You're Dead to Me - Viking Women: wives, weavers and warriors

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Greg Jenner is joined in medieval Scandinavia by historian Dr Eleanor Barraclough and comedian Chloe Petts to learn about the fascinating women of the Viking age. The popular stereotype of the Vikings is pretty macho: bearded men on boats, heading out to raid, pillage and burn down monasteries. There are some famous images of Viking warrior women: shieldmaidens, Valkyries and various goddesses. But what about the lives led by ordinary women in medieval Scandinavia and across the Viking world? In this episode we look at the real history behind the myths and stereotypes, exploring daily life for Viking women: their roles as wives and mothers, the work they did as weavers and healers, the gods they prayed to, the archaeological traces they left behind, as well as the sad reality that many women in the Viking world were enslaved. We also look at women who lived lives out of the ordinary – as queens, sorceresses, and warriors. If you’re a fan of feminist history, the intimate details of daily life in the past, and fantastical myths and legends, you’ll love our episode on Viking Women. If you want to know more about the Vikings, check out our episodes on Leif Erikson and Old Norse Literature. And for more fearsome warrior women, there’s our episode on Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba. You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Clara Chamberlain Written by: Clara Chamberlain, Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

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In a world where swords were sharp. And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians. Me, Matt Lewis. And me, Dr. Eleanor Yonaga, dive headfirst into the mud, blood, and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme,

subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Greg here, just a reminder before we get going that episodes of Your Dead to Me are released on Fridays wherever you get your podcasts. But if you're in the UK, you can listen to the latest episodes 28 days earlier than anywhere else.

First, on BBC Sounds. Hello, and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously. My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian author and broadcaster. And today we are loading our loomweights and launching our longship as we sail back to medieval Scandinavia to learn all about Viking women. And to help us, we have two very special guests.

In History Corner, she's a historian, writer and broadcaster based at Bath Spa University, where her research focuses on the cultures, literatures and languages of the medieval north. You may have read her sensational new book, Embers of the Hands, Hidden Histories of the Viking Age. It's a wonderful book. And you will definitely remember her from our episode on Leif Erickson. Dr. Eleanor Baraclough.

Welcome back, Eleanor. Yay, thank you so much for having me back. Delighted to have you back. And in Comedy Corner, they're an award-winning... Sorry, and in Comedy Corner, they're an award-nominated stand-up comedian. When it comes to awards, I am famously always the bridesmaid, never the bride. And what you just did, your mouth typo just cut deep.

I'm so sorry, Clive. Okay, okay. And in Comedy Corner, they're an award-nominated stand-up comedian. You might have seen them on TV, on Celebrity Pointless, Richard Osmond's House of Games, Jonathan Ross's comedy club or commenting on the women's football Euros on the Sky Sports. Maybe you caught their recent stand-up tour. How You See Me, How You Don't.

Awesome supporting Ed Gamble. It's Chloe Pets. Welcome to the show, Chloe. Thank you so much for having me. It was so beautiful as well, because I get, this is my first time meeting you, and I get the impression that you're such a lovely man. No, monster.

We really felt like your mistake cut you to the core, whereas that's probably the funniest thing that's going to happen to me today. I'm pretty sure you're going to win an award any time soon. Okay, okay. Anyone listening, please give Chloe an award so I look like a profit. Manifestation. Yes, exactly.

I put it out into the universe and it's coming back to you. Chloe, first time on the pod. How are you with history? Did you like it at school? Are you comfort zone? I did like it. I think I did it for A level? Did I do it for A level?

You think you. Did I do it for a little? You're not that old. What did I? I wasn't there, class. We're going to know. Oh my God. Yes, you did it for A-level.

I think I must have because I really liked it. Did I do it for A-level? Now I'm going to list my A-levels. I definitely did English because I did that at uni. I did maths. History, theatre studies. Oh, and then I did classics as well. Double history.

I did double history. I forgot that I even did one history. Look, I loved history. It was probably like my top two subjects were English and theatre studies. And then history was like my subsidiary. And I had two great teachers, two great teachers, Miss Winley, Dr. Gardner, lovely people. Yeah, shout out of them.

And, you know, it must be the classic. Like, it was a lot of Henry VIII, a lot of World War II. The area of history that I enjoy the most, because I really like consuming history via novels. So I'm a big fan of, like, the Victorian era and the regents' hero. Gotcha. Those are kind of my areas of speciality. So if I say to you, Vikings, did your brain just go?

No. Slightly, yeah. I mean, I don't have any sort of context. of really where they're located in history. They seem like kind of vacuum-packed in their little section. So, yeah, getting a bit of like context of where they're located in human history will be really interesting for me today. We can do that, can't we?

Yeah, I can definitely do that. So what do you know now? This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you, our lovely listener might know about today's subject. And I reckon when you hear Viking, you're probably thinking big, hairy men in historically inaccurate horn helmets, no horns. But today we're honing, ah, sorry, honing in on the women. Now, you might be imagining fearsome warriors tossing axes while tossing their immaculate blonde braids.

And maybe you're thinking also of the mythological valkyries, made famous in Wagner's opera and the Marvel Thor movies, of course. You might have seen the TV show, Vikings with the scary shield maiden Lagather and her bloody post-divorce glow up, or you've watched Skade, the sinister sorceress, in the last kingdom. But what's the truth behind these pop culture portrayals? What was life really like for the average Viking gal about town? And how many people can you incinerate and still be made a saint? Let's find out. Right, Eleanor, let's start with the basics, because Chloe said vacuum-packed them for us.

So I'll get my scissors out, right? Get your scissors out, seal them up. Put them in a nice water bath, I think. They would like that. Right, let's give some dates. So we're talking first raids that we know about, we think of Vikings being sort of really raidy, on the British Isles, end of the 8th century,

so like 793 classic raid on Lindisfan, possibly a little bit before then, all right? And then how long the Viking Age goes on for sort of depends on how we're defining it, but let's say kind of up to 1,100, except a lot of the evidence actually comes from after that, so we're pushing it. So if you think of the year around 1,000,

they're definitely hanging around there. and then like a few centuries either side, yeah? And then that word Viking, there's an old Norse version of the word, Wikinger, which means a raider or a pirate. But of course, not everyone in the Viking age is going to be a raider or a pirate. So it's sort of like, roughly speaking, the age in which that happens. Then in terms of where we're talking geographically, the homelands are Scandinavia, so Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

That's where it all starts, except a really exciting thing. about the Viking Age is that it's all about expansion, colonisation, exploration, quite a lot of sort of, you know, rae-y, sort of quite bloody invasion-y type things as well, which we'll talk about. But, you know, this is sort of a very culturally sort of, you know, people are coming into contact with each other across this vast area. So, you know, they expand across the North Atlantic. They make it all the way to Iceland and Greenland,

even to the edge of the North American continent around the year 1000. They go east down the waterways of what's, now, sort of Russia, Ukraine. They end up in the Byzantine Empire, which is centered on what's now Istanbul in Turkey. And then they end up further east than that. They end up sort of around Baghdad, that sort of region. So they're really far traveling. And that's a really important part of what they are. But also because it's over sort of several hundred years, there are big changes over that time. So for example, they start pagan. You might have heard of the Viking sort of Norse pantheon of gods like Odin and Freya and Thor and Loki.

