Jochens, Jenny; Women in Old Norse Society. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1995. ISBN: 0-8014-3165-4

Jenny Jochens' Women in Old Norse Society is an excellent book, but it has several points which provide trouble. While her facts are well assembled, her conclusions often diverge from them to the point where one wonders how she came by them. She seemed to have trouble finding her voice in this book, as the problem is most prevalent in the earlier chapters. The final chapter, however, provides a very strong close to the book. The book is also covers much about the lives of men in Old Norse society; if the book were not named as it is, in fact, one would be tempted to criticize the book for focussing too much on women on what would seem to be a general text on Nordic culture in the Middle Ages. Since it is named Women in Old Norse Society, however, it is instead applauded for exceeding its mandate, while still thoroughly covering its topic.

Despite those problems, the book is very strong, and has much to recommend it. One thing that Jochens must be applauded on is her use of foreign languages. It is very rare when she writes a word or phrase in Old Norse, one of the modern languages, or Latin without providing an immediate translation for it. When she does fall prey to this bad habit, it is usually with a Latin word or phrase which has close cognates in English, such as "verba de futuro" and "verba de presenti" on page 165. In addition, her writing style is very clear; while one occasionally wonders how she came to an idea, there is never any confusion as to what her idea is.

Jochens' first chapter is perhaps the least impressive; while it introduces two people who she intends to be iconics of Norse women (one Christian, the other pagan), she rarely deals with either in the text save as a brief reference. If more were known about each woman, and they could have been used as truly iconic individuals, this might have been more effective. However, Jochens essentially begins comparing a mythic heroine to a historical figure, and the comparison falls. There isn't enough commonality of information to make the comparison, and what is known about Gušrun comes from one of the least reliable sagas, that of the Volsungs, so any comparison that might have been made is made murky by the nature of its source.

The second chapter suffers from the problem of well-assembled facts which lead to mystifying conclusions. Jochens states that female consent was a feature of Christian, not pagan, marriage, and her evidence supports that conclusion. However, she attempts to explain instances of female consent in the Sagas of the Icelanders as being inserted by later scribes, in an attempt to make the idea of female consent popular. The examples she cites, of Hallgeršr in Njal's Saga and Gušrun in Laxdaela, make it seem as though paternal favor is equally likely. Her quote of Hallgeršr on page 47 is particularly telling. Hallgeršr says, "'Now I am certain of what I have been suspecting for a long time, namely, that you do not love me as much as you always have said you did, since you do not think it necessary to discuss this proposal with me; besides, I do not find this marriage as prestigious as you had promised me.'" While that could very well have been inserted by a Christian scribe with an agenda, it also makes an equal amount of sense as the words of a strong young woman attempting to manipulate her father. When one also takes into account that Sagas were passed orally before they were written down, and such an addition would certainly be noticed, Jochens' conclusion that the words were added carries less weight.

Later in the same chapter, Jochens again makes a very poor comparison. When examining the salient features of a pagan vs. a Christian marriage on page 52, her two situations could not have been more different. Her pagan bride is Hallgeršr Hoskuldsdottir, marrying her third husband, Gunnar Hamundarson. Her Christian bride is the thirteen year old Ingibjorg Sturludottir. Jochens has already noted that widowed or divorced women had great leeway in choosing her subsequent husbands, so the initiative shown by Hallgeršr in choosing her own husband isn't shocking. On the Christian side, while she had previously stressed that Christian marriage was not a financial arrangement, Jochens goes on to note the immense monetary outlays that Ingibjorg's wedding required for her husband to even agree. Both brides seemed to be a far better advertisement for the other religion's marital strengths, and any sense of the institutional differences between the two is lost because the examples atypical.

At the end of her first chapter, Jochens returns to her primary fault of bad conclusions based on the evidence. Page 63 mentions that powerful widows were less common in the contemporary sagas than in the sagas of the Icelanders, and says that the cause was likely political and economic. While she goes on to provide evidence for this statement in her final two chapters, at this point she's speaking way ahead of herself; she's provided no evidence for this statement to this point, and the change would seem to be more based in religious than economic differences.

