A new study uncovers how pregnant women in Viking society were imagined not only as mothers, but sometimes as warriors.
A pregnant woman gripping her belly with both hands wears what appears to be a helmet with a noseguard. In an Icelandic saga, a mother-to-be, too far along to flee, bares her breast and brandishes a sword to scare off attackers. These arresting images are not what we typically associate with pregnancy—but they form part of a groundbreaking new study into how the Viking Age understood expectant women.
“”Womb Politics: The Pregnant Body and Archaeologies of Absence,” was written by a team of scholars led by Dr Marianne Hem Eriksen of the University of Leicester, and Dr Katherine Marie Olley of the University of Nottingham. Published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, it is the first focused examination of pregnancy in the Viking Age, and draws together literary, linguistic, artistic, and archaeological sources.
A Figurine Wearing a Helmet: The Pregnant Warrior in Art
Among the most striking pieces of evidence discussed in the study is a small Viking Age silver figurine that convincingly depicts a pregnant body, arms wrapped around a protruding belly, wearing a helmet with a prominent noseguard. This image raises provocative questions about how pregnancy and martial imagery could coexist in Viking representations of women.
The idea is echoed in Norse literature. Dr Olley notes that:
Freydís’s behaviour is surprising but may find a parallel in the study’s examined silver figurine, where a pregnant woman, arms embracing her protruding belly, is wearing what appears to be a helmet with a noseguard. While we are careful not to present simplified narratives about pregnant warrior women, we must acknowledge that at least in art and stories, ideas were circulating about pregnant women with martial equipment. These are not passive, or pacified, pregnant bodies.
Saga Women and Social Power
Drawing on later Old Norse texts, Dr Olley explores how pregnancy was conceptualised in Viking society—often entangled with wider themes of kinship, violence, and fate:
Using Old Norse texts to illuminate Viking Age beliefs is difficult because the surviving manuscripts date to well after the Viking Age, but it is still fascinating to see words, concepts and memories of pregnancy in these sources that may have their roots in the earlier Viking period. Among the Norse words used for denoting pregnancy, we find rich terms such as ‘bellyfull,’ ‘unlight,’ and ‘to walk not a woman alone’ which provide glimpses of ways people may have conceptualised pregnancy.
In one saga, a fetus still in the womb is destined to avenge his father’s death, already caught in the web of family honour and feud. In another, the saga heroine Freydís defies gender and physical limitations to stand her ground in battle.
Language, Law, and the Politics of Reproduction
The study goes beyond individual stories to examine legal and social structures. Pregnancy, the authors argue, was not simply a private condition but a deeply political one—linked to labour, inheritance, and control.
Dr Eriksen remarks:
It verges on the banal to say, but pregnancy is an absolute necessity for all forms of reproduction – demographic, social, economic, political. Without pregnant bodies, none of us would be here. Questions such as whether a pregnant body is one or two, how kinship works, or when personhood begins, are not devoid of politics and we don’t have to look very far into our contemporary world to recognise that.
The team also discusses how laws treated pregnant women, particularly enslaved ones. A pregnancy could be seen as a “defect” when purchasing an enslaved woman, and the children born to such women were the property of their owners.
“Together with legal legislation such as pregnancy being seen as a ‘defect’ in an enslaved woman to be bought, or children born to subordinate peoples being the property of their owners, it is a stark reminder that pregnancy can also leave bodies open for volatility, risk and exploitation,” adds Dr Eriksen.
🚨 NEW PUBLICATION 🚨
My first co-authored paper with the #BODYPOLITICS team is available now in #CAJ 💫
Read our study ‘Womb Politics: The Pregnant Body and Archaeologies of Absence’ in Viking Age Scandinavia HERE:
Missing from the Graves: A Silence in the Archaeological Record
Perhaps most puzzling is how little evidence survives of pregnant women and infants in Viking burial contexts. Among thousands of known graves, only a handful appear to be mother-and-child burials. This, despite the likelihood that maternal and infant mortality rates were high.
The researchers suggest that infants were underrepresented in burials and may have been interred differently than adults, or not buried at all. Some remains have been found in domestic settings, such as beneath house floors, but many others remain unaccounted for.
This absence, they argue, is telling. It raises questions about who was considered worthy of formal burial and how social identity, including pregnancy, was acknowledged or erased in death.
Rethinking the Viking Age
“Womb Politics” adds a crucial new layer to our understanding of Viking society. While much popular and scholarly focus has centred on warriors, traders, and kings, this study shifts attention to the social and symbolic role of pregnant women, and the risks, expectations, and power that came with it.
The article, “Womb Politics: The Pregnant Body and Archaeologies of Absence,” by Marianne Hem Eriksen, Katherine Marie Olley, Brad Marshall and Emma Tollefsen is published in Cambridge Archaeological Journal. Click here to read it.
