Last Friday, April 8, Dr. Mary Valante visited ETSU to talk about women’s labor in Viking Age towns.
Valante is a professor of Medieval History at Appalachian State and a former scholar at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. She is also the author of “The Vikings in Ireland,” a book on the settlements, urbanization and trade of the Viking Age in Ireland.
Valante is currently researching the intersection of women’s work and identity in Viking Age Ireland, especially in Dublin. Her presentation at Ball Hall addressed just this.
“Vikings are usually best known as fearsome warriors who raided Western Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries,” Valante said.
In reality, Scandinavians at this time were more so traders, craftsmen and town builders. Their work improved and expanded trade routes and brought up new trade centers which, in turn, shifted their towns’ domestic production to an urban economy.
Valante shared that the work that caused this shift fell largely on Viking women.
“The inhabitants of these new trade centers needed food, needed ale and they needed to prepare against the possibility of famine and siege,” Valante said.
According to Valante, women’s contributions were within the production of perishables. Namely, food, ale and textile production. Food and ale production supplied more than just a single household; it needed to also adequately supply the royal household as well as the rest of the town.
Additionally, Valante shared that it was common for Viking clients and tenants to owe their lords “food rents.” These consisted of milk, bread and butter, which were all exclusively products of women’s labor.
The production of high quality textiles, specifically linen, woolens and silk for those in the Viking Age, was very important for trade in Dublin. The process of creating textiles was extremely lengthy and the demand for the products was high.
Despite this, women received no credit for their role as manufacturing sources.
To highlight the importance and difficulty of textile production, Valante used a Viking Age ship as an example. With the image displayed on the screen, she shared that modern day estimations determine that it would’ve taken 10 men nine months to build the ship. Then she focused on just the sail.
“To make a sail would have taken 10 women probably two full years,” Valante said.
In conducting and presenting her research, Valante is one of the few people acknowledging the contributions Viking women made to their society.
“Without them [Viking women], there would’ve been no towns, no sails for the ships and no Viking Age,” Valante said.
