Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Viking Royalty: Nicknames, Love Poems & Victorian Myths

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

We think we know the Vikings, but how well do we really know them?From the insignia we think they wear, to the names they call themselves and the way they spoke to each other, there's a lot to uncover.Joining Kate today is Dr. Caitlin Ellis, historian and Associate Professor at the University of Oslo, to take us back to this world and find out more.This episode was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Please, Peter Ricksons, we need your help. Right, on with the show. It's the year 1098, and we are on the rugged aisles of Anglesea in Wales. Land of St. David, daffodils, leeks, Tom Jones, and of course, the Vikings? Yeah, they got there too. It's winter, and you've guessed it, the weather isn't great.

There are hundreds of wooden long ships pulled up all along the shore, and one man is pacing up and down the beach. Despite the weather, he's got his legs out. He's wearing something kind of similar to a kilt. This man, betwixters, is the king of Norway, Magnus Bare Legs, and apparently he got his nickname because he was very little. very fond of short tunics. Who isn't?

And he's just taken control of the island after killing his Norman opponent with an arrow to the eye, and Anglesey is now officially classed as the southern border of Norway. A Norwegian bare-legged king in a kilt on an island in Wales without a horned helmet

is perhaps not the stereotypical image of a Viking. But it is a true story. So today we are going to be busting a few more Viking myths and find out how the Victorians rewrote our understanding of that period, as well as learning more

about the lives of Viking royalty. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference.

Goodness, for beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Dary. Hello and welcome back to Betwixta Sheets, the history of sex scandal and society. With me, Kate Lister. If you have a smartphone, it's likely that you have encountered Viking royalty in the form of Bluetooth. Yep, Harold Bluetooth was the king of Denmark and Norway, and he apparently got his name because of his rotten teeth. And as you heard in the intro, the Vikings really liked a nickname for their kings.

As well as bare legs and Bluetooth, we have got fork beard and eyeball. the boneless. And what else do we know about these leaders? Who were the Royal Viking women? And why did the Victorians mess up our understanding of the Vikings so spectacularly? Today, I am joined by historian Caitlin Ellis to find out more about Viking royalty. Longboats at the ready. Let's do it. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Caitlin Ellis. How are you doing? Good, thank you. It's a sunny day here in Oslo, so I can't complain. Is it? Lovely. And you are associate professor in medieval Nordic history at the University of Oslo. So if there's anyone we need to be talking to about the Vikings, it is you. Can I ask, what brought you to this study? Do you remember that there was a point when you went, oh, the Vikings, they're the very people for me. I want to study them. Yeah, good question. Yeah, I think.

when I was younger when I was little. I think actually maybe at first I was intrigued by sort of all the mythology and the stories, like the legends. You know, you maybe get like children's retellings of them and then as I got a bit older, maybe I kind of read the original thing. Obviously, in translation, you know,

you get all the penguin translations of things. And there's some good sort of historical literature. And yeah, I suppose I just maybe the medieval period appealed a bit because it's a bit unknown. And I think we didn't really do so much of that in school maybe when I was in primary school and high school, you know, it was a bit more, maybe you did the Romans and then you kind of skipped to like the 20th century and it was sort of this gap in between. And you kind of think, I mean, it might be different nowadays people in school, but yeah, you sort of

wondered what happened in between. So, yeah, in some ways it's kind of mysterious, but in some ways we have all these, all these kind of sources that are out there and that are really interesting to engage with, yeah. Do you think that, so the reason that we get taught about the Romans, we know loads about the Romans, like, you know, there's a Roman empire. Men think about it every single day, apparently, is because they left so much evidence and writing and statues and infrastructure and architecture and blah, blah, blah. Did the Vikings leave as much that we've got to work with? Is that one of the reasons why perhaps there's a bit of sort

of darkness around this particular period in history? Yeah, maybe. And I suppose maybe the sort of classical world used to be seen as kind of this is where all the good things happen, right? Or civilization begins or something. And we will like heart back to it. And as you say this, idea of the dark ages, I guess, particularly for the early medieval period as if, yeah, after the Romans, it all just sort of disintegrated and everything was terrible and dark and horrible. But, yeah, we maybe do have a little bit of a problem about a lack of sources for some areas, but yeah, definitely not as stark, I guess, as that stereotype would imply. And we do have, yeah, amazing artifacts and kind of works of artistry and, yeah, maybe not so many, like, huge stone buildings

