#ben raffield

[mediaeval-muse]

When people are wrong about stuff, I gather sources.

Here are some intro sources on slavery in the Viking Age:

Stefan Brink. Thralldom: A History of Slavery in the Viking Age.

Ruth Mazo Karras. Concubinage and slavery in the Viking Age

Jacek Gruszczyński, ‎Marek Jankowiak, ‎Jonathan Shepard (ed.). Viking Age Trade: Silver, Slaves, and Gotland.

Janel M Fontaine. The archaeology of slave trading in Viking-Age Britain and Ireland: A methodological approach

Ben Raffield. The slave markets of the Viking world: comparative perspectives on an ‘invisible archaeology’

[dwellordream]

“…While it is relatively easy to identify links between toy weapons and warrior cultures, other types of play may have conveyed more subtle messages. Strategic board games, for example, may have served to introduce children to the martial ideologies that underpinned Scandinavian social structures. The game hnefatafl stands out as having particularly militaristic connotations in this respect. Hnefatafl is played on a square latticed board between two forces of unequal strength. One force, comprising a king and their retinue, occupies the center of the board. They are outnumbered and surrounded by a larger force that lies on all four sides of the board, potentially reflecting a number of different battlefield scenarios (see Kimball 2013). It is thought that the objective of the game is for the player commanding the king’s force to successfully guide the king piece to the edge of the board without being captured.

Both gaming pieces and boards have been found in a range of occupational contexts ranging from urban settlements to overwintering camps associated with viking armies (Dobat 2017; Hadley and Richards 2016; Wallace 2016). They also feature prominently in high-status burials that contain martial equipment, including graves from Valsgärde and Birka, Sweden, and the mid to late eighth-century Salme II ship burial, Estonia (Arbman 1943; Hall 2016; Peets, Allmäe, and Maldre 2010; Peets et al. 2012). While gaming pieces and boards are predominantly found in male graves prior to the Viking Age, the recovery of these objects from later female burials suggests that these may have become gender neutral over time (Rundkvist and Williams 2008).

…Textual evidence indicates that children would have played strategic games from a young age. For high-status children, mastery of these games was a prerequisite for elite status (Gardeła 2012), as reflected in the Eddic poem Rígsþula (v. 41; Orchard 2011:246), which states that aristocratic children “learnt to play, swimming and board games.” Later, in the twelfth century, a young Norwegian nobleman named Rögnvaldr, who would later become the Earl of Orkney, boasted that tafl was one of nine skills that he had mastered (Jesch 2006). This association between the elite and strategic board games may have reflected martial ideologies and the close links between political leadership and success in warfare. However, there is no reason to believe that individuals from across the social spectrum would not have played these games. While some gaming boards and pieces were status symbols in their own right (see, e.g., the board from Ballinderry, Ireland [O’Neill Hencken 1933] and the decorated glass gaming pieces from grave 644 at Birka [Arbman 1943]; see fig. 4), lower-cost alternatives would have been cheaper and easier to produce, and as such it is unlikely that gaming was a leisure activity associated only with the elite (Dobat 2017).

There is no reason to assume that children would not have had access to these objects, and it is also important to consider that these games might not have required purpose-made equipment at all. It has been argued, for example, that the crudest “graffiti” gaming boards, inexpertly etched into pieces of wood or stone, might have been made by children, possibly in response to having been taught to play games by others (Hall 2014a; McGuire 2016). In these impromptu games, small stones or other objects might have easily sufficed as gaming pieces, the obvious implication of this being that board games could have been played anywhere, at any time. This means that evidence for gaming may be significantly underrepresented in the archaeological record.

For children and adolescents, playing hnefatafl may have conveyed numerous lessons, the most obvious of which concern the game’s strategic elements. The objective of the players, to either capture or facilitate the escape of the surrounded king, and the unequal size of the opposing forces speak to the kind of challenges that might have been faced on the battlefield. As such, playing these games gave individuals the opportunity to show off their tactical skills and ingenuity to opponents (Dobat 2017). However, it is possible that more subtle messages were also being transmitted during play. Despite the numerical imbalance in the size of the opposing forces, it has been suggested that the rules of the game heavily favored the player commanding the king’s forces. If this was the case, then perhaps these games served in some way to reflect social hierarchies and political order, as well as to emphasize elite power (McGuire 2016).