But then around the year 1,000 or so, we see this sort of conversion to Christianity, roughly speaking. So it's a really interesting tipping point that the Viking Age exists. Is that sort of sufficiently unvacuum packed for you? Yeah, that's amazing. And I think what's so interesting about history and the way that we teach it in this country, I do think we're really bad at contextualising and localising where things are sick.

Because, like, the fact that you're like the Vikings went to the Byzantine, lands is like, it feels like a Marvel DC kind of crossover. They knew each other. They knew about each other. Like they saw the big hairy gingermen. Yeah. Okay. So Chloe, what do you imagine the Viking women were up to while the lads were on tour?

You know, they're off doing all these galavancing around half the world. What are the women up to? I hope a lot of intense lesbianism, if I'm honest. That must have been more going on. There's probably some. I mean, let's be honest. There's probably some. Oh, yeah, there's sort of later prohibitions against it,

which suggests people are up to things. Yeah, definitely. Is that sort of, the thing that I'm interested in, why did the Christianity come in? Or is that something you'll get to? Well, so it's like the whole, the whole of Western Europe is Christianising. In fact, sort of, as far as the Viking Age is concerned,

they come to it quite late. And so, you know, Charlemagne 800, he's trying to sort of push north from what's now Germany, France, Christianise going north, and then above them in Denmark, you've got a lot of contact, and then this spreads. And so sort of it gets to Denmark first and Norway and then the Norwegian king. It's sort of like, all right, Iceland, you want to be thinking about this, Greenland, you want to be thinking. So it's just part of this big movement that's going on at the time.

We've spoken to a certain extent about men and kings and so on, but we need to talk about women, right? So we're trying to reframe the picture, because I think it's quite easy to think of men in their longboats, going off to pillage and to plunder and to settle. So how do the women, what is their life like? How does it sort of fit into that story? Well, there's no Viking age without the women, for a start. Sure. So if you, if you, so for a start,

it's things like that sound a little bit tedious or worthy if you're into Vikings because they're glittering, cool and fun and dramatic. Things like textile production, you need clothes. But you also need sales to, if you're going to go across the ocean, if you're looking to trade or to raid or to saddle or to colonise, find new lands, you need wind power to actually get across that. ocean. Without the women, you don't have sales. You don't have clothes. You also don't have children and that's because obviously some people are having the children, but other people

are also helping bring up the children. So you need that next generation. So on a very, very basic level, take away the women and you've got nothing. Also, they're doing most of the food preparation. They're looking after the houses when or the long houses and the farms, when sort of the men might be on their hunting or their raiding expeditions, whatever it is. And so take away the women and you've got some hungry naked men in a rowing boat. Which is a channel four documentary that I would watch. Was there monogamy or did the men have multiple partners? So it's not entirely clear, but it looks like, yeah, particularly if you're high status and male,

you could have more than one woman. Maybe there's a sort of concubinage system, something like that. Certainly the sort of later written accounts, the size of. sagas that are written later on, but look back to the Viking Age, some of them. Again, the suggestion is there. Would it get to the point where, like, the men were going and, like, pillaging and bringing women back? And then was there, like, jealousy and stuff? Yeah, so, yeah, in the sagas, again, so sagas just say they're written down in Iceland in the 13th century.

But there's a group of sagas called the East Leninga Sergud, the sagas of Icelanders. And a lot of them look back to those first centuries of settlement in Iceland. So Iceland is settled that the sort of second half of the 9th century. So we're sort of in the Viking Age proper at this point. And exactly that. So there's one where I think it's Lax-Styler saga, where someone basically goes abroad and he ends up in this slave market essentially where, you know, people are bidding for women.

And he gets really excited because there's someone he really fancies. And everyone's a little bit embarrassed. He's bidding huge amounts of money for her, gets her, brings her home to Iceland. and his wife is absolutely furious. As you would be. Understandably. Exactly.

Yeah. You didn't pay any money for me. Yes. But this is it. And in fact, in that particular examples, the concubine, the enslaved person, whatever it is, who's brought back to Iceland, she turns out to be, according to the saga,

because of course she's not going to be an ordinary person, turns out to be the daughter of an Irish king. And she, you know, has this child and it's all very much. Wow. But it gives us a sense that, yeah, British Isles and Ireland are very much the context for a lot of these women. We need to start, I suppose, with the life of women. Let's start with girlhood, right?

What would you expect of a Viking girl's upbringing, Chloe? She's probably getting taught just to do the classic stuff, the food making. Skateboarding. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's a couple of ollies. Yeah, I think probably skateboarding. Yeah, you took the words out of my mouth. Sorry, I'm there. Is it skateboarding?

Yeah, skateboarding. Sorry, I ruined it. You're making a very sensible point and I've ruined it. No, no, I think it's important. I think it's important that we allow intrusive thoughts to win on this podcast. Okay, skateboarding, Eleanor? I mean, I think Chloe's point about food preparation and, you know, domestic chores. Domestic chores, really. So it's really important to say up top, there's no such thing as an average experience. We've got to think, you know, we've already said the Viking Age extends over hundreds of years. You've got your homeland. You've got this sort of Norse cultural sphere. but you've got a really big geographical area as well.

And then within that, you've got lots and lots of different social strata. And so someone who is, say, you know, a young child who is enslaved is going to have a very different experience growing up compared to someone who is much further up that social pecking order. But exactly as you say, yeah, a lot of it's going to be learning from a young age, domestic crafts and sort of textile manufacture. It's really interesting in what you find evidence of children, young children, in the textile making spaces, you know, across the Norse world and the archaeological record. There's one from Norway, it's little bits of sort of, I think it's birch sort of sap or something.

And some child has been using it as chewing gum. And it's so cute. You've got these little teeth box. And again, it's in the context of textile production. So there's that. There's also slightly less pleasant stuff. So, for example, it looks like there's a higher rate of female infanticide. I was wondering whether that might be the case.

Yeah, that seems like it's really hard to prove it. So just to be clear, that is the deliberate killing of little baby girls because you don't want a girl, you want a boy. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Which is horrible. We're a comedy show, but that is, you know, we have to talk about this stuff. It's cruel. Toys?