and amphitheaters and kind of things like that. But I suppose, yeah, in the northern world in particular, if things are being built out of woods and so on, obviously that's less likely to survive in the longer term. But yeah, I suppose now Vikings seem to be on trend, almost, you know, they're in a lot of popular culture, which is good for me and that students take the modules. Is it good for you as an academic who really studies the history of the Vikings

or do you find yourself getting very grumpy about the mythology? of the Vikings. Do you find yourself kind of like running after it going, no, no, no, no, they didn't have horns on their helmets and they didn't do those and they didn't do that? Or are you quite happy to let this myth play out? Yeah, a bit of both, I think, yeah, like in some ways, you know, I think we should just be pleased if anyone takes an interest in something that I'm interested in and that I study, if we can get people interested in the medieval period in the first place, that's sort of maybe part of the battle. But then, yeah, I suppose there are some stereotypes, obviously

and maybe that can be frustrating if you sort of keep hearing the same thing or someone just sort of found some dodgy source on the internet and then kind of things that they're an expert. And I suppose there is also maybe the slightly dangerous aspect. Some of the stereotypes have obviously been connections to white supremacy and neo-Nazism. So that bit, I guess, is the thing that we'd be most uncomfortable with the way that things can be kind of misappropriated and misused,

taken out of their context and used in a very different potentially kind of dangerous way. But yeah, hopefully lots of superiors. are willing to learn and sometimes maybe it can be fun to kind of challenge the stereotypes of it and sort of nuance the like TV or film image that they have maybe. So if we start with a real basic page one question, what is your categorisation of a Viking? Like what does somebody have to do? When do they have to have lived? Where do they have to have lived for you to comfortably say you're a Viking? Yeah, that's something that scholars still argue about to this day. So I guess the original meaning of the word

in Old Norse, Veking is the noun for a person or Veking is the sort of the activity like to go raiding, to go a Viking as it were. So yeah, I guess it is kind of just being used as a job description, you know, rather than a cultural identity or an ethnic identity.

So literally it meant a pirate, a raider, someone who goes plundering. That's the original meaning of the word. But obviously it's come to be used for sort of the whole society of medieval Scandinavia and the Scandinavians who go out and leave and go and raid and settle and trade across most of Europe and even beyond. So yeah, it's something that we still sort of slightly argue about how we should use the term

precisely. So maybe we should only be using Viking for the people who are doing the raiding. But as we still maybe talk about the Viking Age and the Viking world and things like that. So we could maybe just try and call them medieval Scandinavians, but then it's also so possible that some of the people who are who are raiding with them are not actually originally Scandinavian, right? They could have been from all of these places that they travel. I mean, I suppose it's like anything that all of our terms are always, you know, somewhat imperfect, you know, or our periodizations or whatever it might be. So yeah, the traditional chronology,

I suppose, would be from the sort of eighth century to the 11th century, that that would be the Viking age, with maybe slight differences, almost depending on which country you look at, right? So if we're in England, we maybe like to think that the end of the Viking Age is 1066 because the Norwegian king, Harold Hardrada, dies and then we get the Norman conquest. So we kind of think this is the start of a new era. But if we're looking at other parts of Europe, that that date isn't necessarily quite so significant. I suppose I am a little bit more interested in this sort of later Viking age or kind of after that date as well when there's still Scandinavian kings who are kind of come

and on big naval expeditions to Britain and Ireland, so it's not necessarily so clear-cut. Well, some people have tried to talk about there being like two Viking ages. Peter Sawyer had this idea that actually, if we're thinking about those very early Viking reigns, it's such a different scale to these big invasion attempts in the 11th century,

so then we'd end up dividing it even more. I can understand why it's just easier to go, Viking. It was just, they're all Viking. Yeah. Stephanie convenient, yeah. to start trying to get the real nuance in there. It becomes very, very confusing. But we are talking about Viking royalty today.

