Introduction

Literary evidence tells us that, in the Old Norse religion, women played an important role. In the mythology we meet goddesses and other female beings such as the giantesses, the valkyries, who took care of the fallen warriors at the battle-field and afterwards in Valhalla, the disir, important in the fertility cult and the norns who span the threads of fate of every person. Archaeologically, the valkyries feature as ornaments in the form of small silver ladies found in graves and on the pictorial stones of Gotland (Pl. 30.1), often with a mead cup or horn in their hands. On the tapestry from the famous Oseberg ship burial in Norway (ninth century), many women are depicted as participating in a procession that has been interpreted as an activity within the cult of Freya, the fertility goddess. It has also been suggested that the buried woman at Oseberg was a Freya priestess (Ingstad 1992, 240 ff.).

But what happened at the conversion? It has been argued that Christianity was a disaster for women, partly as there was no Christian goddess and partly as the Christian cult was headed by men, which meant that the women lost all the religious influence that they had earlier held (Næss 1981, 6 ff.; Steinsland 1985, 130). In my opinion, this is not a valid suggestion for the conversion period. It was not until the end of the twelfth century, when the Church was finally established and organised, that the difficulties with the contemptuous view of women on the part of the Church began.

There is very little space given to women in traditional Church history. However, during the past two decades, a general pattern of women who play an important role at conversions has become apparent. For the ancient Church, this has been shown through a study of Philippian women in Macedonia in the first century AD, where women were usually the first to accept the new faith, and where joy is stressed as a most important reason for women to convert: the joyful message and the sisterhood (Portefaix 1988, 181, 199). The fact becomes clear when studying ancient historians such as Gregory of Tours in his history of the Franks or Paul the Deacon in his history of the Langobards or the Venerable Bede in his ecclesiastical history of the English people.