Deux publications récentes sur les vikings

Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir The Valkyrie. Women of the Viking World, Londres, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020.

Extrait, p. 14 :

“Gender is a fundamental category that has structured human societies throughout history, but it is much more complex than a simple male/female binary. One of the factors that complicate gender identity, especially for women, is age. Women were (and are) perceived differently depending on whether they are unmarried or married, fertile or not, and becoming a widow could give women a new-found freedom and independence but also leave them unprotected. As both literary sources and burials show, old women were sometimes seen as dignified and worthy of respect, or witch-like. The Norse had sophisticated laws that provided married and widowed women with substantial scope and security, and the protections afforded to children suggest that they were seen as valuable members of society. On the other hand, adolescent girls seem to have had little ability to make their own decisions and they were often married off as suited their family. The book will follow the life cycle, addressing each of these phases in turn to uncover the complexity of a woman’s experiences and the shifting identities and roles she might have had.”

Christian Cooijmans, Monarchs and Hydrarchs: The Conceptual Development of Viking Activity across the Frankish Realm (c. 750–940), Londres et New York, Routledge, 2020.

Extrait, p. 9:

“All in all, by introducing and implementing an original methodological framework to reconsider regional viking movements around the Frankish realm, this study allows overarching patterns of said endeavour to be identified and interpreted, offering a beneficial, novel perspective on the logistical and strategic considerations that would have governed them. Likewise, due to its focus on a sizeable yet comparatively underrepresented portion of the wider viking world, it will amass and accommodate bodies of evidence that have hitherto often been divided across disciplinary, linguistic, and geopolitical lines. By pairing this respective source material and research methodology – and presenting them to a wider academic audience – this work aspires to open up future opportunities for comparative and critical study of this far- reaching Scandinavian presence across the European mainland.”