I'm kind of interested in, because obviously these are a group of people that, would we say it's feudalism, that they use their system of like the king at the top, the plebs at the bottom, and they're using enslaved people. What sort of system of government did these people have? I suppose we normally associate feudalism,

maybe with a bit later in the medieval period, or we feel that Scandinavia maybe doesn't have such a developed system of government if we were comparing it to England or to Frankia at the same time. So we don't really have such a thing as Norway or Denmark quite yet for a lot of this period. Or we're kind of starting to, or it's sort of aspirationally, it's there that people are starting to try and say, I'm the most important king, but there are still some other kings knocking around. We sort of went up talking about petty kings, like sort of smaller scale kings. But yeah, I think it still would have been a hierarchical society.

I guess sometimes we can have a slightly romantic notion that like, yeah, everyone was equal just because it was a bit less hierarchical or not so much of a kind of aristocracy maybe is in other places. But yeah, as you say, there's obviously there's still slaves, you know, they are they are being traded and plundered just as much as kind of precious metal in this period as sort of part of Viking activity. So that's obviously the more unpleasant side that I guess we need to not forget, although obviously it doesn't go with that nice romantic image of the Vikings as we say that we see in the media sometimes. you've got kings and hopefully queens hopefully we can talk about some queens as well what kind of areas are they ruling over i've never ever heard of petty viking kings before and i i love that concept that there was a king but he was kind of a rubbish king so we're not going to count him properly i'm trying to get an understanding of yeah i suppose petty kings makes it sound a bit like he's just kind of really petulant and gets annoyed easily or something but doesn't let people play in his long

about. So is it that people are kings and rulers over small areas if countries aren't forming yet? Is this sort of like almost, I don't want to say tribal like the Celts, but is that kind of what we're dealing with here? Yeah, I think in terms of sort of smaller areas, maybe, yeah, you know, maybe they can then start to beat the neighbouring king and then you can start to kind of consolidate power and kind of gradually build up into something that looks more like the nations that we kind of recognize today. But I suppose it's also maybe that we've not got a system of like primogeniture, you know, of the succession isn't so established as we'd get sort of in the later period, you know, that I'm the eldest son of this, of this guy. So therefore I get to be king after

him. We maybe have a system based on kind of who's a good candidate, like who's powerful, who has support from particularly the maybe the army or the kind of warrior bands and sort of retinues. So maybe it has to be someone in the first. family of the previous king, but then that could obviously still leave you with quite a few claimants who might try and kind of try and come in and sort of take over. So there's maybe a bit of a bit of kind of instability that that situation would create. And I suppose that has been one of the arguments for why did they go raiding at all is that you need to kind of maintain your position by going and getting lots of wealth that you can reward all your followers with. But then I

guess that becomes a bit of a kind of vicious cycle. Then you have to have all these followers and this war band to maintain your position and you have to keep them happy. So you have to keep going raiding and then you need the war band. Yes. And say what you want about Viking kings is they did have some belting names, didn't they? Like there was someone, I don't know if he was a king, but there was someone hairy breeches and someone Bluetooth, but there was a king bear legs, king bear leg. Yeah, exactly. How do you go about getting that particular name? Who is King Bearleg? Yeah, so his first name is Magnus, but yeah, this is the sort of colourful nickname epithet that he gets known by bear legs or sort of bare fodder in Ordn, sort of bare feet. So, yeah, bear as in naked, not as in very hairy or something.

So the sagas actually have like a couple of slightly different explanations for where that name comes from. So one of them sort of has it that he gets kind of attacked. He's taken a bit by surprise, unawares. So he has to kind of like rush out of the tent and he's not really. really had time to put his trousers on yet because there's no time to delay. And then one of the other sources says that it's because he sort of spent time in like Britain and Ireland that he's kind of adopted some sort of kind of tunic thing. I mean, it sort of puts you in mind of a kilt or though a kilt is sort of a much later thing really, as if he's just sort of adopted a

new kind of style of dress. But yeah, those sources are a little bit later than he lives. So it's a bit difficult to know for sure. Whereas, yeah, some of the others are a bit more straightforward. forward. If someone's called the tall, then that's a bit easier to get a sense of what that means, right? It's bonkers to think that some of them might just be that it's like a nickname of something that happened that you did that was really embarrassing and now forevermore you are going to be officially known. It's such a strange system. Yeah. And I guess this is a society where like reputation is really important potentially, you know, like your standing in society is sort of maybe based on some of, you know, what people think of you and these stories.