Well, this is the lovely thing. So these are not many. But if we're talking about young female children, you know, it's, again, it's hard to say, okay, this definitely belonged to a little girl. But there is some evidence of children's toys. My favourite is from Hedaby, sort of on the border between northern Germany and southern Denmark, as it is now. And this was a trading town, really early trading town. And there was this little doll made of probably sort of antler or bone, you know. And it's, I mean, it's adorable.

I meant to see it. And all the children in the museum were just gathered around it. You could see they just wanted to pick it up. And her little hands It looks like a girl I don't obviously know that it's a female doll But the doll's little hands Is sort of like splayed onto its tummy

And it's got his little hair It's so, you just, it just looks like a doll You know, that's what it is And then there's other things You get swords and you get boats and things like that But the little dolls for me So was there any culture of play amongst kids That's a really good quote

Well I think there's a very I don't know what you think right Like children play Play is sort of a universal impulse, partly because it helps you to sort of work out the society, the world in which you live in, you know, your role playing to some extent, you're sort of making sense of that imaginative world as well. The question is, at what point does that stop? And I think that's certainly compared to today, you know, at the point where, yeah, children nowadays might be going out on their skateboards, you know, these girls are probably in there learning how to weave. So they've already got a job at eight. So if you survive being murdered at their birth as a girl,

they're like, put you to work at 8. Yeah. All right. That's great, isn't it? Oh, right. Does it improve for teenagers? Like, you know, is it fun? You know the answer to that.

I don't know the answer. It's not going to improve for teenagers. If they're killing girls at birth and then putting them to work at 8, I don't think all of a sudden they're going to be like, okay, off you go into the world now. You can go to university? But can I tell you something nice? Yeah.

Quite recent findings, right? Ice skates. Greg's cried. People. people think that so archaeologists have looked at evidence for ice skates from the Viking age made from bone and they now think that it was probably older children and teenagers who were using ice skates so they had some fun you know which I just think is adorable that is charming yeah right but yes so again I'm going to say this out is basically I'm just covering my eyes

it's hard to tell it's hard to tell right otherwise archaeologists they'll write in weren't they will get angry letters in red ink Dr Baricast said I heard it on the radio that's not red ink That's blood There are very angry people It's the Viking way So yeah So essentially When you get to sort of be of

Childbearing age And pretty young Marriage is obviously on the cards And that is an important part Of teenagehood As you sort of head towards the latter part of that If you're lucky Yeah

And do the girls get to pick their hubbies Or does dad go I've chosen Sven He's exactly what you need I think more to the point exactly what I need, you know, is it? And I think that's it. And it depends. There's so many different contexts in which that could happen. And I'm sure there are some marriages where it's like, oh, look, they like each other. They live on neighbouring farms. This makes sense. But of course,

particularly if you are sort of socially elite, then you want to make good matches for your children because that is strategically advantageous to you. So there's going to be, yes. And certainly, once again, when you look at the latest saga evidence, bearing in mind, sagas are not history, as we would think of history. They're stories, but they do sort of reflect something of that earlier time and the time in which they're written. But certainly, yes, it's, it's, I have picked out, you're going to be marrying him, whether you like it or not.

When that happens, I should say, it doesn't usually end well. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, oh, there's one really, again, Laxtaelsa, I mentioned that. Guthrin, who's this badass woman who ends up with four husbands. And I like to hear more about Goodhran, actually. Oh, Guzran's great. We can come back, we can just...

We'll get to her later, really, because she's in... But her first husband, again, it's... Her father chooses him for her, and she absolutely can't stand to him. And so, she makes a shirt for him where she cuts it so low that his nipples poke out,

and this is grounds for divorce because this is sort of effeminacy. It's like, you can't be going around with your nipples and show. You can't have your nips out. You can't have your nips out. Even back then. Well, actually, men are allowed

their nips out, aren't they? But that, okay. Only on a hot day in England. Not in Iceland in the middle. Yeah, okay, fine, fine, fine. Okay, but we do have one source from Bergen where there's a sort of, there's a little evidence of a, I don't know if it's a dad saying,

I've found a guy for you, but you don't have to marry him? This is great. It's like, it's real like dad energy. It's like, he's not, he's really nice, but you don't have to marry him. It's okay if you don't want to. So I prefer your reading of it. I suspect she was not quite as happy as that makes sense.

So this is from, again, I was like a lot of the source material is later and we we with this we're talking about around 1300 okay so this is like pretty late it's a runic inscription on a piece of wood right and it's found in a stave church so again we're very much in a Christian context so it's from someone called Holvard

and he's proposing to someone and we only know that her name starts with a G and possibly a you and he basically says it is my full intention to marry you but only if you don't want to marry Colbing and so there's some of what I love about this is that it's found on the side of the church that probably the women sat in

because they're, you know, separated, and someone, probably her, G.U, has tried to scribble out these names and has dropped it between the four balls. Oh, rejected. Yeah. That's... Exactly.

So it's like, I just want to know what was the tea. You know, it's like... So, wait, sorry, what did she write on? So Pauvard writes it on a piece of wood in rooms. And he basically says, I want to marry you, G, whatever this woman's name is, but only if you don't want to...

to marry Colbyn. So it's not a dad. That was me getting excited as a dad. It's a boyfriend saying, I want to marry you unless you fancy Colvin. Well, we say boyfriend, but I mean, just the number of context that could be, just like some creep. And she's, oh, God, this is so embarrassing. I don't want to find out. Is it like that thing where, like, you pass a note in class.

It's basically passing a note in class. Do you want to be my friend? Yes. No. Yes. Exactly. And what did she do, scribbles up the name. drops it down a hole. Perfect. Right, moving on. Wow. There's another lovely run stick that I love. It tells us about what happened after a couple

have got married. It's also in Bergen, in Norway, which is a lovely place to go on holiday. I've actually been, yeah. It's great, isn't it? Lovely, brilliant place to go. It's from a lady called Gida. She's sending it to her husband. What do you think she's saying in the message? Get home now and you're drunk. Literally is. 100%. How did he know that? Because it's a tale as old as time. And do you know why I knew that is because when I was. in Bergen I was there with my mate

and she was like do you want to go up this big hill and see a sight and I was like no I want to go pub watch Man United again and get drunk Taylor's old as time

Taylor's oldest time that is literally what it is that is literally it was it done on the other side though it looks like one of those drunk messages you know you send by text or something

now we don't know that they're married we don't know that it was a pub blah blah blah but it's likely so but on the other side someone has tried to reply it looks like, but you can't read it.