The symbolism of sacrificing the retinue to preserve the life of the king, furthermore, may not have been lost on players, reinforcing not only political structures but also ideological beliefs that championed death in battle. This potential link between board games and martial ideologies of kingship is further illustrated by the gaming pieces found in the Salme II ship burial. Here a “king” piece was placed in or near to the mouth of individual XII, a man accompanied by a double-edged sword with a gilt bronze ring hilt and an antler comb (Peets, Allmäe, and Maldre 2010). The particular placement of this object may have been intended not only to emphasize the higher status of individual XII in relation to the rest of the group but also to symbolize the disastrous consequences of failing to succeed in matters of strategy and warfare (Hall 2016). For children and adolescents who aspired to join warrior groups, the lessons learned when playing strategic board games may have been imbued with a very real significance.

- Ben Raffield, “Playing Vikings: Militarism, Hegemonic Masculinities, and Childhood Enculturation in Viking Age Scandinavia.”

[damgoodfantasy]

Captivity and the Kargs

I'd like to preface this by saying that yes, the focus of this blog will shift to content about Earthsea for at least the next few weeks, so bear with me if you have not read the books.

Now let's talk Kargish raiders. I mean, in name, in style, and in the way they plunder and loot it seems pretty obvious to me that Ursula Le Guin was inspired by Vikings. Who isn't? There is something undeniably fascinating about the pre-historical seafaring peoples of Scandinavia that really get the ol' creative juices flowing.

What interests me and stood out to me when reading the opening of A Wizard of Earthsea though was which aspect of Viking culture Le Guin focused on: the raiding. Specifically, she mentions the taking of captives as a motive of the Kargs. This is in fact historically accurate: the Vikings did take captives (a nicer word for slaves, really), though "captivity and slavery remain an enigmatic aspect of [their] daily life" according to Ben Raffield, writer for Slavery and Abolition. Prior to some recent reading, I certainly was not aware the role slavery played in Viking life, much less its normalcy. Yet it seems Le Guin knew of this when writing the Kargs. Why is that?

I would suggest that, like much of Le Guin's work, the Empire of Kargad represents a power struggle that exists in our own world. If you read her other essays and interviews, it is clear that Le Guin has strong, well-evinced feelings about power and powerlessness, which even in the more childlike first book of the first Earthsea trilogy shines through in her characterization of the Kargs. Much like the protagonist's latent heroic power, the Kargs are made threatening to us in that not only do they wield power, but they seek to actively take it from others, to reduce them to captives without agency. Such a fear, I believe, pervades Le Guin's work, and the Kargs are our first real introduction to the danger of a parasitic power dynamic.

As we discuss more thoroughly the books of Earthsea, I hope to delve deeper into this discussion of power and its taking, but for now, I will leave you with the recommendation to, as always, read those books! They're very good and a very fast read, too.

[anneeemerald]

Vikings Vs Pirates

The Kargs of Earthsea are raiders with particular savagery who frequently attack seaside villages, carting off loot and people. Remind you of anything? You guessed it, pirates. Those cutthroat thieves that pillaged regardless of flag. 

Or was it Vikings? Pirates are mentioned on the same page the Kargs are introduced, which makes one wonder the difference. Le Guin writes that “the Lords of Gont were busy with their piracy and paid small head to the woes of other lands” (A Wizard of Earthsea, 8). Later, she again emphasizes that Gont was not famous for warriors, “but goat-thieves, sea pirates, and wizards” (A Wizard of Earthsea, 9). However, while the Gonts seem to engage in piracy, Kargs seem more closely inspired by Vikings for a few reasons. Why then are Kargs described as evil and the Lords of Gont merely apathetic?