So if you had a particularly unflattering nickname, that could be a bit of a problem, if you become the butt of the joke. It would be. So what kind of king was King Bearleg? What was he a good king? Was he a bad king? What was his origin story?

Yeah, so he is the son of a guy called Olaf Keir, which means the quiet or the peaceful. So he wasn't doing much of the Viking stuff, much warfare. The father was a bit more just focused on like making kind of noise, strong and kind of on internal improvements, as it were. But this Olaf, he had seen his father and be killed at Stanford Bridge. He'd seen Harold Haudrada be killed, so he was with him.

So I suppose it's possible to think that, you know, yeah, if you see your father be killed in battle while trying to invade another land, maybe you might decide, I'm just going to stay here in Norway and just like not try and expand my territory and just kind of stick here. This is fine. Absolutely. But then it seems like his son, like Magnus, kind of harks, to his grandfather more takes after him.

So he does seem a bit more, a bit more kind of ambitious and warlike and sort of has conflicts kind of with other Scandinavian kingdoms as well. But then I guess he's particularly known for having these two expeditions to Britain and Ireland. And we are now more sort of at the end of the 11th century and into the very, very beginning of the 12th. So I say some people would say it isn't really Viking anymore technically. But I say this is almost the period that I'm sort of interested in as to what are we

calling it like is are they post-vikings or you know they're still acting in in the same way as a lot of their predecessors but it's definitely yeah an interesting period and they they wouldn't have had any conception of like oh we're not Vikings anymore or whatever it was that how they refer to themselves would they that that wouldn't have occurred to them at the time yeah suddenly they all woke up and said right there's a new era now what i really liked about king bear legs was the story that he is the child of his dad and one of his dad's concubines. Is that right? Yeah, so we don't actually even know for certain who she is. Again, I think some of the sources kind of give different names, sort of come up with different possible identifications for her. So sometimes that's the problem in medieval history that the women just don't, don't feature as much as we might like or don't get named. But yeah, I suppose it's kind of maybe not so uncommon in this period that the king may well have a wife, but sort of also has other. sexual partners as well. And it might be that it seems like in this period it's not necessarily, I suppose maybe

concubine now you sort of think that it might have associations of that like being looked down upon or kind of being like a slightly negative kind of connotations. It might be a bad thing to be. But we sort of think that actually it might have been somewhat advantageous, well maybe to the woman herself and to the family. So I guess it is possible that some of these women might have kind of chosen to do this. Or I suppose also that their family might have kind of pushed them into doing it. it, which could also be unpleasant, but by that association with the king, obviously, if you end up

bearing the heir who, like, becomes king, then obviously that's a particular kind of really good bonus to have as a family that would increase your status. But we even get kind of references to things like the king's brother. So actually someone who's not of royal status, you know, doesn't have any kind of royal blood themselves, but it's like the half brother to the king sort of from his mother's side. So just because he's like been in the same womb that the king has been, He still sort of has some kind of association. So it sort of seems like in the earlier periods, yeah, kind of being a concubine or sort of having that connection to royalty isn't necessarily something kind of shameful or anything like

that. No, that doesn't surprise me at all. You see that all the time, the kind of professional mistress, the actual sugar baby of the king or it seems to be a very coveted position. But you know what it has made me wonder is, has anyone else? done any research on Viking sex work? I mean, if there's like a system of concubineage of people, you know, like great, you can chag the king and get pregnant and that's brilliant. That's a way to get lots of money. But what about like further down the social scale? Presumably people

are buying and selling sex, but I can't remember reading anything about anyone researching just Viking sex for sale. Yeah, that's a good question actually. I'm not sure I'm aware of anything in that much detail either. I suppose maybe the assumption has been that a lot of that need might almost be being filled by slaves who then don't have a choice and don't get paid or I suppose maybe eventually I guess if they're pleasing enough they might get their freedom or something at some point but yeah I think you're right there might have been

some sort of expectation that if you have this sort of relationship with a king that you might get some sort of financial reward and obviously if you have a child you would hope that the king would give you something to help with the upkeep of the child and and raising them I'll be back with Caitlin after the show outbreak. Wouldn't it be great if somebody excavated a Viking brothel? That would just tell us so much, wouldn't it? That would be my archaeological find of a century. I'm fascinated. But the idea that there