So I'm just imagining him down the pub basically trying to like, yeah, it's fine, she'll never know, I'm down there. So she's saying, get home from the pub. Get home. And he writes, he's written back, I'm going to do it, I'm an important work, mate, see. Exactly. Yes. How many, like, pieces of evidence

do you think of, like, flummox historians, which are just drunk and rambling? People are like, there's a new language that will, there's a lot of been on the story about. Now you're just pissed. There's loads of those from the run sticks in Bergen, things like, sort of just sit down and carve the runes, stand up and farts. That's a good, yeah.

And there's, there's another one probably from a pub. There's going to be a big fight in here. I wish I could go to the pub more often. I think I would have made such a good Viking. Yeah. What was there alcohol of choice? Ooh, beer, mead. Yeah.

They're not wine drinkers really, are they, the Vikings. I mean, they later on after Christianity, maybe they are in a religious context. Yeah. Beer and mead. Beer and meed. Ale and mead, isn't it? Ale, the meat, yeah, oil is that, and yurther, like ale. And meat is made of honey, so it's a sort of...

Oh, God, I've never tried it, but I've loved it. Oh, it's really good. Because I love beer and I love honey. Oh, they do. Well, you'd probably like me. You'd like me. Maybe I'll just do like a beer with a shot of honey, like a Yeager bomb. Oh.

Make my own meat. Yeah, nice. You would make the best Viking. Yeah. What else have we got that are giving us insights into relationships, primarily giving us, you know, look into lives of women in this era? Well, so there are, we've got, again, we've got literary sources, but as I mentioned, the sagas, those are actually quite important. I mentioned like Stella Segglers.

I mentioned Goethrin, right? She's a great one. Again, she's later on there's all sorts of context for her. But when we just look at how she operates within a world that is very clearly frameworked around men, this is a great one. So I mentioned her first husband. She managed to get divorced from him because she's cut the shirt with the nipples. The second one is brilliant. So the second one, Thurther, the bloke, he's already married to someone called Oeder, or Oyd.

And basically, Guthrin says, oh, well, you know, I mean, I hear that she's a bit of a cross-dresser, you know, she gets known as Britches Other around town. And so, you know, I told you, lesbian, is. Yeah. Well, it's even better, right? So then this, that he divorces, Britches Oithr, marries Guthrin, and is lying in bed one night and Othr, it's like, right, you're going to accuse me of this. Well, thank you very much. So she dresses up in britches and she takes a sword and she goes and she basically cuts him across the nipples.

Nipples again. Yep. Oh, I don't like that. That made me upset. That's going to be very sore in the morning. That made me upset. I didn't like that. Yeah. And then the next husband from there, she basically gets the most Icelandic thing.

She meets this bloke in a hot spring basically and she falls in love with him. But then she ends up married to his foster brother and then she gets the foster brother. to kill her original lover. I need to chill out. Yeah. So you have those sorts of sources,

but you've got to think for that. It's, you know, literally, we work in. It's EastEnders, right. It's full-on soap opera. So more drama than Love Island, or Love Iceland, I guess, maybe. Very good.

I like that. Thank you. I did not write that one. So let's move on. Can a man divorce a woman easily? We've said that a woman can divorce a man if he's wanted, you know, so can, yeah, exactly. There's divorce legally and culturally accepted.

Yeah, yeah. Can I ask, just to clarify, how does marriage and coupledom relate to what we know now? Because if they didn't have Christianity at this point, was marriage was still an institution? You marry, it's sort of like there will be a kind of social context for that. When we're talking about Guthran, I should say, they're on the cusp of Christianity. They're around the year 1,000. In fact, Guzran ends up becoming a nun or something, you know, so, and it's then very upset about all the things she's done.

She gay. So there is, yeah, very much, the sense of divorce is something that you can, you call witnesses and you say, I'm divorce. And it can be all sorts of reasons. And this is true, I think, of the men and the women. So as far as the, but the important thing is that women can do it too. So it can be things

like, you know, if he's too effeminate, hence why Guthrin is able to do it when she's cut this shirt. My favourite one, though, is if you're not satisfied in the bedroom. And so, you're Yeah, there's one. Again, we're talking sagas, but, you know, you can, okay, let's, you know, this is the East Enders version, once again, of it. But basically, this woman has to go to her dad because he's the sort of main law giver. And she's like, right, dad, this is really embarrassing. I don't know how to tell you this.

But essentially, I want to divorce him because every time we try and, I think they sit, come together, you know, which is like, sure. Yeah, his, a part of his body grows so big that he's not able to actually do anything with it. that he's been cursed by witch, of course he's been cursed by witch, who used to be his lover, right? Wait, hang on. Hang on, he's been cursed by a witch with a knob so big. Yeah. It's unusable. I'm assuming this is going in the podcast, not the radio.

This is definitely not the radio for it, is it? The Viagricus. But, like, pretty much that. Pinocchio, but, like, downstairs Pinocchio. Every time he lies with her, his knob gets bigger. Downstairs Pinocchio is the best thing I've ever. That's amazing. Yeah.

So you could be dumped if you're not good enough in bed. You could be dumped if you're too. Too impressive in bed or whatever. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And that could be quite good for you as well. So if you're particularly sort of for widows, they seem to have.

And we're talking again, if you've got the money and the sort of household to back it up, you've got, once you're a widow, you've got more agency. I was going to say, so the interesting thing about the Viking age, historians often say that women in the Viking era were better off than anywhere else in the Viking. Sorry, anywhere else in the, sorry, anywhere else in the, European Christian world, like they had more rights, more laws, more freedoms. We've heard maybe that's not entirely true. There's quite a lot of pressure, so on. But widowhood kind of is, that's kind of a quite comfortable life. That's what you're aiming for, basically. That's the ideal, right?

But you have really, I mean, so for example, we mentioned Iceland being settled, second part of the 9th century. Some of the first settlers, the big settlers are women. There's one in particular, she's called Eider or Unather the Deep Minded, and it's only once she's a widow, she able, she sort of gathers her family and her followers and her and her sort of like slaves at that point around her and takes them off to Iceland, frees the enslaved people and sort of sets up this sort of matriarchy out there. Yeah, this community of like of women, right?

She's, she's the, I mean, she ends up, it's on the night. In a world where swords were sharp. And hygiene was actually probably better than you think it is. Two fearless historians. Me, Matt Lewis. And me, Dr. Eleanor Yanaga, dive head. first into the mud, blood and very strange customs of the Middle Ages. So for plagues, crusades, and Viking raids, and plenty of other things that don't rhyme,

subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. I think it's her grandchild. On the night of her grandchild's wedding, she dies upright in bed, having basically just sorted everyone out. Again, she's an East Ender's matriot. Yeah, exactly. Get out of my part. Yes. Longhouse.