“The slave markets of the Viking world: comparative perspectives on an ‘invisible archaeology’” by Ben Raffield, at one point refers to the Vikings as pirates: “Viking groups regularly engaged in conflict with each there, either as mercenaries or in order to further their  own political ambitions, while Adam of Bremen noted that pirates in the seas around Denmark during the eleventh century would regularly attack shipping in order to take captives” (Raffield, 686). So what is the real difference? Well Vikings are a type of pirate, but it is a much more specific term. The Vikings were confined to a specific era, and they had a stronger sense of culture than pirates in general. They had particular ways of burying their dead, customs regarding mingling with local populations, and their own styles of fighting and seafaring. The fact that the Kargs are carrying out calculated raids, and the level of brutality they exhibit, make them seem much worse than the pirates from Gont, who aren’t acting out of a sense of nationalism, and aren’t described as unnecessarily brutal. It will be interesting to see what other aspects Kargs share with Vikings as we read on.

[norsereadalong]

Additional Readings for the Eager...and or, those with the Saga-Fever!

As we dig into the wonderfully fantastic saga that is Eyrbyggja Saga, I wanted to give readers the opportunity to look at discussions in Old Norse Scholarship that have buzzed with the themes and topics brought up by this saga! Politics, Gender, Magic, Law, the Restless Undead, Religion-Belief, and the construction of a saga itself! Below this cut you’ll find a regularly updated haphazard Bibliography separated into sections. 

Those entries with an * (asterisk) present are free and accessible online–I will be happy to send you a pdf of every other article/chapter if I have it, just DM me the particular article you want at @cousinnick and I will do my best to send it to you. If you have any suggestions to add to the list, I’d be happy to look into them! 

Old Norse Read-Along Bibliography: Eyrbyggja Saga

Íslendingasögur/Icelandic Family Sagas:

Andersson Theodore M. The Icelandic Family Saga: An Analytic Reading. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1967.

Andersson Theodore M. The Displacement of the Heroic Ideal in the Family Sagas. Speculum 45, 575—93, 1970.

Byock, Jesse. Medieval Iceland: Society, Sagas, and Power. Berkeley, 1988.

Hastrup, Kirsten. “Defining a Society: The Icelandic Free State Between Two Worlds.” Scandinavian Studies, vol. 56, no. 3, 1984, pp. 235–255.

Jonas Kristjansson. Eddas and Sagas: Iceland’s Medieval literature, trans. Peter Foote. Reykjavik: Hið Íslenska Bókmenntafélag, 1988.

Ian Miller, William. Emotions and the Sagas in Palsson, Gisli 9th ed. From Sagas to Society. Engield Lock: Hisarlik, 1992.

O’Donoghue, Heather. Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction. Blackwell, 2004.

Vesteinn Olason. Dialogues with the Viking Age trans. Andrew Wawn. Reykjavik: Heimskringla, 1998.  

Vesteinn Olason. The Icelandic Saga as a Kind of Literature with Special Reference to its representation of Reality, in Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays for MCR, ed. Quinn et al. Brepols, 2007.

Eyrbyggja Saga:

Chadwick, N. K. “Norse Ghosts (A Study in the Draugr and the Haugbúi).” Folklore 57.2 (1946): 50-65.

Kanerva, Kirsi. The Role of the Dead in Medieval Iceland: A Case Study of Eyrbyggja Saga. (2011).*

Sayers, William.  “The Alien and the Alienated as Unquiet Dead in the Sagas of the Icelanders.” Monster Theory: Reading Culture. ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Draugar/Revenants/Restless Undead:

Ármann Jakobsson. “Vampires and Watchmen: Categorizing the Mediaeval Icelandic Undead.”  Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 2011, Vol. 110.3., pp. 281-300.*

Ármann Jakobsson. The Troll inside You: Paranormal Activity in the Medieval North. Earth, Milky Way: Punctum Books, 2017.*

Ármann, Jakobsson. “The Fearless Vampire Killers: A Note about the Icelandic Draugr and Demonic Contamination in Grettis Saga.” Folklore, 2009, Vol. 120, no. 3, pp. 307-316.*

Ármann, Jakobsson. “The Taxonomy of the Non-Existent: Some Medieval Icelandic Concepts of the Paranormal.” Fabula, 2013, vol. 54, pp. 199-213. *

Ármann Jakobsson. “The Trollish Acts of Þorgrímr the Witch: The Meanings of Troll and Ergi in Medieval Iceland”. Saga-Book, 2008, Vol. 32, pp. 39-68.*

Chadwick, N. K. “Norse Ghosts (A Study in the Draugr and the Haugbúi).” Folklore 57.2 (1946): 50-65.

Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome. Monster Theory: Reading Culture. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 1996. Ebook Central.

Glauser, Jürg. „Supernatural Beings. 2. Draugr and Aptganga.“ In Medieval Scandinavia: An Encyclepedia, Edited Phillip Pulsiano, pg. 623. New York: Garland, 1997.

Hartnell, Jack. Life and Death in the Middle Ages: Medieval Bodies. New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc, 2018.

Kanerva, Kirsi. The Role of the Dead in Medieval Iceland: A Case Study of Eyrbyggja Saga. 2011.*

Kanerva, Kirsi. “Having No Power to Return? Suicide and Posthumous Restlessness in Medieval Iceland.” Thantos, 2015, Vol. 4, pp. 57-79.*

Kanerva, Kirsi. “Restless Dead or Peaceful Cadavers? Preparations for Death and Afterlife in Medieval Iceland.” Dying Prepared in Medieval and Early Modern Northern Europe. ed. Anu Lahtinen and Mia Korpiola, Leiden: Brill, 2018.*

Kanerva, Kirsi & Koski, Kaarina. “Beings of Many Kinds—Introduction for the Theme Issue ‘Undead’”. Thantos, 2019, Vol. 8, pp. 3-28.*

Laurin, Dan. The Everlasting Dead: Similarities Between The Holy Saint and the Horrifying Draugr. Scandia, 2020. N. 3.*

Merkelbach, Rebecca. Monsters in Society: Alterity, Transgression, and the Use of the Past in Medieval Iceland. Kalamazoo, MI, 2019. The Northern Medieval World.

Sanders, Karin. Bodies in the Bog and the Archaeological Imagination. Chicago, Ill.; London: University of Chicago, 2009.

Sayers, William. “The Alien and the Alienated as Unquiet Dead in the Sagas of the Icelanders.” Monster Theory: Reading Culture. ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.

Gender and Sexuality:

Ármann Jakobsson. “Óðin as Mother; the Old Norse Deviant Patriarch.” Arkiv För Nordisk Filologi 126 (2011): 5-16.*

Clover, Carol. “The Politics of Scarcity: Notes on the Sex Ratio in Early Scandinavia.” Scandinavian Studies 60.2 (1988): 147-188.

Clover, Carol J. “Regardless of Sex: Men, Women, and Power in Early Northern Europe.” Speculum 68.2 (1993): 363-87.

Jesch, Judith. Women in the Viking Age. Woodbridge: Boydell P, 1991.

Jochens, Jenny. Old Norse Images of Women. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania v, 1996.

Jóhanna Katrin Friðriksdóttir, ‘Women’s weapons a re-evaluation of magic in the Islendingasogur.’ Scandinavian Studies 81.4 (2009): pp. 409-28.

Laurin, Dan. But, What About the Men? Male Ritual Practices in the Icelandic Sagas. Kyngervi, 2020.*

Price, Neil. The Archaeology of Seiðr: Circumpolar Traditions in Viking Pre-Christian Religion. Brathair 4 (2), 2004: 109-126.*

Raffield, Ben, Neil Price, and Mark Collard. “Polygyny, Concubinage, and the Social Lives of Women in Viking-Age Scandinavia.” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 13 (2017): 165-209.

Ström, Folke. Níđ, Ergi and Old Norse Moral Attitudes. London: Published for the College by the Viking Society for Northern Research, 1974. Print. The Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies; 1973.

Wallenstein, Frederik, The Burning of Rǫgnvaldr réttilbeini, (Nordic Academic Press, 2013).*  

Politics and Law:

Jesse Byock. Feud in the Icelandic Society. (Berkeley 1982).

Firth, Hugh. “Coercion, Vengeance, Feud and Accommodation: Homicide in Medieval Iceland.” Early Medieval Europe 20.2 (2012): 139-75.