was a sort of a system of concubanage of professional mistresses, that's interesting. But what's really interesting as well is that that didn't stop King barelegs becoming king. So like you were saying, illegitimacy doesn't seem to have been as big an issue for the Viking culture. Yeah, certainly not in this kind of period, I guess there maybe starts to be a bit of a change over time, maybe with the kind of growing influence of Christianity as well, you know, and what the church has to say about things that you then get more of an emphasis on what is the proper line of succession and that you should be legitimate from a sort of church-approved marriage and everything like that. And I suppose maybe they themselves even start to realize that perhaps that could also be good for stability to an

extent as well, that then if you don't have as many people kind of competing for the throne, as many different contenders, it might make things a little bit kind of smoother if everyone kind of agrees that this is the system. But I guess it's maybe as somewhat of a kind of gradual change. And I guess maybe very kind of just dependent on the particular situations if, if an legitimate one is the only option or the best option or is a lot older and then it's like, are you going to choose a little infant that's legitimate over him? So I suppose individuals could maybe try and use it a little bit opportunistically perhaps. But yeah, I think maybe with this growing concern about stability and maybe as we get a bit later on you almost wonder if some of these

kings are deliberately trying not to do that and stop that happening, trying to sort of limit the possible number of children that there could be and kind of not have so many concubines and so on. And I suppose particularly because we get this issue that because people like Magna's spare legs and other kings have spent all this time abroad and presumably had dalliances and affairs and whatnot concubines there, then you can. can get someone coming from abroad who suddenly sort of rocks up and says, oh, I'm actually totally the son of so and so. But, you know, I'm from like a different culture in a lot of ways. And now you have to kind of take me into account. And that probably creates even more uncertainty and

kind of. Did that happen quite a lot? Just people turning up going, he was definitely my dad, definitely. Yeah, we do get it a fair bit. So actually, Magnus himself, we do have someone who turns up in the 1120s when he's called Harold Gillie or Gila. which seems to be short for Gila Christ, so that's a kind of Gaelic name, meaning kind of like the servant of Christ or sort of devotee of Christ. We often get it paired with kind of saints names. So yeah, he just sort of is supposedly a result of a relationship that Magnus had in kind of Ireland or the Hebrides. And then, yeah, he kind of turned up. And I think some of the sources even imply that like he doesn't speak Old Norse very well.

But they actually make him go through like an ordeal, you know, kind of like the trial by ordeal idea of sort of hot iron. There's like bishops there who are like overseeing this and like seeing whether they think that this is, and he does pass this test apparently. Yeah, I don't know how. But then the king at the time, his sort of half-brother, also makes him swear an oath to say that they can kind of like share rule, but that he shouldn't kind of try and claim the throne as long as he's alive and that his son is alive. But then he doesn't actually really stick to that.

So when this king dies, he comes back into things. And it's actually almost the start of the Norwegian. in Civil War era, which lasts for over 100 years with lots of competing claimants. And yet we get another one, King's Fair, who sort of grew up in the Pharaoh Islands. And then, yeah, suddenly his mother says, oh, actually, he's not the child of my husband. He's the child of the king. And they have to try and, again, go through various processes to try and prove this. But yeah, I guess scholars are still slightly in disagreement as to whether we should believe

the story at all. With Harold, we do also have a poem that Magnus Bearleg supposedly wrote to a woman in Ireland. Or at least people claim that he writes poems, which, yeah, I guess it is quite interesting for us when we think about all these very warlike people. And there's also some kind of love poetry. I think I have it here, actually.

Oh, please do. I've got to know what a Viking love poem is like. It says, what's this talk of going home? My heart is in Dublin, and the women of Trondheim won't see me this autumn. The girl has not denied me pleasure visits. I'm glad. I love the Irish lady as well as my young self. Oh. So yes, this is attributed to the king in the sagas that we get, yeah.

