It’s genuinely worrying to me how often white supremacist misogynist dudes have a weird Viking obsession. The Vikings did not agree with you. Stop dragging the Vikings into this.
Right-wingers: We should treat the Muslims like the Vikings did! Me: You mean travel thousands of miles to strike up profitable trade deals with them in their own countries and establish mutually beneficial business arrangements? Right-wingers: Wot?
VIKING LORE HELD THAT BOTH WEAVING AND SORCERY WERE WOMEN’S WORK, DITTO THE ORDERING OF THE HOUSE ACCOUNTS. MANY CULTURES HAVE HISTORICALLY LEFT ACCOUNTANCY TO WOMEN! MANY SOCIETIES HAVE ALSO LEFT FIBERCRAFT TO WOMEN BECAUSE IT IS TEDIOUS AND REPETITIVE BUT ALSO VERY NECESSARY. SEE ALSO: COOKING, CLEANING, BUDGETING, EMOTIONAL LABOR.
ANYWAY FIBERCRAFT, AS I HAVE DISCOVERED VIA LEARNING TO DO A WHOLE LOT OF IT, IS ALMOST ENTIRELY APPLIED MATHEMATICS EXCEPT FOR THE PART THAT’S ENGINEERING (WHICH IS ALSO MATHEMATICS). ONCE YOU LEARN EVEN THE BASICS OF KNITTING, SEWING, AND WEAVING, IT BECOMES ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE TO REALIZE MEN THINK WOMEN ARE BY VIRTUE OF THEIR SEX (these are of course sexist gender-essentialist men who are not cool with trans people) ILL-EQUIPPED TO DO MATH SOMEHOW. HOLY SHIT, HAVE YOU SEEN HEIRLOOM KNITTING PATTERNS? HAVE YOU SEEN THE FORETHOUGHT THAT GOES INTO WORKING A HARNESS LOOM? OH MY GOD.
THIS IS, THEN, WHERE PROGRAMMING (AND SORCERY) COMES IN. A PROGRAM IS “CODED INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE AUTOMATIC PERFORMANCE OF A PARTICULAR TASK”. WEAVING IS OFTEN A BINARY PATTERN: OVER/UNDER. PUNCH CARDS ON ADVANCED LOOMS CAN SET WHETHER THREADS GO OVER OR UNDER, AND SWITCHING THE CARDS AROUND YIELDS DIFFERENT PATTERNS OF CLOTH. A DUDE NAMED JAQUARD DEVELOPED EXTREMELY COMPLEX PUNCH CARDS THAT STARTED TO ENCODE HIGH VOLUMES OF INFORMATION FOR INCREASINGLY AUTOMATED LOOMS. A HUNDRED YEARS LATER WOMEN ARE USED AGAIN FOR THE ‘TEDIOUS BUT NECESSARY’ BUSINESS OF USING BINARY ON/OFF CARDS TO WRITE PROGRAMS FOR EARLY COMPUTERS.
WHERE SORCERY FITS INTO ALL THIS IS HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A WOMAN USE A CARD LOOM REALLY FAST? IT’S THE MOST INTIMIDATING SKILLSET OUTSIDE OF A RODEO. SHE 100% LOOKS LIKE SHE COULD MAKE YOUR BUTT FALL OFF IF YOU CROSSED HER. APPLIED MATHEMATICS / ENGINEERING IS BAFFLING TO WATCH FROM THE OUTSIDE, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO FIBERCRAFT. YOU CAN MANIFEST WITH YOUR MIND AND HANDS THIS HIGHER AND TRUER ARCANE PLANE OF EXISTENCE INTO A NICE SCARF AND KEEP YOUR HUSBAND ALIVE FOR THE WINTER. MAYBE IF HE CROSSES YOU YOU CAN ALSO MAKE HIS BUTT FALL OFF.
I TOTALLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MEN DO FIBERCRAFT TOO BUT THIS WAS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN WOMEN, MATH, FIBERCRAFT, AND MAGIC, SO THERE YOU GO.
You may have known this already, but the Apollo guidance computer’s core memory was literally woven strands of copper, and it was all done by hand, by a bunch of women. Because who else knows how to weave things?
*SLAMS HANDS ON TABLE* WOMEN’S WORK SENT MEN TO THE FUCKING MOON HOW IS THAT NOT MAGIC AS HELL
Oh oh oh oh this is my subject on Viking reenactment gigs, I’m the group’s Vala and I also fill in for the weavers and spinners because IT’S THE SAME SHIT let me tell you about it 😀 😀 😀
SPINNING with a drop spindle, none of your fancy high-tech spinning wheels here my friend, SPINNING OMG is literally taking undifferentiated fluff and turning it into the most useful and life-essential item in your whole civilisation with little more than a click of your fingers–without thread you have no sails, no clothes, no blankets, it’s literally power of life-or-death shit here, it is magic AS FUCK. That’s without doubt why the Norns were spinners and weavers.
There was laws about not saying people’s names or talking about people when you’re spinning, because you’re basically bringing something into being out of nothing, and with that kind of power you could just as easily bring events into being. So folks probably look the other way when you’re spinning thread for your son’s shirt and you want him to be victorious and honourable, but if you’re spinning away and bitching out about that ho Ingvar (see below) and how she stole your man and deserves the same to happen to her, that’s a crime. You’d be in better legal standing if you just punched her, because enchantment against a person was seen as sneaky and underhanded, with all connotations of forethought and antisocial intention, while punching someone could be an understandable lapse of self-control.