Sorry. Okay, we should talk about a childbirth, which obviously, you mentioned before that obviously in order to keep having Vikings going out into the world, you need children that grow up, we need babies. I mean, obviously childbirth is dangerous at any time in history. In the Viking world, there are kind of rituals, routines, there's magical spells.

There's all sorts of ways of trying to protect a woman in childbirth and a baby. Can you talk us through some of those? Yeah, so I mean, yeah, exactly as you say. So mortality rates were huge, as they always have been. There's a really touching grave from Orkney, Rousey, and it's a woman, a very high status. Again, with a little brooch that seems to have once upon a time being sort of from the very beautiful blingy cover of a gospel book.

So somewhere in the place, so she's from sort of the, oh, I don't know, like 850 to 900, something like that. But somewhere in her sort of ancestry, someone was doing a raiding, you know, comes back with this. But she is, she's buried with an infant who's full term. And so the likelihood is that she's died in childbirth and so as the child. So exactly as you say, that there has to be measures in place. One of these is called, they're called Biagrinar, sort of helping runes,

ruins of protection. Those seem to have been used. We've got like sort of just evidence on the edge, often with childbirth, with pregnancy. Everything is on the edge because it's female histories and they don't, you know, They just don't get recorded. But we have sort of a few little runic inscriptions that might sort of back that up. There's an amazing, again, it's later. It's very much within a Christian context, but it's a roon stick.

And it looks like basically the baby's gone over term and is still, you know, inside. And this runic inscription is to the baby. And it ends and it says, come out, hairless one. The Lord calls you into the lights. That's kind of beautiful. That's right. It is beautiful. I love that one.

Yeah. Yeah, but then there's once Christianity comes, you know, so it's likely that there would have been sort of pagan goddesses and deities that you would pray to. So Freya. Yeah, exactly. That's the likelihood. And then in Christianity it's St Margaret famously. Exactly. Do you know the story of St Margaret? I don't think so.

It's pretty cool. It is cool. She cuts her way out from the inside of a dragon's tummy. Yes. Like he's been swallowed and then she's just like, I'm not loving this. And sort of bursts out of the tummy. Like a chest burst from alien. Yeah.

She's like, hello, I'm here. So she's the patron saint of women in labour and prehist. pregnant with me. She knows she's, and that's who you pray to, right? In the medieval world. And the reality is so mental. That's the one that you're going to choose is the woman that birthed her out of a dragon. But I would feel sorry for the dragon. I've got to say, having given birth, I'm looking at those pictures and the manuscripts of the dragon

who's just absolutely horrified. This just a thing burst out. I'm like, mate, I hear you. Yeah, exactly. But please can we just clarify what a room stick is? Yes. Literally, a little piece of words with runes written on. Rooms are that spiky alphabet,

sort of, it's sort of a North Germanic alphabet. It's not just Viking Age, but they use particularly in the Viking Age and the centuries before and afterwards. Slightly magical, aren't they? Yeah, they can be magical. They have kind of... Associated with Odin.

Yeah, exactly. So is it like a, is it like a prayer thing, a manifestation thing? It can be if I wanted to win an award, for example. Yes. Oh, yeah. I'd be able to write a run to do a little room stick inscription. Yeah, but you've seen, you know,

it's also sort of like text messages. come back from the pub, mate. But not all women wanted to have kids, and we know this because we have some Viking word, old Norse words. Chloe, do you know what a fan fluga is? I want this bit to be able to go on radio four, so I will not be hazarding and guess what a fan fluger is.

Context would be a gentleman comes a calling, and the fan flugher says, The fan fluga says, do you want to go out with me? No, the fan fluger says, no thanks, and run. it literally means what dick deserter you know someone who runs away from penises someone who just legs it away from the moment a penis appears so that's like like you go you're a fan flueger it wouldn't be a compliment yeah but i think we should reclaim it

yeah i'm definitely re-re reclaiming now i'm going clubbing on Saturday night and I'm gonna go around a corner of a lot of people's and fan floggers and they'll be very glad and there's a there's an equivalent for a chap who doesn't perhaps want to have fun time to the lady a footh floggy So, Fufliga would be what, Fanny Fliya? So the Vikings are very, they're very basic in their language, right? And there's a poetry to it. But the interesting thing about that is that we, you know, we talked about sort of like pagan context and sort of gods.

The gods are all sort of, I like to, you know, what's it, the drag queen, Bimni Bon Bulash, like gender bender system offender. Right? Those are the Norse gods, particularly low. We've got Loki, who essentially is able to transform himself into a handmaiden to go and sort of rescue a hammer. Transforms himself into a mare to lure away a giant's stallion for a bit of sexy time and ends up giving birth to an eight-legged horse. Yeah. Lone as what?

Slapnir. Sleep near, the eight-naked flying horse. So we're getting an idea here. In some ways, Viking gender very, very fixed. In other ways, kind of fluid, so it's kind of interesting, right? But let's get back to a woman's work, you know, the kind of day. domestic. She's not just obviously giving birth the next generation.

There's a lot she's got to look after in the house. There's quite a lot of responsibilities. Some would say agency in power. Yes. You said when we had our Zoom call, you said responsibilities. Yes. I think agency, yes. Power, it depends. So it's this idea of you have agency within the

household, but it's whether that translates to outside. And it's not that it never does. It's just, it's always that thing of like you don't want to say, yeah, basically the Viking Age was a feminist utopia. because it's like, I don't think I would have wanted to be a woman there compared to what I can be now, you know. But yes, definitely.

So they're very much in charge of the household. The household isn't just sort of immediate family or relatives. You know, you've got quite a community, depending on how big this farmstead is. You've got responsibilities for making sure everyone stays alive throughout the winters. You've got to be able to cook, but you've got to be able to store food. You're going to be looking after the farmstead. As I said before, you're going to be textile production. Medicine?

Exactly. So that's the other. And again, yeah. So there's a really interesting episode from Hames Cringler, which is sort of a big group of kings sagas, essentially, where there's a battle. Someone's injured and they go into the tent and there's a healing woman there.

And she basically feeds them this mixture of sort of garlic and herbs and nasty stuff. Because the idea is that once you eat it, if you can sort of smell the garlic from the wound, you know it's gone through and it's sort of a fatal wound, essentially. That's one of the worst things I've ever heard in my life. It's not great. I'd rather just not know it.

But that is actually... I think I'd rather just die and not stink in a garlic. That's what the character says. He's like, no, I'm cool. Thanks very much. No, you keep your garlic soon. But the fact is there's women in there doing that.

