I came across this image of Thor getting married and, as an owner of two adorable cats myself, my eye was immediately drawn to the two in the bottom left of the picture. Assuming this isn't an anachronism, (I'm not sure when the picture dates to, but I saw it linked in this article) how did the 'Vikings' view cats? Did they treat them as pets? As animals to be kept around to kill mice? As divine / mythical beings?
In short answer: a 13th century Icelandic tradition (Gylfaginning section of Snorri's "Prose" Edda) certainly associates two cats with Goddess Freyja (two cats carry her cat - see the citation below), and the artist of the cited modern illustration (dated to 1902), Elmer Boyd Smith, apparently employs the two cats as her "attribute (jargon in the history of art - linked to the glossary site of National Gallery, UK)" to show that Thor was being disguised not just an ordinary (?) woman, but as Freyja - though I'm not sure whether the artist himself depicts this disguise attempt as successful, judged from the apparent indifference of her cats to Thor who tried to mimick their master.
"And when she [Freyja] travels she drives two cats and sits in a chariot...... (Faulkes trans. 1987: 24)."
On the other hand, it is rather difficult to ascertain the credibility of Snorri's statement above, based on the extant written as well as non-written (archaeological) evidence.
Among other animals, a small amount of cat's bone has been retrieved in Iron Age and Viking Age Scandinavia (its frequency is a little less than those of bird of prey), and we have a few examples of cats buried in the human grave especially together with (rich) woman since the 2nd or 3rd century (Late Roman Iron Age). Based on the location of their early occurrences, Jennbert surmises that the habits of keeping domesticated cats had originally been brought from the Mediterranean Area into Scandinavia during the Roman Period (Jennbert 2011: 67). (Added): It would also be natural to suppose that cats were also kept and expected to hunt and to kill mice.
Scandinavians (especially their males), however, did not usually bear the Old Norse person name based on the cat, in contrast to some other "wild" animals like the bear (Björn and Bjarni), the snake (Ormr), and the eagle (Arn - Örn), whose bones have not been testified in Viking Age settlements (so that the Old Norse people did probably not pet them in usual circumstances), as I suggested before in: In the television show Vikings, various Medieval European courts and nobles are pictured as having a variety of rare or exotic animals such as monkeys and parrots. The leader of the Vikings is also shown petting both a rat and a python at one point. Are such portrayals historically accurate?). On contrary to the dog (as I also before in: Did the vikings have dogs? What kind? Are there depictions of them in their art?), cats seldom appear in Viking Age and medieval art (perhaps since their preferred scenes were located primarily in outdoors, not indoors).
I'm not so sure about how to interpret this apparent contradiction between the presence of archaeological-osteological evidence and the unpopularity in naming practices. The simplest interpretation might have been that while cats were rather common as domesticated pets, not all the Scandinavians highly appreciated the cat's characteristics in Viking Age, but this answer sounds rather too naive also to me.
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