Sexism and Vikings: Why Nordic women have it better

Few can still argue against the accepted fact that the countries which “the North” in Europe consists of are the most gender-equal nations the world has yet seen. Whether we focus on work-life or family life, Nordics seem to have the most gender-equal ideas and processes than any other group. That is not to say that everything is fine and dandy and that no changes need to be made; however, compared to the rest, Nordics are closer to succeeding in gender equality than any other national group. But why is that?

I think to explain this phenomenon, we should take a look at how it all started back in the day when the countries we now know were still forming and women didn’t have nearly as many rights as today. I know that many would wish for the movie screenings of Vikings to be true: prideful men and women, who fight off enemies and stand tall against the awful weather conditions. The truth is, however, not so glamorous. Just like many other countries a good portion of the population were farmers. And just like the rest of Europe, women didn’t have that many rights.

In both the articles of Holcomb (2015) and Wildgoose (2015), the role of women within the age which most common people know as the “Viking Era” was not glamorous at all. Before Christianity, they didn’t have many rights and had to accept the children their husbands had with other women as well after a while. They didn’t have much social power, they needed to be represented by someone else at the court and they could only inherit from their family if every other male relative was deceased. After Christianity things didn’t change much; they basically just didn’t have to deal with extra children from other women.

Now this kind of description could easily ring a bell with some people because it is a very close description of the situation of most women back in that time. With few exceptions, the role of the woman was not that different in the North than, say, in France or Greece, if one was to look at them comparatively during similar periods.

And yet, if you look at them today, they differ so much that it is hard for someone to imagine that they once had the same start. But how did that happen?

First and foremost it was the difference in religion. Christianity came slowly into the lives of the Nordics and was gradually accepted as the main religion (to this day), but it was a slow process and not an easy one (Hofmann et al, 2014). This detail is very important for the topic at hand because it means that even though the Nordics accepted Christianity as their main religion, they never had it at the core of their nationality identity like, for example, the countries in Southern Europe. Thus, they never identified with the huga division between the sexes and the shame of the female body which exists in the more religious South.

This is an important key point because it means that women in the North may not have had equal rights to men at the beginning, but they also didn’t associate their bodies with “the Devil”. Meanwhile, if we take a look at the countries that have Christianity at the core of their identity (for ex. Greece or Italy), we can see that the female body is associated with illness, evil, and temptation, and it has to be shamed or punished when it is uncovered (Meratzas, 2011). This fact on its own creates a social environment where the male is associated with good characteristics and the female with bad characteristics, therefore the female is often looked down upon and shamed. Thankfully for the societies which we now identify as “Nordic”, this is an element that never existed strongly in their social integrity.

A second factor that led to more gender-equal economic circumstances today, is the fact that all Nordic countries consisted mostly of farmers. One point which many miss when they look at history, is that the strong social division between the genders comes from nations that have more diverse occupations. The reason for that is simple: when you can make money without needing to work all day under harsh conditions you have more time to think and less need for all members of the family to work.  In the Nordic countries, on the other hand, most people worked at farms and that meant that the whole family needed to participate in taking care of the land. So, it was quite obvious that women were needed for the production of the economy; which is something that the rest of Europe only started catching on to after World War 2 when most men had died and women had to go and work in their position.

Therefore, it is no wonder why Nordic women nowadays experience the most gender-equal social system that human society has produced until now. Their history is such that it has allowed them to build a more equal infrastructure from the get-go. Thanks to their beliefs and their division between national identity and religion they managed to avoid the association between “woman” and “evil” that more Christian identifying countries have. Meanwhile, because of their rough weather and their farm-based economy women were always part of the production. Hence they manage to have it better now than the rest; they have been building on more gender-equal terms from the get-go.

Sources

Hoffman K., Kamp H. & Wemhoff M., 2014, Die Wikinger und Frankische Reich, Wilhelm Fink

Holcomb K, 2015, Pulling the Strings: The Influential Power of Women in Viking Age Iceland, Western Oregon University

Wildgoose R.M., 2015, Undervalued and Insignificant: The Truth About Women in the Early Viking Age, d.n.

Μεράτζας Χ., 2011, Αντεστραμένος Διόνυσος, Εδκ. Πολιτεία