Women, Warriors, and the Negotiation of Identity in Migration-Period Scandinavia

Abstract

Women, Warriors, and the Negotiation of Identity in Migration-Period ScandinaviaIn this chapter, I will examine how jewellery played a part in the articulation and negotiation of identities in Migration-period Scandinavia (ad c. 400-550), by exploring this in relation to two different perceived groups: women and warriors.In archaeology, two separate narratives have been established that deal respectively with the role of women versus warriors in the construction and articulation of ethnic affiliation and group identity in this period.Accordingly, women have often been portrayed as bearers of a static ethnic identity that was ascribed at birth and remained unchanged from cradle to grave independent of individual life experiences.Warriors, on the other hand, have been assigned an identity that was flexible and enabled them to shift their ethnic affiliation by joining different mobile warrior bands or confederations.The research behind these contrasting presentations has basis in different concepts of phenomena like identity and ethnicity.I argue here that by applying a dynamic, contextual, and multidimensional concept of identity, it is possible to challenge the discrepancy that has occurred between the two research positions and arrive at a more nuanced and complex understanding of how the multifaceted phenomenon of ethnicity actually played out -and evolved -during the Migration period.By this approach, I will question the traditional perception of the role of women versus warriors in the articulation of identities in the Migration period, and demonstrate that both women and warriors played a previously unrecognized and active part in these ongoing negotiations of identity. Background: The Creation of Two Different Stories -Women and Warriors in Migration-Period Ethnicity StudiesIn early scholarship, research into ethnic groupings in the Migration period often assumed a direct link between specific object types and distinct groups of peoples known from historical sources.This applied especially to interpretations of jewellery and dress-accessories.Accordingly, migrations of groups such as for instance the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes from the Continent and Scandinavia to England, were often traced through the distribution of jewellery worn by women as part of what was conceived as an ethnic costume. 1 This research was usually implicitly based in a concept of ethnicity as a 'primordial' or biological identity that was perceived as innate and static in remaining the same independent of, or isolated from, the historical and social context, or individual life experiences of the person involved. 2 From the late 1960s onward, this concept was rejected as social and anthropological studies promoted an understanding of the instrumental and situational aspects of ethnic identities in emphasizing the importance of cultural encounters and economic competition for generating ethnicity.In this approach, ethnicity was perceived as an aspect of social organization. 3 As demonstrated by for instance Ian Hodder's ethno-archaeological study Symbols in Action, 4 the