Miller Ian. William. Choosing the Avenger: Some Aspects of the Bloodfued in Medieval Iceland and England, Law and History Review 1, 159-204.

Miller Ian. William. Law and Literature in Medieval Iceland. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989.

Miller, William Ian. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law, and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago, Ill.; London: University of Chicago, 2005.

Fantasy:

Hume, Kathryn. Fantasy and Mimesis : Responses to Reality in Western Literature. London: Methuen, 1984.

Larrington, Carolyne. “The Psychology of Emotion and Study of the Medieval Period.” Early Medieval Europe, 2001, Vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 251-256.

Mundal, Else. The Treatment of the Supernatural and the Fantastic in Different Saga Genres. (2006)

Ross, Margaret. “Realism and the Fantastic in the Old Icelandic Sagas.” Scandinavian Studies 74.4 (2002): 443-54.

Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve U, 1973. Print. A Volume in the CWRU Press Translations.

Mythology/Vikings:

Clunies Ross, Margaret. Prolonged Echoes : Old Norse Myths in Medieval Northern Society. Odense: Odense UP, 1994. Print. Viking Collection. v. 7, V.10.

Hayward, John. The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings. London: Penguin, 1995.

Jesch, Judith. The Viking Diaspora. New York: Routledge, 2015.

Jones, Gwyn. A History of the Vikings. (OUP: 1968 rev. 1984)

Lindow, John. Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Price, Neil S. The Viking Way : Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (2002).

Sawyer, Peter. The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. (OUP, 1997)

Williams, Gareth, Peter Pentz, and Matthias Wemhoff. Vikings : Life and Legend. London, 2014.

Magic in Icelandic Family Sagas:

Ármann Jakobsson. ‘The Trollish Acts of Þorgrímr the Witch: The Meanings of troll and ergi in Medieval Iceland. Saga-Book of the Viking Society 32 (2008): 39-68.*

Davidson, H. R. Ellis. ‘Hostile Magic in the Icelandic Sagas’ in The Witch Figure, rd. Venetia Newall. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973. 20-41.

Dillmann, Francois-Xavier. Les magiciens dans l'Islande ancienne. Uppsala: Kungl. Gustav Adolfs Akademien for svensk folkkultur, 2006.

Gísli Palsson. “The Name of the Witch: Sagas, Sorcery and Social Context.” Social Approaches to Viking Studies, ed. Ross Samson. Glasgow: Cruithne Press, 1991. 157-68.

Heide, Eldar. Spinning Seiðr. Old Norse Religion in long-Term Perspectives: Orgins, Changes and Interactions. (2006 Lund: Nordic Academic)

Jochens, Jenny. The Prophetess/Sorceress in Old Norse Images of Women. (1996)

Jolly, Karen. Definitions of Magic in Witchcraft an Magic in Europe: The Middle Ages. (2002)

Kieckhefer, Richard. Definitions of Magic in Magic in the Middle Ages. (1989)

Laurin, Dan. But, What About the Men? Male Ritual Practices in the Icelandic Sagas. Kyngervi, 2020.*

Lindow, John. ‘Supernatural Others and Ethnic Others: A Millennium of World View’ Scandinavian Studies 67.1 (1995): 8-31

Meylan, Nicolas. Magic and Discourse of Magic in the Old Norse Sagas of the Apostles in Viking and Medieval Scandinavia. (2011)

Miller, William Ian. ‘Dreams, Prophecy and Sorcery: Blaming the Secret Offender in Medieval Iceland’ Scandinavian Studies 58.2 (1986): 101-23

Mitchell, Stephen. Skirnismal and Nordic Charm Magic. (Turnhout: Brepols 2007)

Mitchell, Stephen. ‘Magic as Acquired Art and the Ethnographic Value of the Sagas’, Old Norse Myths, Literature and Society. Ed. Margaret Clunies Ross. Odense: UP Southern Denmark, 2003. 132-52. (attached).

Mitchell A. Stephen. Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages. (2011)

Morris, Katherine. Sorceress or Witch? The Image of Gender in Medieval Iceland and Northern Europe. (1991).