He was married, wasn't he? So he's a cheating dog, but that's still quite sweet. Yes, yeah. Do we know anything about the woman he was writing it for, the woman and I know? No, yeah, that's kind of the only glimpse that we get, really. I suppose a lot of this poetry, the sort of scaldic poetry, we do get quite a few that are sort of to do with love and sort of romance. Most of it is about war, is about battle and kind of like praising the king.

so often it's sort of not written by the kings themselves it's written by poets kind of telling them how amazing they are and like stroking their ego and being rewarded often with money as I guess we were talking about that being a common means of exchange or sort of get, but I suppose because it's seen as gift giving maybe sometimes rather than payment.

So yeah, it is sort of interesting that it gets used in this sort of romantic context as well and we get a few of the Icelandic sagas we get a few kind of like love triangles as well but I suppose in a way it's still a similar sort of idea that the men are like competing for the woman, but you know, this time it's about them showing off their kind of skills that, oh, I'm a great poet, not just I'm a good warrior. Sometimes they do both, you know, sometimes they have both skills. So that can be something that we see. And if we sort of get

to the 12th century, we have an Earl of Orkney, Earl Roganvald, who sort of goes to Jerusalem, so we're almost slightly connecting into crusading as well. But then I guess the line between Vikings and crusading, we could maybe argue it's a little bit more blood, but you've just got religious backing this time. And he's kind of going around the south of France and sort of composing poetry for some Viscountess of Narbon. So some people have said maybe there's a bit of like Trubodore kind of courtly love influence going on,

or just that it's difficult to know there's direct influence from courtly love poetry, or just that people are just kind of detecting some slightly similar kind of threads in both that you might often kind of direct it to a woman as your muse almost. So Viking kings, it seems complicated and quite precarious, but it does sound like they can have a pretty good time of it

if they wanted to. Was there ever any Viking queens? Was there ever a queen that ruled, a kind of a lagatha from the TV for Vikings? Is that just nonsense and fantasy? Yeah, I think there might be an extent to which it's slightly, slightly wish you were going to say that. I was really hoping there was going to be a Viking.

Queen. The experts coming and ruin everything. Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously there's some good stories out there. I mean, we have queens who are mentioned, but in the sense of the wife of the king more. And obviously, some of them can be important or sort of be backing their sons. If their son is quite young, you know, then they'd probably have more of a role to play as well. And yeah, I suppose women could these marriages, maybe as opposed to the concubines could sort of be a bit more about kind of alliances, important things like that, the same Magnus Bellegs that we've been talking about when he marries a Swedish princess, her nickname is sort of like Peace Woman, like Frevecola. So that sort of seems to be symbolizing the kind of, yeah, this union is supposed to kind of settle

things down because previously. No pressure then. Yeah, a bit of a tall order maybe. Yeah, previously Norway and Sweden have been fighting. So there's that sense of things. Yeah, I suppose maybe more in the literature. We do get stories, like you say, kind of Lagerfur and kind of shield maidens. A lot of that is a bit later.

Is there evidence for shield maidens? Because I know that there is a sort of a swelling thing at the moment of like looking to the Vikings to go, they were so feminist, it was amazing. And I love that. But it's also, I don't know how true it is, is there evidence for shield maidens? So there was the famous burial from Beirka in Sweden that had always kind of been assumed to be a male burial because it had, you know, when it was found, it had lots of weapons. So it was kind of looked kind of like a traditional male, high status, warrior, grave. maybe not a king, but like someone quite important and quite high up in society, at least a leader

or a chiefden or some sort. But then there was the genetic testing, sort of revealed that biologically it's a woman. So then we obviously, yeah, as you say, kind of got quite a lot of attention for this issue. Is she a Viking warrior woman? And yeah, it was kind of controversial in a way. And I think it is sort of interesting how some people really want it to be true. And some people really don't. And I suppose it also maybe goes to some modern issues about, as you say, sort of feminism or sort of thinking, yeah, women, should women be serving in the armed forces today? And maybe it can appeal to women because, yeah, you sort of want to be like kick ass and go-getting and kind of. But then some of the representations in the media can maybe be appealing a bit more to sort of the male gaze, right?

