Although I write a column entitled”The Viking Answer Lady” for my local SAC newsletter, hadn’t a clue as to the answer. When I turned to the sagas, they didn’t tell me, either. Thus began the start of a massive research project that has produced the work you are about to read. The study is still not over… M still discovering new information as the number of scholars in the fields of Viking history and Scandinavian women’ studies increases. Whenever discover new information, I either correct or augment my work, so it is as current as I can make it. The long and short to the problem is this: even in sappy modern romance novels, how many times is an entire wedding ceremony actually described? You can discover that brides wear white dresses, often with veils, that there was a groom, a best man, a matron of honor, bride’s maids.
You’d find out that the words “l do” and some rings fit into the picture somewhere. But since each and every one of us has seen or heard about weddings, the novelist doesn’t have to include all the details. Only an ethnographer or an anthropologist is likely to record the type of full details that WOUld enable someone from another time or culture to really understand a modern American wedding. Similarly, the authors of the sagas did not provide complete details, nor did contemporary commentators or historians from other cultures.
So here is my answer to the question of “How did the Vikings conduct a wedding? ” I feel that I have made a good approximation. My friends, Lord Bicorn Heralds and Lady Leaders Leitmotif’s, enacted the wedding as describe it here: as all the guests, and the couple themselves will tell you, everything felt right. It was like participating in a folk ritual in a foreign country, where you know that each action has millennia of tradition behind it. Sake little credit for the success of the event, as Leading is a formidable general who knows how best to marshal her friends and assemble her resources to stage a coup: this wedding was the closest I have ever felt to the sensation of “YOU ARE THERE. ” As with any piece of scholarship, you the reader must judge my research upon its merits and decide if you agree with my conclusions. If you have access to information which corrects or elaborates upon my own, please feel ere to contact me: gunnora@vikinganswerlady. Com l.
Introduction This paper seeks to examine marriage and related topics as they existed in Viking Scandinavia. Primarily, marriage was a contractual arrangement between the families of the bride and groom in the Viking Age, just as it was throughout other areas of medieval Europe. However, in addressing the topic of marriage, I have also briefly examined love, sexual conduct, mythical- religious aspects, and divorce in order to provide context for understanding the coloratura background in which marriages were made.
The focus of his research is the pagan era of the Vikings, although due to the lateness of the period legal codes and literary sources, some information is undoubtedly more reflective of medieval Scandinavia (ca. 1000- 1400 CE). It should also be mentioned that since much of the information we possess today about the Viking Age originated in Iceland, the information presented in this paper may PDF creator – Pedigree v. O https://www. Absentmindedly. Com/printed. SHTML https://www. Pedigree. Com 10/22/2007 Page 2 of 19 reflect Icelandic practices only, for there were wide differences in laws. Society ND religion throughout the various Scandinavian countries, and thus there was no such thing as a single, universal “Viking culture. ” The primary sources for the Viking period come from archaeology, runic Inscriptions, and contemporary literary evidence provided by Arabic travelers and German chroniclers such as Adam of Bremen. Additional sources which may be used to complete a picture of the Viking Age date from the twelfth to thirteenth centuries: these are the Scandinavian chronicles, sagas, and laws.
In utilizing these later sources, the researcher must use caution in accepting as confirmed truth whatever he or she finds there. The sagas are concerned with personalities and political maneuverings rather than with social history, and may reflect most accurately the social conditions of the author’s lifetime instead of those of the historic figures that people the sagas, just as medieval artists painted historic figures such as King Arthur in the armor of the late Middle Ages rather than in the proper historical gear.
The legal codes of medieval Scandinavia are perhaps more factual in orientation than are the sagas, however their chief value to the researcher is to provide “normative history,” describing how lawmakers wanted their society to operate, rather Han the actual workings of day-to-day life. Further, the extant law codes we possess (GarҐgҐs, the Gulping Law, Prostrating Law, Jesse Love etc. ) were all redacted and written down after the close of the Viking Age, when the establishment of Christianity and canon law could influence these codes.
Unless one day we recover and revive some hapless Viking who has been preserved frozen in glacial ice, and are able to extract from him a detailed account of his life and culture, it is unlikely that modern historians will ever be able to present an absolutely accurate and authoritative description of the life f the Viking Age. The Saga Time has passed away, and like the Golden Age of Homer, may only be recovered in bits and potsherds, in romanticizes remembrances and distant echoes.
In order to re-create the society of the Vikings within recreations organizations such as the S. C. A. , or to resurrect the religious beliefs and tenets of the pagan Scandinavians as do the Stature, we frequently blend together a mix of historical fact, period fiction, and the creativity of our own imaginations in order to create a new reality which we hope is not too far from the truth of history. With this in mind, we an let the information contained in these pages teach us what the Viking marriage was, or at least, might have been. Art II: The Function Of Marriage in Viking Scandinavia The starting point for any discussion of marriage in a culture should be the reasons and function of marriage in that society. In general, marriage serves two primary functions: the control of sexual activity and/or reproduction, and as a means of forming socioeconomic alliances between social groups. In Scandinavia, the boundaries of proper sexual conduct were very wide, although (as is usual in many societies) a double standard prevailed. The ideal woman was expected to be chaste before marriage and faithful within it.
This bias may be seen in examining the types of insults against women that existed in such materials as the Poetic Deed, which vilify their subjects with accusations of promiscuity and incestuous or otherwise illicit liaisons (Lee M. Hollander, trans. The Poetic Deed. Austin, University of Texas press, 1962. Up. 90-103). There was good reason for this insistence on female chastity: an unwed maiden was a marketable commodity who could be used to bring wealth to her family via her bride-price, and to help form favorable alliances tit other families when she wed.
A more important reason for limiting women’s sexual activity was the lack of effective birth control, because the risk of producing illegitimate children could mean financial hardship for a woman’s family. An illegitimate child who had been recognized by its father would receive only two-thirds of its support from its father and the father’s kin, while unacknowledged bastards were entirely supported by the mother and her family (Greeter Jacobsen, “Sexual Irregularities in Medieval Scandinavia,” Sexual Practices and the Medieval Church.