A new study uncovers how pregnant women in Viking society were imagined not only as mothers, but sometimes as warriors.
A pregnant woman gripping her belly with both hands wears what appears to be a helmet with a noseguard. In an Icelandic saga, a mother-to-be, too far along to flee, bares her breast and brandishes a sword to scare off attackers. These arresting images are not what we typically associate with pregnancy—but they form part of a groundbreaking new study into how the Viking Age understood expectant women.
“”Womb Politics: The Pregnant Body and Archaeologies of Absence,” was written by a team of scholars led by Dr Marianne Hem Eriksen of the University of Leicester, and Dr Katherine Marie Olley of the University of Nottingham. Published in the Cambridge Archaeological Journal, it is the first focused examination of pregnancy in the Viking Age, and draws together literary, linguistic, artistic, and archaeological sources.
A Figurine Wearing a Helmet: The Pregnant Warrior in Art
Among the most striking pieces of evidence discussed in the study is a small Viking Age silver figurine that convincingly depicts a pregnant body, arms wrapped around a protruding belly, wearing a helmet with a prominent noseguard. This image raises provocative questions about how pregnancy and martial imagery could coexist in Viking representations of women.
The idea is echoed in Norse literature. Dr Olley notes that:
Freydís’s behaviour is surprising but may find a parallel in the study’s examined silver figurine, where a pregnant woman, arms embracing her protruding belly, is wearing what appears to be a helmet with a noseguard. While we are careful not to present simplified narratives about pregnant warrior women, we must acknowledge that at least in art and stories, ideas were circulating about pregnant women with martial equipment. These are not passive, or pacified, pregnant bodies.
Saga Women and Social Power
Drawing on later Old Norse texts, Dr Olley explores how pregnancy was conceptualised in Viking society—often entangled with wider themes of kinship, violence, and fate:
Using Old Norse texts to illuminate Viking Age beliefs is difficult because the surviving manuscripts date to well after the Viking Age, but it is still fascinating to see words, concepts and memories of pregnancy in these sources that may have their roots in the earlier Viking period. Among the Norse words used for denoting pregnancy, we find rich terms such as ‘bellyfull,’ ‘unlight,’ and ‘to walk not a woman alone’ which provide glimpses of ways people may have conceptualised pregnancy.
In one saga, a fetus still in the womb is destined to avenge his father’s death, already caught in the web of family honour and feud. In another, the saga heroine Freydís defies gender and physical limitations to stand her ground in battle.
Language, Law, and the Politics of Reproduction
The study goes beyond individual stories to examine legal and social structures. Pregnancy, the authors argue, was not simply a private condition but a deeply political one—linked to labour, inheritance, and control.
Dr Eriksen remarks:
It verges on the banal to say, but pregnancy is an absolute necessity for all forms of reproduction – demographic, social, economic, political. Without pregnant bodies, none of us would be here. Questions such as whether a pregnant body is one or two, how kinship works, or when personhood begins, are not devoid of politics and we don’t have to look very far into our contemporary world to recognise that.
The team also discusses how laws treated pregnant women, particularly enslaved ones. A pregnancy could be seen as a “defect” when purchasing an enslaved woman, and the children born to such women were the property of their owners.
“Together with legal legislation such as pregnancy being seen as a ‘defect’ in an enslaved woman to be bought, or children born to subordinate peoples being the property of their owners, it is a stark reminder that pregnancy can also leave bodies open for volatility, risk and exploitation,” adds Dr Eriksen.
Missing from the Graves: A Silence in the Archaeological Record
Perhaps most puzzling is how little evidence survives of pregnant women and infants in Viking burial contexts. Among thousands of known graves, only a handful appear to be mother-and-child burials. This, despite the likelihood that maternal and infant mortality rates were high.
The researchers suggest that infants were underrepresented in burials and may have been interred differently than adults, or not buried at all. Some remains have been found in domestic settings, such as beneath house floors, but many others remain unaccounted for.
This absence, they argue, is telling. It raises questions about who was considered worthy of formal burial and how social identity, including pregnancy, was acknowledged or erased in death.
Rethinking the Viking Age
“Womb Politics” adds a crucial new layer to our understanding of Viking society. While much popular and scholarly focus has centred on warriors, traders, and kings, this study shifts attention to the social and symbolic role of pregnant women, and the risks, expectations, and power that came with it.
The article, “Womb Politics: The Pregnant Body and Archaeologies of Absence,” by Marianne Hem Eriksen, Katherine Marie Olley, Brad Marshall and Emma Tollefsen is published in Cambridge Archaeological Journal. Click here to read it.
You can also learn more by visiting their project website: Body-Politics: Personhood, Sexuality and Death in the Iron and Viking Ages as well as Marianne Hem Eriksen’s article ‘Viking pregnancy was deeply political – new study‘ in The Conversation.
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