To sort of sexual fantasies. They're not fighting in bikinis, were there? We can definitely put that one to bed. Yeah. And actually, there have also been a few interpretations saying that, you know, just because we have this genetic evidence. We could maybe also be thinking about kind of non-binary interpretations as well, potentially, or, you know, that maybe she sort of was living as a man, but obviously we'll never really know the answer to all of these questions. And we do have

a much later kind of legendary saga, Haverer, saga or Hazix. And this girl, she's an only child as well, so there isn't a son to inherit from the father. And she takes on quite a kind of male role and even adopts a kind of male name in the text, but kind of has to like break into the tomb and reclaim her inheritance and reclaim her sword. So there's definitely some very interesting things going on in the sagas. But I'm sure there were some kind of warrior women, but maybe just not, you know, every other person in the army

or something like that. We know maybe that with the Great Army that comes to England and the continent and then leads to all these settlements in England in particular. So we used to just assume, oh yeah, all the men are in the army and they marry local women and sort of settled out. Some of that is definitely happening,

but some recent evidence does suggest that there are some women and even children who would sort of travel with the army. So you'd assume then that these women, even if they're not kind of like a career warrior, if that makes sense, even if that's not their main role, presumably they would be able to defend themselves

if necessary or they would maybe have some training or at least be able to handle a weapon or at least able to handle an axe or something that you use in other situations as well. That makes sense. What do we know about the woman in the grave then? Because presumably there have been tests and excavations and the archaeologists have got right in there. And there are things that we'll never know. We won't know her name.

We won't know if she was a they or non-binary or any of this stuff. What do we know about the person in the grave? I suppose the short answer is that we don't know a lot. We have the skeleton and we have the grave goods, including weapons and a horse. Quite costly then. So like there must have been quite high status, whoever it was. Yes, definitely. Yeah. The one thing is that archaeologist, somebody's like saying is, oh, you know, the dead don't bury themselves, that like someone else buried her. So you don't even quite know what everyone would choose to be buried with and then what the people around them choose to do as well.

But then I suppose maybe now we're being very critical of this one burial and saying, oh, you know, were the weapons even hers, but we maybe wouldn't be that critical if we were talking about a male burial with exactly the same objects and sort of artifacts. But yeah, as you say, she has some quite high status things. She also has like a kind of gaming board and kind of gaming pieces too. So a few things that aren't purely kind of martial, but maybe as something that elite society would do. But, yeah, sadly, we sort of don't really know that much about her,

but I suppose she's just kind of come to maybe symbolize that debate as a whole. And yeah, we have a lot more examples in the literature, but then sort of how kind of legendary they are. And, yeah, as you say, maybe there's the image that it would have been wonderful to be a woman in the Viking period or in medieval Scandinavia. And I think it might have been a bit better to be a woman there than in, like, other parts of Europe at the same time. but sort of fundamentally it's still a kind of patriarchal society.

Maybe in places like Iceland and Greenland, you might have a bit more opportunities. I suppose in frontier societies you normally think that then people might not be as strict about gender roles or just because the population isn't very much, you're kind of not able to be. But yeah, we do get some very, very kind of colourful, very kind of fierce women, some very kind of striking characters. In the sagas, these Icelandic family sagas, we also get women who are, who maybe aren't like committing the violence themselves. but are goading the men into doing it

are kind of really like egging them on and kind of being like, you know, like are you really a man unless you go and take revenge for your family member who's been killed or whatever it might be? So yeah, there are some very striking moments where like they'll take like the blood stained garment that that person wore and kind of like put it around the shoulders

of the person they're trying to encourage to do. So it makes them obviously seem quite kind of fierce because maybe in a way they only benefit from this kind of blood vengeance whereas they can't really be in a legal setting about kind of getting compensation and kind of other avenues that you could explore. So that might be kind of one of the reasons

why we get this literary trope. The Vikings are fascinating for so many reasons, but they are one of the groups of people in history who get appropriated by different people further down the line for different reasons. The Nazis loved them because they viewed it as this proof that there was an Aryan original race, and they used a lot of runic iconography. And as you said earlier,

still today, the right-wing nutheads are still appropriating their imagery for all kinds of crazy reasons. A group of people that I studied a lot is the Victorians. And I actually did my PhD on Victorians writing about the medieval period and all the mad crap that they came up with, basically. And I didn't really get into it, but I know that the Victorians were obsessed. with the Vikings, and they created a lot of myth around the Vikings there as well. Is that something that you have had to confront in your research as well, what the Victorians did with the Vikings? Yeah, it's supposed to an extent that we kind of get this almost sort of rediscovery of the Vikings

