THE ADVENTURER
Intrepid female travellers journeyed to destinations as far-flung as Jerusalem, Rome, Russia and North America
The Viking age was a time of exploration. Between the 8th and 11th centuries, those with roots in Scandinavia travelled to the Caspian Sea and the Mediterranean, and crossed the Atlantic to reach North America. Women participated in most of these voyages, and in the trading and settlement that were their main purpose. There is evidence for this in the Scandinavian-style female jewellery found extensively in present- day Russia, Ukraine and further afield, showing that the Viking traders and rulers known as the ‘Rus’ took their wives and families with them. The female jewellery discovered by metal detectorists in eastern England in the last few decades offers further evidence of female settlement in the Danelaw (the Viking- dominated parts of north and east England).
As for Iceland, an uninhabited island at the beginning of the Viking age, it would not exist as a nation today if its settlers had not included women, with some born in the British Isles rather than in Scandinavia. While most of the first settlers of Iceland recorded in the medieval Landnámabók (Book of Settlements) are men, 13 women are named as having made the journey in an open ship to claim land in Iceland. Most famous of these is Aud (also known as Unn) the Deep-Minded, who is celebrated in Laxdæla saga for her achievements in moving her whole household from Scotland to Iceland, via Orkney and the Faroes.
Further afield, both the archaeology of L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, where a spindle whorl and bone needle have been excavated, and the Icelandic sagas, suggest that women participated in the voyages to North America. And with the coming of Christianity, women were soon going on pilgrimage to Rome or Jerusalem, as in the case of the 11th-century Swedish woman Ingirun, who set up a rune stone in memory of herself. The inscription states that she intended to travel to Jerusalem – and she appears to have been uncertain as to whether she would come back!