be initiated by the woman. When a woman divorced she kept both her dowry and the bride price, in addition to any shared property being split between the two parties. Thus a woman could not be financially destroyed by a divorce and would be able to continue on and recover from it. If a woman was widowed, she retained control of the farm and homestead. She could choose to try managing everything herself or could choose to hire help as she saw fit. In addition, it was not uncommon for a man to leave his wife in charge of everything while he was away at the alþing or out on raids.

In terms of magic, women were usually depicted as the sole practitioners. There are examples in the sagas and other sources of men performing or attempting to learn magic but they are fairly rare. One of the defining accoutrements of Scandinavian magic is the magic wand or staff, which could be seen as a form of distaff. The distaff is of course a common tool for spinning wool, a traditionally feminine task. So while practitioners shown are typically female and use items associated with feminity, the most famous male practitioner of magic is Oðinn. Yet even the god himself cannot escape accusation for practicing magic. In Lokasenna, Loki makes fun of Oðinn for practicing magic, claiming it is unmanly. So there does seem to be a pall of unmanliness over magic. But still, it's hard to say with any certainty what the exact stance towards magic would have been (plus it would have varied between time and place). It is stated as being unmanly in at least one source but the context of that source is that it is a depiction of flyting. This is an exchange of insults, akin to a proto-rap battle. So is magic being unmanly a true stance of the people at large? Or is it exaggeration for a particular purpose?

Bibliography:

Women in Old Norse Society - Jenny Jochens

Women in the Viking Age - Judith Jesch

I relied pretty much entirely on Jochens for this answer but I figured I would list Jesch as well since it is the other main canonical text on Viking age women.