Price, Neil. The Archaeology of Seiðr: Circumpolar Traditions in Viking Pre-Christian Religion. Brathair 4 (2), 2004: 109-126.*

Raudvere, Catharina. Trolldomr in Early Medieval Scandinavia’, Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: The Middle Ages. London: Athlone v, 2002. 75-171.

Steven, Justice. Did the Middle Ages Believe in their Miracles? (2008)

Ward, Benedicta. Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record and Event 1000—1215. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.

[fumpkins]

Playing with tools—and weapons—was a ‘normal’ part of prehistoric childhood | Science

Fragmentary atlatl handles: One (left) has been designed to fit comfortably in an adult’s hand, and one (right) seems to have been designed for a child’s hand.

Robert Losey

Prehistoric children may have been cherished by their parents—but until recently, they’ve been neglected by many archaeologists, who assumed that childhood is simply about toys and games. Now, a new study adds to the growing literature that prehistoric children were hard workers, who learned from an early age to use the weapons and tools that would help them with the rigors of adulthood.

This latest study of ancient children at work started accidentally. Archaeologists Robert Losey and Emily Hull at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, were examining artifacts from a 1700-year-old refuse pile at a site on Oregon’s coast, an area historically home to Chinookan- and Salish-speaking populations. Among the finds were the broken remains of several atlatls—handheld spear-throwing tools that were, until the invention of the bow and arrow, one of humankind’s deadliest hunting implements. But some of the broken atlatls looked different.

“They were just not made for adult-sized hands,” Losey says. Instead, they appeared to be scaled-down versions for children. Perhaps, the researchers speculate, adults fashioned the tiny tools so that youngsters could begin to hone the hunting skills they would later need, the researchers report this month in Antiquity. “To be a successful hunter you really needed to have mastery over the atlatl,” Losey says. The tool has almost—but not quite—vanished from the hunter’s toolkit today, but some studies suggest it takes years to gain full proficiency.

Losey and Hull’s speculation lines up with what researchers observe in many societies today, says David Lancy, an anthropologist emeritus at Utah State University in Logan. From an early age, children are allowed to interact with the tools adults use to work, forage, and hunt, often with no parental supervision. Babies suck on sharp knives; toddlers play with machetes.

Many studies suggest children who play with tools quickly transition to working with them. Four-year-olds among the Maniq people of Thailand can easily skin and gut small animals, for example. And according to Douglas Bird, an anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University in State College, children among the Hadza of Tanzania are adept foragers. One study suggests that in some seasons, 5-year-olds can gather half their daily calories by themselves.

Prehistoric children may well have had this leaning, too. But it is only within the past 20 years that archaeologists have begun to consider that ancient children were productive members of their societies, says Jane Eva Baxter, an archaeologist at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. Even today, “There is still an overreliance on looking for toys,” she says.

Other recent finds include child-size flint points in children’s burials in prehistoric Sweden and miniature Viking weapons and food-processing tools found as far east as Russia and as far west as Greenland. Young Vikings likely had fun playing with such objects, says Ben Raffield, an archaeologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, but doing so also probably accelerated their transition into the adult world. Skeletal evidence suggests, for example, that many Viking teens were also army fighters.

Lancy says these insights might hold lessons for parents in today’s postindustrial societies. For many such parents, the idea of a working child is seen as an aberration, in part because it conjures up images of child exploitation in factories or mines. But Lancy says there is an important distinction to be made between “child labor” in an unhealthy work environment and what researchers have dubbed “children’s work,” which takes place within the family and involves learning useful skills—like how to use an atlatl—that are beneficial throughout life. Anthropological studies show that “children’s work” is a normal feature of childhood in most societies today, Lancy says—and archaeological finds such as the small atlatls suggest this has been the case for millennia.

Anecdotal evidence suggests some children prefer it that way. After Bird and his wife, Penn State anthropologist Rebecca Bliege Bird, spent years living with the Martu people of Australia’s Western Desert, for example, their own children had a hard time transitioning back to life in the United States. They had gotten used to the autonomy of Martu children, who proudly catch, cook, and eat small lizards without adult help. As one father among the Dusun people of North Borneo said to an anthropologist concerned that his child was playing with knives: “How can you learn to use a knife if you do not use it?”

