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Women in Old Norse Society
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Jenny Jochens captures in fascinating detail the lives of women in pagan and early Christian Iceland and Norwayâtheir work, sexual behavior, marriage customs, reproductive practices, familial relations, leisure activities, religious practices, and legal constraints and protections. Women in Old Norse Society places particular emphasis on changing sexual mores and the impact of Christianity as imposed by the clergy and Norwegian kings. It also demonstrates the vital role women played in economic production.
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PREFACE
1. By âOld Norseâ I mean âOld West-nordic,â the language spoken by the Norwegian immigrants who arrived in Iceland from the late ninth century. Subsequently undergoing changes in the two countries, it became Norwegian and Icelandic respectively. Throughout the medieval period âOld Norseâ encompasses both languages, but the overwhelming majority of Old Norse manuscripts were written in Icelandic. Unfortunately, for reasons of brevity, âIcelandicâ cannot be accommodated in the title. On these problems, see JĂłnas KristjĂĄnsson 1993.
2. âThe sagas of Icelanders,â coined from the Icelandic (ĂslendingasÇ«gur, is increasingly replacing the term âfamily sagasâ in English and will be used in this book.
3. It will be published by University of Pennsylvania Press in 1996. Henceforth, it will be referred to as ONIW. In this work, I shall pay particular attention to divine female figures and four vivid images of human women, the warrior, the prophetess or sorceress, the revenger, and the whetter.
4. Duby 1980, 147.
5. With the exception of physical lovemaking, the subject of love â heterosexual and homosocial bonding â will not be treated in these books, but I hope to turn to them in the future. For a preliminary version, see Jochens 1992.
6. GrĂžnbech 1909â1912 and Grönbech 1932.
INTRODUCTION
1. The meeting may have taken place in the year 999; see ĂlafĂa EinarsdĂłttir 1964.
2. The statement comes from Ariâs âBook of Icelandersâ (ĂslendingabĂłk); the text is found in the series Ăslenzk. fornrit vol. 1, and the passage occurs in chap. 7, p. 17. The following texts from this series will be cited by abbreviated title, volume (without series indication), chapter, and page (in this case Ăsl 1.7:17). In Chapter 3 I return to the continuation of this law which ordered the abolition of infanticide.
3. On the conversion, see JĂłn Hnefill AĂ°alsteinsson 1978.
4. On Benjaminâs use of Geschichtsschreibung, see his essay âThe Storyteller: Reflections on the Works of Nikolai Leskov,â in Benjamin 1955, 83â109, esp. 97, and his âTheses on the Philosophy of History,â Benjamin 1955, 255â66.
5. The sources are discussed more fully in the Appendix.
6. Two other genres, the heroic sagas (fornaldarsǫgur) and the chivalric sagas (riddarasǫgur), are used occasionally here to test the mentality of the authors on specific issues, but their full exploitation is reserved for my study of images.
7. I am grateful to Ian Baldwin and DavĂĂ° Erlingsson for help with this paragraph.
8. Two are mentioned in LandnĂĄmabĂłk, a record of four hundred of the original settlers and the land they appropriated (landnĂĄm); see, for example, Lnd 1:377 and 74. On this text, see Appendix n. 1.
9. The name is found only in the late Hrana saga hrings, a saga that exists only in manuscripts from the nineteenth century. For the reference to SvartĂĄ, see Ăslendinga sögur 1949, 9:417
10. Likewise, the third most important Christian celebration after Christmas JĂłl) and Easter (PĂĄskar) was called HvĂtasunna (White Sunday; cf. English Whitsun).
CHAPTER ONE. GUĂNĂ BÇȘĂVARSDĂTTIR AND GUĂRĂN GJĂKADĂTTIR: NORDIC-GERMANIC CONTINUITY
1. The historicity of SigurĂ°r is questionable; his name has been associated with the Merovingian king Sigibert from the sixth century, known from Gregory of Tours, and with Arminius, leader of the Cherusci tribe in the first century and known by contemporary Roman historians.
2. Storm 1888, 24, 126, 326; Flat 3:525.
3. References to Sturlunga saga (volume and page in the 1946 edition) will henceforward appear in the text. For a more recent edition, see Appendix, n. 28.
4. Nonetheless, BÇ«Ă°varr was among five named Icelandic chieftains singled out for special opprobrium for their sexual behavior in a letter from the Norwegian Archbishop Eysteinn in 1180 (DI 1:260â64).
5. They are listed in the following order: ĂĂłrĂ°r, Sighvatr, Snorri, Helga, and VigdĂs (1:52). When Sturla died in 1183, the boysâ ages were given as eighteen (ĂĂłrĂ°r), thirteen (Sighvatr), and five (Snorri; 1:229). Sons were almost always listed before daughters, so we cannot conclude that the girls were younger. If they were older, they would have been born during the first five years of the marriage, suggesting that GuĂ°nĂœ was in her late teens when married and thus ready for reproduction. If ĂĂłrĂ°r was the oldest, the infertile years would suggest that she had not yet reached menarche. Of course, the spacing of GuĂ°nĂœâs sons would have allowed for births in the intervals. If Snorri was only three at his fatherâs death, as suggested by other passages, the girls could still be younger than the boys.
6. On fostering, see Kreutzer 1987, 221â34, and Jochens 1996b.
7. Recently Sverrir TĂłmasson has suggested that by sending Snorri away, Sturla may have intended to leave a greater share of his inheritance to the two older sons, as fathers on the Continent did when they sent younger sons to a monastery; see Ăbm 1:369. For a case in the context of the sagas of Icelanders, see Ăorkell and ĂiĂ°randi in Fld 11.4:221â22.
8. On the importance for Snorri himself, see Jochens 1994b.
9. For a discussion of sources, see Appendix. The sagas of Icelanders (and the kingsâ sagas) are available in the series Ăslenzk fornrit (ĂF) and the former also appear in Ăslendinga sögur 1987 (ĂS). See Introduction, n. 2, for citation principles. Practically all these texts have been translated into English. For a comprehensive list, see Fry 1980 and Acker 1993.
10. On this episode, see Bjarni Einarsson, âHörĂ° höfuĂ°bein,â in Bjarni Einarsson 1987,107â14, Heller 1984, and Helgi ĂorlĂĄksson 1992. The date of Snorriâs death comes from the so-called Ăvi SnorragoĂ°a (4:185â86), thought to bewritten by Ari Ăorgilsson, the author of ĂslendingabĂłk; see Einar Ăl. Sveinssonâs introduction (ĂF 4:xiâxiv).
11. The genealogy can be worked out from many texts; see, for example, St 1:64.
12. Sturlaâs fourteen children, evenly divided between legitimate and illegitimate, were more than matched by Snorriâs nineteen legitimate and three illegitimate children.
13. The family arrived when the country was âcompletely settledâ (albyggt) and had to receive land from others (Lnd 1:180).
14....
Table of contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- ONE GuĂ°nĂœ BÇ«Ă°varsdĂłttir and GuĂ°rĂșn GjĂșkadĂłttir: Nordic-Germanic Continuity
- TWO Marriage
- THREE Reproduction
- FOUR Leisure
- FIVE Work
- SIX The Economics of Homespun
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Sources
- Abbreviations
- Notes
- Bibliography