What can we tell about gender roles in Viking society? It’s a historic subject that’s receiving new attention.<\/p>\n
Angus Somerville, a retired professor with Brock University’s Department of English, will be tackling it in his upcoming talk Transgressive Vikings: Gender boundaries in the Viking Age<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the mythological, magical and spiritual world of the Viking Age, gender was decidedly not binary,\u201d says Somerville. \u201cOdin, for instance, was sometimes masculine and at other times, distinctly feminine, and sometimes not clearly either.\u201d<\/p>\n Recent reconsideration of archaeological finds has called into question the traditional interpretation of Viking remains.<\/p>\n Some of the archeological digs included in Somerville\u2019s work are from the 1870s, when Hjalmar Stolpe excavated a grave whose occupant was equipped with the gear of a 10th-century Viking warrior in Birka, Sweden. The skeleton remains were initially thought to be of a male since it was equipped with the gear of a warrior, but further examinations indicate it was a female.<\/p>\n \u201cThis identification of the Warrior Woman of Birka is only one among several physical witnesses to the need for another look at Viking Age categories of gender,\u201d says Somerville.<\/p>\n