There's also sort of religious aspect. There's a type of sort of magic called saithar. And again, we're back in sort of more pagan context here, that a woman is particularly meant to practice. The Old Norse word for a female practitioner of magic or Cirrus is a vulva. So there you go. Wow. Yes. So is that one shows up where we are.

get that. It's spelled differently. It's probably just coincidences, isn't it? But say the magic would be prophecy, right? Yeah, it's predicting the future. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And what's interesting is that within a pagan, God's context, who's it doing that? Odin. So once again.

Oh, okay. There's a lot of sort of fluidity there that we don't see. And then, of course, there's sort of textile production, which is just like, I know it sounds boring to keep on going on about, but it's so important. It's like, if we didn't have textile production, we would all be sitting here naked, right? It's like, we would, nothing happens.

And we get a strongly worded email. mouth from HR, wouldn't we? But yeah, but there's a special sort of women's quarters called the dinghya. And the dingya, it's not necessarily just for textile production, but in the archaeological record all over the Norse world, so Greenland is a really good example of this. You see these sort of textile production spaces

where you have women, where you have children. There's one, and this is from Norse Greenland, where you have this whole sort of knotted, platted piece of beautiful blonde hair really long that's basically, like human hair, it's been made into sort of a necklace or something and tucked into the corner of this dingya. Sagas, again, have episodes where, you know,

women sit there talking about, for example, their former lovers in one case where one of the husbands here is. It doesn't go well. Oh, okay. So the dingyaya is a sort of, it's kind of like a stitch and bitch session, but also, but a slightly, it's a bit like sort of the ladies' toilets, maybe on a night out where you're sort of, you know, you go in there for private space.

Yeah. And in terms of weaving, it's not just humans who are doing the weaving, the gods weave to. Do you know what the gods would weave with when they were determining people's futures? Oh, the clouds. Oh, that's charming. That's beautiful.

I mean, you're so wrong. But it's... No, I'm going to say you're not so wrong, right? Because you've got these supernatural beings called the norns, the nornier. There's these three. And they're responsible for weaving the fates of humans, essentially. I like to think, yeah, they're basically just like pulling down threads from the clouds.

So I'm like totally with you there. Yeah, but there was a nastier one. Yeah, come on. Let's have the gory one. Right. So the gory one, it's Valkyries this time. You know, do-d-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Right, that's how we know Valkyriis on their horses. Yeah, blah, blah, blah.

Right. And there is an episode from, again, it's in Nyao Saga. It's where essentially on the night before a battle, someone sees these women going into one of these dingya, one of these weaving rooms. He peeps inside, and he sees them and they're singing as they weave on this big loom. But what it is is that the entrails of the dead. and there's like kind of heads hanging from the... So the loom weights are severed heads. Exactly, the loom weights are...

And the thread is just guts. Yeah, just Viking guts. Yep, that is... Do you still want to be a Viking? Yeah. Look. For the beer, yes. Okay.

For the... For the... Using guts in a loom, I'm going to say no. Fair, I'm out on that. Do women go out on the ships, right? So we've heard them at a home, they're doing the farming, they're doing the medicine, they're doing the weaving, they're looking after the kids. But, like, do they get on long ships? and go and settle Iceland and Greenland.

Yes, absolutely they do. This is really important. So Iceland, we've already talked about this matriarch at the beginning, one of the widows who goes out there under the deep-minded. Greenland is a really interesting thing. So Greenland gets settled, first of all, from Iceland in sort of Eric the Red. It's kind of 9-8-5 or something. And there are women absolutely going out there to settle.

There's a run stick that they found in one of the graveyards from Greenland. And it's not got a body in it, but it says, you know, this woman, she died on the Greenland Sea. So basically she died on the journey over. You also then have women going even further west. So again, this is sort of sagas, but in the sagas that talk about the voyages from Greenland to the edge of the North American continent,

you have a woman called Guthriever, giving birth to a child called Snoddy out there. Yeah, exactly. Very much part of that cultural sphere. You've mentioned enslavement already. And, you know, I think throughout history, there's going to be enslavement and so on. There are stories that we, I mean, we have to sort of talk about. them. They are horrible. And, you know, a comedy podcast and all that, but we just, for a brief

moment, if we can just sort of, if we can just hear the very, very nasty, horrible story about what Ibn Fadlan describes seeing. So he is a, I mean, he's an Arab diplomat who meets Vikings. Exactly. He's a very important source for us. Yes. He describes a very horrible funeral. Yeah, exactly. So this is around 921, something like that. He's coming up from Baghdad with this diplomatic corps. And they're on the Volga. And they come across this group that are known as the ruse, and the ruse are of Nordic heritage. Swedish, is it, or Swedish heritage? Yeah, for the most, exactly.

So that's where they come, but then there's sort of very big Slavic populations that they very quickly assimilate with. So we can't say, these are definite Vikings in that sort of what we might think of, or Norse, but certainly of that heritage. And one of their leaders has died, and they're having a big funeral, and it's one of the very few sources that describe sort of a ship burning, you know, that kind of Hollywood idea of how Viking funerals go. But it is one of those.

The problem is that what they also ask for as a volunteer with a lot of sort of... Yeah, air quotes. Air quotes, yeah. To join their master in paradise. And it's really horrible. So basically this sort of young enslaved girl is volunteers and she's sort of ritually

raped and then stabbed and killed. And there's this horrible figure called the Angel of Death, this woman who basically responsible for that and then finally she's placed on the pyre next to the dead man together with all these sort of sacrificed animals and other things and then it's set fire to and it even if adlaan is it's extraordinary there's no other source like it he doesn't just talk about that but it's the the level of detail it's it's really it's it's very disturbing yeah it's an incredibly important source for us because he tells us all sorts

of things about you know Viking washing customs and so on which is really interesting but that particular story is so upsetting Yeah, it is. You know, I remember as a history student, just reading, going, oh, that's really, really troubling. Exactly. And the thing is, archaeologically, that is then reflected. So there's Isle of Man, there's a Viking burial of man,

but a woman appears to have been sort of like killed and then put into the pyre with. So, yeah, so sorry about that, Chloe. I know we're a comedy show. I could have just sort of done some comedy sound effects throughout. That would that have helped? No, probably not. Probably not.

Probably not. Let's get back to sort of comedy mode. Let's talk about the lives of the rich Viking women, the elite. I've got a favourite here, right? Okay, go on, yeah. Okay, so this is Norway, Osserberg, so sort of southern Norway. Oh, my God. The classic.

The classic, but there's a reason. It's an oldie and it's a goodie, right? So this is one of the most sumptuous burials. It's a ship burial. It hasn't been burned, but these two... A what burial? A ship, thank you. What did you hear?