New post published on: https://www.livescience.tech/2019/12/18/playing-with-tools-and-weapons-was-a-normal-part-of-prehistoric-childhood-science/

[dwellordream]

“…Militarism is closely associated with the social legitimization of hegemonic masculinity —a dominant form of masculinity that many individuals strive toward but only a few attain. While hegemonic masculinity nominally places men in a social position superior to women, it also serves to create socially exclusive hierarchies among men through the marginalization and subordination of both femininity and nonconformist forms of masculinity (Connell 2000, 2005; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Hooper 2001). Hegemonic masculinity, by its nature, forces all other men to position themselves in relation to the form of masculinity that is being promoted or honored at any given time.

Traditional traits of hegemonic masculinity might include risk-taking, the enforcement of command structures and disciplinary hierarchies, physicality, aggression, violence, and overt expressions of heterosexuality (Hinojosa 2010). Lower-status men who conform to this status quo can receive benefits from those men who occupy the top of social hierarchies, thereby legitimizing and reinforcing the hegemonic status of the latter (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005). Today, hierarchies of hegemonic masculinity can be easily identified in numerous contexts, such as militaries, militia organizations, and professional sports teams (Bickerton 2015; Connell and Messerschmidt 2005; Higate and Hopton 2005; Hinojosa 2010; Hooper 2001).

There is good evidence for a culture of hegemonic masculinity among Viking Age societies. While perceptions of masculinity were undoubtedly imbued with their own shades of nuance across space and time, cultural similarities in the material record speak to broadly homogenous attitudes toward masculinity and its associations with militarism (Hadley 2016:262). Political power lay in the hands of war leaders and their retainers, who were most able to exploit and perpetuate hierarchies of masculinity to reinforce their influence. Expressions of masculinity may also have been closely associated with religious ideologies that reflected the sacral power and status of the elite. It has been suggested, for example, that the mediating role that Germanic kings held between the gods and populations before the Christianization process was expressed sexually through demonstrations of masculinity and virility (Clunies Ross 1985).

…When considered within a wider context, the perpetuation of hegemonic models of masculinity may have legitimized and fueled expressions of power and competitive behavior (Connell 2000), with significant implications for sociopolitical hierarchies and perceptions of gendered power. There has been some debate as to how gender was conceptualized and expressed among Scandinavian societies (Back Danielsson 2007; Clover 1993; Norrman 2000). Carol Clover (1993) has argued that Viking Age societies possessed a “one sex” perspective of gender that, instead of polarizing femininity and masculinity, equated masculinity with power. As a result, expressions of masculinity were celebrated and emphasized. Clover’s hypothesis is borne out in saga narratives that contrast the Old Norse term hvatr (vigorous or manly), used most often in reference to men, with the term blauðr (weak or cowardly), which often refers to women.

This implies that an individual’s status could have been positively or negatively influenced by words or actions considered hvatr or blauðr (see Clover 1993 and discussion below). This portrayal of gendered power aligns well with the concept of hegemonic masculinity because the competitive nature of masculine hierarchies would have encouraged individuals to constantly seek to enhance their status by discrediting others. The intense rivalries that could emerge as a result can be seen in the culture of insult, hypermasculinity, and feuding that abounded among Scandinavian societies. Eddic poems and the sagas are replete with examples of male antagonists exchanging insults (Old Norse flyting), which usually involved boasts of masculinity and the humiliation of one’s opponent, as in Örvar-Odds saga, Hárbarðsljóð, and Helgakviða Hundingsbana I (Orchard 2011; Pálsson and Edwards 1985). Some insults, such as nið, which was associated with accusations of breaking taboos, cowardice, and/or sexual deviance, were so powerful that their use was mitigated by law (Almqvist 1965, 1974; Clover 1993; Meulengracht Sørensen 1980).