that they sort of become popular again. As you say, some of that is maybe this kind of idea of this sort of common Germanicness that appealed to some parts of society. I suppose it was the Victorian era as well where maybe people, got really into the idea of the Vikings having got to America too, sort of as America in the modern world kind of rises in importance. I guess sort of Scandinavian immigrants to America, then obviously that kind of appealed to them that they had this old claim. You know, they beat the Italians, they beat Columbus kind of thing. And yeah, I think you can also maybe see it sort of a bit more

regionally in Victorian England as well, that it starts to appeal to people in the former Dane Law area in the north and the east of England. So I think we still probably see some of it being used in sort of like regional identity and cultural heritage that I guess as well as being popular on TV series and stuff. Do you think we're still kind of doing that as like a sort of a way to draw the interview to a close to think about it is what are we doing with this Viking myth today because the Viking myth, it's part of the history but it kind of has a life of its own, the TV and the how people view it and how they appropriate it and what they project onto it. what do you think is fueling the current Viking trend, as you said earlier?

They're very on trend. Where do you think that's come from? Why are we suddenly going, oh, Vikings are cool again? Yeah, just I'm not sure if some of it is trying to see precursors to things in sort of modern society. Could we see them as having been a bit more feminist or a bit more inclusive of queer people or something like that? I don't know if there's maybe also a slightly like anti-authoritarian angle maybe or just sort of generally about. this sort of like spirit of adventure and fun but it is sort of interesting i suppose that they have captured the imagination more than other early medieval peoples of the same time i guess maybe

because everyone can kind of picture a viking in their heads whereas maybe they can't necessarily have quite the same thing for a frank or for an anglo-saxon or kind of early english person or for a picked or a scott or an irish person at the same time even though yeah in reality there's probably a lot of overlap and a lot of intermarriage between all of these groups and a lot of kind of contacts. Okay, my final question to you, and it might not be a very fair question, but I'm going to do it anyway, do you have a favourite Viking? Of all the Vikings that you've studied, of all the bare legs and hairy britches and Bluetooth's and Harold Hadraders and all of them, do you have one that you're a bit of a sucker for, your favourite?

Yeah, because sometimes people would say, oh, would you want to meet one of them when you sort of think, probably not actually, they're probably horrible people. Some of them, you know, like the reason that they're successful kings, you know, maybe you actually wouldn't want to meet them, you know, that would be a bad idea. But I guess some of the kind of more ordinary people, you occasionally get a little bit of a glimpse of them. So there's sort of like runic inscriptions. I guess we don't have like love letters or anything like that, right, surviving. But so amaze how in Orkney there's lots of different ones carved all over. They kind of break into this ancient mound.

A couple of them are a little bit more explicit, but you get one there just saying, oh, you know, Inga Gerv is the most beautiful. of all women. And then in Bergen, in Norway, there are runic inscriptions on sticks. There is a really funny one from Bergen where it basically says, like, she tells you to go home. And people sort of assume, you know, he's in the pub or something. And these all these run sticks kind of found in the harbour area, maybe where, you know, there's some sailors drinking in the port and it gets a message from the wife to say, come on, you've been out too late. Yeah, I'd like to meet her. Yeah, you're right. She would be fabulous to me. Oh, Caitlin, you have been fabulous to me.

You've been so much fun to talk to. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Still on Twitter or X, whatever it's called. On Blue Sky as well, I think I'm around as a medievalist, a terrible pun on my path. I love that. Yeah, I guess on things like academia.edu and research gate in places like that, or just university profile page, I guess, lists publications and things, yeah. Thank you so much for talking to me today.

You've been marvellous. Thank you for having me. Thank you for listening and thank you so much to Caitlin for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and follow along whatever it is that you get your podcasts. And if you'd like us to explore a subject or maybe you just wanted to say hello, then you can email us at betwixt at history hit.com. We have got episodes on everything from the history of fetishware to scandal in the Tudor court, all marching your way. This podcast was edited and produced by Stuart Beckwith, the senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again, Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex, The History of Sex,

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