The Viking Age occurred in the Early Middle Ages when the Norse people of Scandinavia journeyed out in search of new lands. Those who set sail were called the Vikings and through acts of piracy and war, they invaded countries across Europe. Still to this day, the Vikings are infamous for their ferocious ways and widespread clans. However, the Vikings weren’t all long-bearded men in pointy hats, so, who were the women of the Viking Age?  

1. Freyja

Let’s start with the mythology of the day. The Vikings practiced Paganism and worshipped the Norse gods, this includes Freyja, goddess of love, fertility and magic. In Norse mythology, Freyja is a völva, a magician who uses seiðr, a shamanistic type of magic that sees the practicer putting themselves into a trance-like state where they can access knowledge and see the future. Remember the völvur because we’ll circle back to them later. Freyja was also believed to be married to Odin and rode around on a carriage pulled by cats. Another fun fact about her is that her name is etymologically linked to ‘Friday’.

2. Lagertha

The existence of Lagertha is often disputed. She was included in Danish historian and writer, Saxo Grammaticus’, history book, Gesta Danorum, and all tales surrounding her stem from this one account. In the book, Ragnor Lodbrok, a legendary Viking king, becomes besotted with Lagertha after seeing her fight in battle. He claims her for his wife and she bears him three children. They eventually split and she remarries but she continues to aid her old partner in battle, before returning home to slay her husband and steal his title. She is now best-known for being a main character in the TV show, Vikings.

3. The Seeress of Fyrkat

In 1954, during an excavation at the Fyrkat fortress in Denmark, the grave of a seeress was discovered. It was clear the grave was for someone important due to the conditions the body had been left in. The woman was buried in the body of a horse drawn carriage and she wore a dress of blue and red with gold thread. However, it was three very peculiar items in the grave that point to her profession. The grave contained an iron and bronze wand, a silver amulet in the shape of a chair and a packet of henbane seeds. In the Viking Age, a seeress, (or völva, like Freyja) would put herself into a trance-like state that would allow her to make predictions. The silver amulet likely represents the seats that seeresses would carry with them to use when in their trance and henbane seeds, when burnt, produce a hallucinogenic smoke that could be used to create the trance itself. Although both men and women could practice this form of magic, it was most closely associated with women. 

4. Freydís Eiríksdóttir

Freydís Eiríksdóttir is believed to have been the daughter of Viking explorer, Erik the Red, and born in Iceland in the late 900s. Most details about her life come from two Icelandic sagas that detail her travels with her father and brother, Leif Erikson, to Greenland and possibly even Newfoundland. Her brother is thought to be the first European to set foot on American soil 500 years before Christopher Columbus. In both sagas, Freydís journeys to Vinland, a coastal land of North America, but the details beyond that are very different. In the Saga of the Greenlanders, Freydís falls out with two members of her crew and she plots with her husband to kill them with Freydís herself murdering five women. However, in the Saga of Erik the Red, Freydís is just as ferocious but in this instance she is portrayed as a hero. When native people attack the settlement, an eight-month pregnant Freydís grabs a sword and, bare-breasted, fights the attackers and survives the battle.

5. Olga of Kiev

Now a symbol of Ukrainian courage and defiance, Olga of Kiev was born into a Viking family before being married to Igor of Kiev, ruler of Kievan Rus’, an early Middle Ages territory which covered parts of modern day Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. When Igor demanded expensive tribute from the Drevlians, a Slavic tribe, they murdered him and the crown passed to Olga and Igor’s son, Svyatoslav. Since he was a child at the time, Olga ruled as his regent and she set about a detailed plot to avenge her husband’s death. Her four-step revenge plan went a little like this:

1. She invited some Drevlians to her home, tricked them into falling into a trench and buried them alive. 

2. She invited even more of them to her place (obviously they were unaware of what had happened to the first lot), treated them to a trip to a bathhouse, then bolted the doors and burned the building down.

3. She went to the spot where her husband was killed and organised a funeral feast, waited until the Drevlians had gotten drunk and then had her soldiers massacre them.

4. Lastly, she turned her attention to the remaining Drevlians in their city, Iskorosten, and told them to release three pigeons and three sparrows from each household as a symbol of peace. Then, she had her army tie a sulphur band to each bird’s leg, set the sulphur on fire and send them back into the city until every house was on fire. 

So, er, moving on from that. Olga is also revered as a saint of widows and converts in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy after her efforts to bring Christianity to her people. 

So, there you have it, the stories of five very different Viking women. From saints to slayers to goddesses, voyagers and seeresses, Viking women were a truly fascinating and varied lot. 

Header illustration of Lagertha by Morris Meredith Williams