Really bad burial is why, I thought you would say. It's an absolutely rubbish burial. It's terrible burial. One of the worst I've ever seen. These two women have been played. in it. One of them is really quite old, sort of over 70, the other sort of late, middle age, kind of maybe in her 50s. But it's, there's nothing like it. You know, there's, there's wagons all like beautifully carved with cats and faces and possibly the cats, you know, that's that sort of

the classically linked to Freya, one of the goddesses. There's, there's wagons, there's, there's beautiful things like sort of buckets and like sacrificed horses and all, also, I mean, I mean, there is nothing like it in terms of the amount of stuff that has been placed into it. They can even tell exactly what time of year this initial. Yeah, little crab apples have been found. Oh, beautiful. Which is just, but also, talking of this sort of organic material, henbane seeds, I think, either henbane or cannabis. One of, there's basically sort of that have hallucinogenic properties, right?

So you start to think, okay, what's going on here? Who were these women? And there's also this incredible tapestry, you think, beautiful, look closely. You see, the trees are full of hanging bodies. So, sorry, yeah. These ladies sound terrifying. I know, yes, right. You think what a lovely granny?

Hang on, dead bodies, what? This is the woman I want to meet from the Viking Age. I'm like, I could have fun with you, right? But that's it. They're so elite high status. It used to be thought that one of them was a queen. The other one may be her, we could say handmaiden. She could be an enslaved person.

A little bit of DNA evidence suggests that her ancestors, the younger one, might have come from somewhere around what's now, Iran, but it's been quite hard to replicate that evidence because it's so little material left. But so it's very much this sense of these high status women, possibly with some sort of magical position in society. Yeah, the Siva thing maybe, or the hallucinogenic medicine. Exactly, yeah. I mean, obviously we have rich Christian widows who leave money to the church.

They found nunneries and churches and monasteries and they build bridges and churches and roads. You know, they're kind of putting back into the community, which is amazing too. But we need to talk about Olga of Keev Of course we do She's very important She's one of the most I was getting antsy You were thinking

When are we getting to Algar of Kee? I mean again listeners might be thinking Keeves in Ukraine Yes I mean the Vikings really get very far afield Olga of Keeve Chloe

How did she get revenge On the men who killed her husband I guess she killed him back I'm thinking of a sort of I'm thinking of a sort of John Wicks The Man Army kind of scenario

where I think she's She's gathered up all of her weapons. Like ballerina? Like, yeah, that kind of... Yeah, exactly like ballerina. And maybe she, like, kills some of... What did John Wick kill... In like John Wick 3, he kills him with books or something like that?

I mean, it's not far off. I mean, if anything, she's more badass than that. Olga, by the way, sounds like a very sort of Slavic name. It's actually old Norse. Olga is Helga, right? 10th century. And she is sort of... Her husband is called Igor.

Again, very Norse name doesn't sound it, but Ingvar, Norse name, right? He is killed by sort of a local tribe called the Dreblians. They've got beef with them, right? So Olga then says, oh, ambassadors, please, come see me. Did she bake a pie? Did she bake a pie? There are pies in Norfolk. Not this one.

There are women who bake their children in fact. Okay, we're not even going to go there. I'm still going to get right. No, no. Stick with Olga. She's cool, right? Okay, so the first lot, yeah, she basically buries the ambassadors alive. Okay.

How? Well, it's all there in, I think, the sources from the sort of the 12th century. So it's maybe slightly exaggerated. But then the next lot, she lures the nobleman. She's like, oh, please come, please come, have a bath. Yeah, have a sauna, isn't it? Come have a nice, a spiking sauna. And then she blocks them in the sauna, and then she sets fire to him.

Yep. Yep, so that's the next lot. And then she, just for good measure, burns the whole settlement to the ground. Yeah, in revenge, right. Yes, and then she converts to Christianity and it's made a saint, so she... Well, you know, if you're going to get forgiven... If you're going to convert to Christianity

and get forgiven for all your sins, then I think I would just like really sin. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm not just doing like, you know, I've worn mixed fabrics. I'm doing like, I've killed... I've killed all of my husband's murderers.

Yes. Okay, so Olga's bloody revenge leads us nicely to the warrior women who we would have seen in TV shows. So I mentioned Vikings, I mentioned the Last Kingdom. It's a bit of a trope, the kind of shield maiden thing. Yeah. Is that pure Hollywood? Do we have any evidence for women going into battle?

Yeah, it's not pure Hollywood. We've got some sort of later legendary mythological sources where you have this idea of shield maiden. It's coming quite a strong. And they're really cool. So there's a skeleton found on the island of Birka in Sweden, very important sort of trading settlement in that period. People always thought, oh, well, that's a man,

because it was buried with weapons. It was found in the 19th century. Exactly. So for well over 100 years, we were like, that's a bloke. Yeah, exactly. Then 2017, they look at the DNA and it's female DNA. They're like, oh, okay. So, but the question is then.

That's mental, but no one checked. Well, to be fair, I don't think they had DNA sampling in the 19th century. Yeah, to be fair to them. But it's the fact that, yeah, you see one thing and you assume that's what it must be. Now, that doesn't mean that that was a, that she was a practicing warrior. There's all sorts of possibilities. Because she's buried with swords and all the kind of the cultural more of a woman. warrior. Exactly, exactly. And it's possible that she, what we would call, the terms don't really

apply, but we need to sort of find, she was sort of non-binary or she kind of presented as more male than, you know, there's sort of possibilities there. There's also the possibility that, yes, she was a warrior, but it's like there's no evidence of sort of healed injuries and there's no evidence of, you know, you often see sort of one arm is bigger than the other because they used to wielding weapons. So you don't have that. It's possible that say her father was a warrior and she's the only surviving child or something and so therefore she becomes the encapsulation of that warrior lineage. There's all sorts of possibilities. It doesn't make it, I think it makes it more exciting than I don't know. We don't know, right? We have this fascinating

burial and we've got and science has gone, it's not what you think and now we've got question marks and question marks are exciting. Exactly. But we don't, we can't pin it down. There could be multiple identities to this person or, you know, one. But it's really interesting. And that's how archaeological science is changing quite a lot of what we think of the Vikings in some ways. I guess what's so interesting also about history is like we're always reading it through our own very partial lens. And I think we're in a moment now where like we probably want to go the other way and have women as like these like total independent badasses because A we're sort of like in a feminist

rewriting of history but also I think there's also an element of like men find hot Viking women wielding swords titillating. Yeah, it's definitely a niche corner of the internet that's dedicated to that. Yeah, so it's simultaneously like a feminist reading of history but also quite a patriarchal. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the lads want blunt warriors. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, with like sort of like shells over their boobs or something. I don't know. Yeah, but it's, I think what we've learned so far, you know, it's, women could be all sorts of different things. Yeah, exactly.

