Ernest "Tiger" Burch Memorial Lecture Series, 2022 - Arctic Studies Center
Presented by: Michèle Hayeur Smith, independent scholar, ASC Research Associate

Viking women have been portrayed as members of the society, mostly concerned with the household and childrearing work but rarely standing out as exceptional players in their communities. These views are slowly being challenged in today’s scholarship, particularly regarding the Viking communities established across the Norse diaspora in Iceland, the Faroes, and Greenland after ca. 800 AD.

Through the analysis of archeological textiles excavated at the Norse sites, it is possible to explore the hidden lives of Viking women and to discover their precious contributions to the survival and well-being of their societies, as they confronted climatic change, hardships, and increased isolation but also helped develop regional identities and new economic and political structures. Through textile production, women supported Icelandic communities by making money and helped them to mediate the growing hardships of the Little Ice Age period in Norse Greenland.

The physical process of textile production was an exclusively female activity; it may also have been deeply connected with the world of magic, which provided women with a voice, and a source of power, in a world largely dominated by men. 

About the Speaker
Dr. Michèle Hayeur Smith is an archaeologist of historical material culture, with research interests in gender, textiles, dress, adornment, and medieval history. She is largely known for her work in the North Atlantic and Iceland and has been undertaking projects focused on gender and the production and circulation of textiles from the Viking Age to the early 19th century. Her innovative work contributes to global discussions about the roles of women in past societies in preserving tradition and guiding change. In 2020 she published a monograph based on her textile research called "The Valkyries’ Loom: The Archaeology of Cloth Production and Female Power in the North Atlantic."