It was also forbidden to spin “against the sun” (ie: counterclockwise) because ok we also know there’s a mechanical aspect to that as well, it’s very useful to have the twist going in the same direction at all times so it doesn’t cancel itself out, but it was believed that an item made from backwards-spun thread could literally kill a person, there’s an account of a Vala spinning a shirt to murder a priest and it’s inferred that it was spun backwards. Because like, the sun is the source of all life, and to go against the sun goes against life, and much as the anti-twist cancels out the twist, it cancels out life. Brutal.
And you couldn’t talk about people when weaving, either, because weaving is an extension of the whole something-from-nothing power, but presumably people did anyway because there’s an actual find of a weaving tablet with a curse carved on it “Sigvor’s Ingvar shall have
my misfortune” so basically every time the card was turned, it would strengthen the curse, and literally spin and weave it into being. HOW FUCKING AWESOME IS THAT. There’s also a find of a weaving sword with a “love poem” carved on it, note the quotemarks because this “poem” goes “Think of me, I think of you; Love me, I love you” THAT AIN’T NO POEM FAM THAT A SPELL. She probably making him (or her) a shirt.
And that’s three times I’ve mentioned shirts, so I should tell you that making a shirt for someone was a Big Deal, in a way it was sort of the period equivalent of the boyfriend sweater, with the sheer amount of labour that goes into making a shirt you have to really give a whole lot of shits about that person. There’s an account of a woman making a shirt for her brother-in-law while her husband was away, and it’s OMG DRAMA BOMB. The Vala I mentioned above really gave a lot of shits about murdering that priest. Hence, the most-likely-a-woman who owned the inscribed weaving sword could very well have been making a shirt for her crush, who may OR MAY NOT have been her husband. You know, she could’ve been like “hope my nice hubby thinks about me while he’s away” or she could’ve been like “damn, brother-in-law too hot” or she could’ve been like “damn, Ingvar too hot” (wlw aren’t attested at all but you gotta assume it happened because humans) but in any event she knew what was up. And making a shirt for someone wasn’t thought of as *overtly* magical, mostly, but there’s kind of a subtext to it that presupposes any shirt could be enchanted and probably was to some extent.
And this is just scratching the surface of the academically well established stuff, with none of my own hypotheses and observations. I can go on for hours.
I have talked about knitting and fiber arts with many different women of all sorts of religion and non religion, and the vast majority of them say that when they make special items, they put some kind of intentions into the garment.
I haven’t read American Gods and Anansi Boys yet, despite owning them, because I’m often really not in the mood for Neil Gaiman’s writing style. (I tried to read Neverwhere recently. Fuck, but that was a mistake.) Dude has great ideas, and worked great with Pratchett, but his storytelling works MUCH better when it’s combined with a visual medium–which is why you’ll always hear me wax insanely poetic about The Sandman comic series (you can get the whole story in 10 available tpb collections.)
The “Vikings practiced human sacrifice bit” varies. Historically, we know that when great rulers died, they often took a few friends with them into the afterlife with them, like Egyptian Pharaohs. Their wife and kids were left behind to rule in Midgard, but slaves in the household might go with their king, willingly or not. (Yes, they practiced slavery, but much like the ancient Hebrews, slaves that adapted to their way of life were pretty much immediately made part of the household and well-cared for, not treated as sub-human disposable workers like the fucking horrific shitshow that was the African slave trade that supplied the U.S. and the islands. This isn’t an excuse for *any* sort of slavery, just a historical explanation.)
Ritual human sacrifice seems to have been made up wholesale by white mainland Europeans in regards to the Vikings/Norse and the Britons.There are tales of people being stuffed into baskets and burnt over fires in Briton and amongst certain Gaulic peeoples, but it’s often conveniently left out that those were criminal executions, despite that information BEING WRITTEN DOWN by Roman historians. These were not simple thieves or basic misdemenor-committing criminals, either. That sort of execution tended to be reserved for people who had well and truly fucked up.
Vikings didn’t tolerate rape. At all. They valued their women, who were equal to and often more important than men, so rape was absolutely abhorrent–you weren’t even supposed to do that to slaves, no matter their status. A woman could get a man severely fined, castrated, or even DEAD if a man so much as touched her without her permission, though that depended on where the touch took place. (There was weird-ass rating system, but it worked for them.) Criminals, even in the cases of a woman calling out a man on his shit, were tried before the entire group, and despite what the show Vikings suggests, women were part of those trials, too. (Vikings is very pretty and follows history pretty well, but they’re not treating women correctly in Norse culture and it’s fucking annoying.)
Viking/Norse Women were recognized warriors if that was what they wanted to do; women were in charge of all finances, even if they didn’t participate in raiding; women were *historically* recognized as the only ones who were meant to perform magic, and yes, we have dug up magic wands and staffs from volva graves. Wotan (Woden/Odin) had to sacrifice his life (temporarily) and his eye after hanging on the world tree for months to be able to use magic–that’s how verboten magic was for men, and why Wotan was/is so honored. Those men who practiced magic without sacrificing like Wotan had were treated as blaspheming outcasts for going against what the Vikings considered to be the natural order.
Vikings thought of death differently than modern Western thought. What we’d see as casual killing was for them–they firmly believed there was an afterlife for everyone, and since there was an afterlife, someone dying, be they friend or foe, was just that person moving on to the next life, whether they were allowed into Valhalla or not. Valhalla often gets treated as the *only* afterlife in Viking culture, but no; it was merely considered the *best* option for the afterlife, esp. for warriors. A warrior who failed to enter Valhalla had done something to truly fuck up during their life on Midgard. Not everyone was a warrior, though, and to quote S. King from a time when he wasn’t writing like shit: “There are other worlds than these.”
….I think I tangented away from what you were asking, but since people have told me they like the historical ranting, here is more nerditry!
Steel Phoenix Studios 