During the Viking Age, Pregnancies Were Political, Precarious—and Violent

Pregnant women wielding swords and wearing martial helmets, fetuses set to avenge their fathers—and a harsh world where not all newborns were born free or given burial. These are some of the realities uncovered by the first interdisciplinary study to focus on pregnancy in the Viking age, authored by myself, Kate Olley, Brad Marshall and Emma Tollefsen as part of the Body-Politics project. Despite its central role in human history, pregnancy has often been overlooked in archaeology, largely because it leaves little material trace. Pregnancy has perhaps been particularly overlooked in periods we mostly associate with warriors, kings and battles—such as the highly romanticised Viking age (the period from AD800 until AD1050). Topics such as pregnancy and childbirth have conventionally been seen as “women’s issues”, belonging to the “natural” or “private” spheres—yet we argue that questions such as “when does life begin?” are not at all natural or private, but of significant political co ... Read full article.