The influence of hegemonic masculinity is further illustrated when we consider gendered norms among Scandinavian societies. The roles of men and women were nominally well defined by legal codes and social conventions (Jochens 1995), and acting in a way deemed inappropriate to one’s sex resulted in significant social disapproval (although in certain cases this may have imbued some individuals with a strange type of power; see Price [2002] on men who practiced sorcery). In a society that promoted hegemonic cultures of masculinity, it should not be surprising to find evidence for the nominal regulation of gender roles or the subordination of both women and marginalized men who failed to live up to masculine ideals (Connell 2005). For men, acting in a way that was considered blauðr brought shame and disgrace. In Kormáks saga (chap. 13; Hollander 1949), for example, Bersi’s wife is able to legitimately divorce him after he receives a wound to the buttocks during combat. Other incidents in the sagas indicate that the charge of “unmanliness” and the threat of divorce were frequently used by women to incite men to undertake acts of violence (Anderson and Swenson 2002; Clover 1993; Jochens 1995).

In Grænlendinga saga (chap. 7), Freydís threatens her husband with divorce if he does not avenge a fictitious assault against her (Kunz 2000a), while in Laxdæla saga (chap. 53), Þorgerðr tells her sons that they would have been better born as daughters in order to shame them into avenging the killing of their brother (Kunz 2000b). The fear of judgment for failing to act in an appropriately masculine manner can even be seen among Guðrún’s adolescent sons in Laxdæla saga (chap. 60; Kunz 2000b). Having been shamed by their mother for indulging too long in children’s pursuits, the youths acknowledge that they are at an age where they will be judged if they were to fail to avenge their father’s death. This suggests that children and adolescents were aware of the need to cultivate and preserve one’s status within hegemonic hierarchies of masculinity from an early age.

For women, acting outside of nominal gendered roles also carried social and legal repercussions. The Icelandic Grágás laws, for example, prescribed that a woman who wore a man’s clothes, cut her hair short, or carried weapons should be sentenced to outlawry (Dennis, Foote, and Perkins 2000:219). Hegemonic hierarchies, however, are not static or monolithic (Connell 2005), and the perpetuation of a “one sex” model of gendered power might have cultivated a peculiar form of social fluidity that allowed some individuals to traverse gender boundaries (Back Danielsson 2007; Clover 1993; Norrman 2000). Just as it was possible for men to increase or lose their status through their words and actions, so too might some women have attempted to achieve social ascendancy by behaving in a way considered hvatr.

The sagas indicate that some women who openly defied social conventions by wearing men’s clothing and carrying weapons, such as “Breeches Auðr” in Laxdæla saga (Kunz 2000b), were not only tolerated but also admired (Bagerius 2001). Other textual sources indicate that women participated in warfare as combatants, and in one case a woman is noted as commanding a viking fleet in Ireland (Bekker 1838–1839; Todd 1867). While such women might well have been a minority within Scandinavian society, these depictions are now potentially supported by a recent study of the human remains from grave 581 at Birka, Sweden. This burial, containing an individual accompanied by a sword, an axe, two spears, archery equipment, a knife, two shields, and two sacrificed horses, was long considered to be an archetypal burial of a male viking warrior. Recently, however, genomic analysis by Hedenstierna-Jonson et al. (2017a) has found that the individual interred within the grave was in fact female.

Until now, the only archaeological evidence for armed women was a corpus of so-called Valkyrie brooches and pendants, known from across the viking world, and these findings therefore provide new impetus for the targeted reanalysis of other purported burials of women accompanied by weapons (see Gardeła 2013b; Pedersen 2014). These include two individuals, both of whom have been osteologically sexed as females, who were buried with weapons and other martial equipment in Hedmark and Nord-Trøndelag, Norway (Hedenstierna-Jonson et al. 2017b). While these burials must be interpreted cautiously, the obvious corollary of these findings is that some women were active participants in the martial cultures of the Viking Age. At present, we can only speculate as to whether these individuals were perceived as “women” or as “men” or whether they perhaps occupied (either permanently or temporarily) some kind of third gender (see Back Danielsson 2007; Norrman 2000), but they nonetheless indicate that gendered boundaries were permeable. While we should not suppose that participation in martial society ubiquitously demanded active involvement in combat, these burials remind us that at least some girls may have been conditioned to adopt the persona or roles of the warrior.”

- Ben Raffield, “Playing Vikings: Militarism, Hegemonic Masculinities, and Childhood Enculturation in Viking Age Scandinavia.”