And the evidence points in different directions. I'd like that place on record that women can be all sorts of things. The nuance window! Time now for the nuance window. This is the part of the show where Chloe and I weave in the dingyat for two minutes while Dr. Eleanor spins us a yarn about something we need to know about Viking women. My stopwatch is ready. You have two minutes.

Take it away, Dr. Eleanor. I think Chloe's pretty much done it for me because I want to pick up on exactly that last point that you've been talking about. And it ties us back also to the images that, you know, Greg, you conjured up at the beginning, it's sort of like Valky, shield maidens, hotness or not so hot. You know, it's like, it's feminist and it's also sort of quite reductive. And that's, it's a really tricky thing because there's a reason we love that, right? They're badass.

I didn't go into Viking Age history because I want to sort of look at textile production all the time. I mean, don't get me wrong. Plenty of people do, but I didn't. I like the badass stuff, right? But there is an issue there, which is when we look back in time, especially at this sort of stereotypical hyper-masculine eras such as the Viking Age, it's that idea that women are only exciting or interesting and worth talking about if they're aping male role models and sort of like quite extreme ones at that.

And what I'm trying to do in Embers of the Hands is book, it's like meet ordinary humans on their own terms. And that's particularly true of the women. It's a way to find, you know, it's how to bring their stories to life, not by shoving swords or axes in their hands, but, you know, although that does happen. In fact, there's one saga where a woman actually says, put an axe in my hands, okay? So that does happen there. But I think, historically speaking, women actually deserve better than that because their lives are so much more nuanced and multidimensional and more varied than these cartoon stereotypes. And so for me, that is my nuance window that women themselves are nuanced.

Back in history and these hyper-masculine periods of history from our perspectives, it's even more important. Meet them on their own terms. Brilliant. Any final thoughts on that? Oh, I've got a clap. You've got a clap. I can see you've got 25 seconds left, so I'll go quite a long laugh.

Can we do a really long one? Yeah, there we go. I want those 25 seconds of clapping. 25 is like a standing ovation at Cannes. We're all just like, very good, very good nuance window. So what do you know now? Time now for the So What Do You Know Now? This is our quickfire quiz for Chloe to see how much they've learned.

Chloe, how are you feeling confident? Yeah. I've been listening nicely. It's all been incredibly engaging. I think I've understood everything. And I think it's committed to my short-term memory. If we did this in a week, it will be a solid zero out of ten. That's a real caveat, that short-term memory.

Yeah, but at the moment I'm an expert. For the next ten minutes, I'm an expert. You know what? I'll take it. That's absolutely fine. Okay, I've got ten questions. for you. Good luck. Question one. What was done about unwanted female children in some Viking communities? Is the first answer going to be infanticide? It is, yeah. As I said,

comedy show. That's lovely that. Yeah, it is infanticide. Charming. Yeah. Question two. What passive aggressive message did cross Viking wife Gida send her husband on a run stick in Bergen? Your drunk come home. Yes, it was very good. Come home from the pub. Question three, which Norse deity associated with cats might pregnant women have prayed to during childbirth. Freya. It was Freya and also flig sometimes as well. Question four.

Name two everyday jobs that an average Viking woman, if such a thing existed, might have done. Storing food and textiles. Very good. Yes, absolutely. You could add cooking, healing, looking after the kids. Question five. What was the dingya? Oh, no.

What was the dingya? It was a space. Place for weaving. It was. And chatting and gossiping. Very good. Well done. Yeah, it's women.

It's women. Or whatever there's women, there's chatting and gossiping as well. Question six. What unorthodox materials do the mythical valkyries in Yelds saga weave with? It's not clouds. It's a human entrails. It was. I love to, I really love the word entrails.

I think it's one of the words that I love the most, but hate what it is the most. Do you see what I mean? Like I like the sound and then you see it and go, no, thank you. No, thank you. Yeah, I often see it and say no, thank you. Question 7. What does the Old Norse word fan flugre mean? Like running away from a penicer? Yes, very good. A lady who legs it from penises. Yes, absolutely.

Very good. Well done. That felt loaded. Question 8. The two women interred in the Osberg ship burial were buried with a wagon finely decorated with which animal. Cat. It was cats. Well done. Question 9. How did Olga of Keeve allegedly avenge the murder of her husband? She lured all of the murderers to a sauna and burned them alive. She did, and then became a saint, which is a...

What a classic second act, that is. And this were a perfect 10 out of 10, Chloe. Oh, my God. What is one theory about the person buried in the Bierke grave? Oh, no. They were discovered in 19th century and thought to be a man, but... They weren't. They were a woman who might have been a warrior. That's right, very good, yes.

Various various interpretations. And her perfect 10 out of 10, Chloe. Wow. We'll come back in a week and we'll check and we'll see. What's about a kick? Who's great? What is this? What day is it?

Well done, 10 out of 10. Thank you. You're feeling like you learned some stuff? Yeah, I am feeling really good about that. I also know that I'm too competitive as a person and I'm trying to really rehabilitate that. So I think the thing that I won most at was being a really chill guy. Yeah, I mean, you were great.

If you've gotten 8 or 10, you probably would have come out. us with a sword. Yeah, I would have flipped to the table. It would have happened. Lots of sin and burned it alive, like older a keef. Yeah, lovely stuff. As you deserve. Thanks so much, Chloe.

And also, of course, thank you, Dr. Eleanor Baraklough. Listener, if you want more Vikings, check out our episode on Lefe Erickson. Also, we have one on Norse literature, which is lots of fun, cake heard. And for more warrior women, why not listen to our episode on Injingo of Indombo and Matamba,

which is good fun as well. And remember, if you enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to get the episode 28 days earlier than on any other app. Switch on your notifications, so you never miss an episode. I'd just like to say a huge thank you.

To our guests in History Corner, we have the excellent Dr. Eleanor Baraklough from Bath Spa University. Thank you, Eleanor. Thank you, Eleanor. And in Comedy Corner, we have the incredible Chloe Pets. Thank you, Chloe. That was amazing. Thank you so much to you both. And to you lovely listener, join me next time

as we unearth more buried historical secrets. But for now, I'm off the go and suggest entrail weaving as a fun craft activity for my daughter's school. Bye! Your Zetamie to me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4. Hello, my name is Alex von Tunselman, and I want to introduce you to history's heroes, the BBC's breathtaking, high-stakes, story-led podcast, shining a light on extraordinary people, and ordinary people who become extraordinary, including

A pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, Don't worry, Sonny. You'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. And the woman who created the international charity Save the Children. Subscribe to History's Heroes on BBC Sounds. In a world where swords were sharp. And hygiene was, actually, probably better than you think it is.

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