Jochen's third chapter, on reproduction, is marked by fewer problems. She provides a very good overview of pagan and Christian attitudes towards foreplay, intercourse, and sexual initiative., as well as pregnancy, childbirth, and infanticide. Much attention is given to the last, as Christianity attempted to limit, and then stop, the practice of infanticide, especially in the case of healthy children. She discusses not only why so many more children in Norway were badly deformed, attributing it to the relatively isolated genetic populations within a given fjord, but also the actions of the Church to stop the practice, and the conventions of baptism in both the pagan and Christian worlds.

Her major difficulty in this chapter returns to the problem of confusing conclusions. There are only two mentions in the literature of female nakedness, and since both incite horror, she concludes that nakedness in women was seen as something to be avoided. However, those two instances call that conclusion into question. The first instance is of the naked ghost of a woman appearing in the kitchen of a house, after the owners of that house had refused the men bearing her corpse hospitality. The second is of a woman in Vinland frightening some skraelings who had attacked the settlement by taking up a sword and slapping her naked breast with it. Both cases are clearly extraordinary; in the first, the people are confronted with the undead image of a naked woman, and the second has non-Nordic people fleeing from a berserker, who happens to be female and not entirely clothed. Examining the second in at the source, it is revealed that the woman is not only pregnant, but that the men with her praised her bravery, not seeming the least disturbed by how she drove off her attackers. This makes her conclusion that Nordic people regarded female nakedness as "fearsome" very suspect.

Jochen's fourth chapter covers the topic of leisure, and is excellent save for, again, a single instance in which she does not answer a very obvious question. She discusses gender differences in the amount of leisure time and sleep, the many things that people in Old Norse society did for fun, as well as briefly treating politics and mourning. Her major problem comes with her discussion of drinking, specifically what was available to drink. While it is true that hops and barely grew poorly in Iceland, thus limiting their access to beer, and the lack of vineyards (or lands capable of sustaining them) is also true, she completely neglects the prototypical Nordic drink of mead. Bees can survive quite low temperatures, going into hibernation when winter makes pollen scarce, and are found throughout the world. After the initial stages, mead only requires attention once per month, which also makes it lower-maintenance than beer, and it is featured prominently in the Eddas as a drink of the Gods. She makes no mention of mead's production or consumption, however, limiting the information solely to the production and consumption of beer. Since her assumption that Icelanders drank far less than Norwegians seems to be based on the lack of beer, this is a somewhat important question to the progress of the chapter.

Beginning with chapter five, which covers the work of Icelanders and Norwegians, Jochens' book really levels out. The problems evident in the previous chapters are less prevalent and less important; it is almost as if she had this part of the book in mind from the beginning, and the previous sections were tangential to her concerns, so great is the difference.

In covering the work of women, Jochens must also discuss the work of men , and how labor was divided in a household. While the tradition is that women were responsible for "inside labor" and men for "outside labor" is pervasive, the fact is that much of women's labor took place outside, such as the washing of garments and people. Jochens chronicles the slow climb of technology in both bathing and weaving, and their impacts upon women's roles and duties. Chapter five moves smoothly into chapter six with only one slight hitch; on page 147, her anecdote about Margret the Skillful is largely unconnected with the rest of the section or paragraph. Chapter six itself examines the economy of Iceland, especially the role of homespun within that economy. Homespun was of great importance, supplanting silver as the monetary standard for many years. However, as Jochens points out, this also changed the role of women in society. Production of homespun moved even higher in priority of their daily tasks, but it was now for external consumption, not for use within the house. Jochens supposes that this left women feeling less fulfilled in their work, but there is little evidence for it either way. Jochens also covers the production of some of the more innovative substitutions for fur that Icelanders used, as well as the use of foreign cloth and a description of the units of measure and how disputes were settled.

Her conclusion follows the mold of chapter five; excellent construction, good information and logical conclusions, but with one questionable piece that doesn't affect her point, only the overall quality. On page 166, and at several points previous, she ascribes all sexual aggression to men. While it is true that the extremes of sexual aggression, such as rape, are most often committed by men, actively seeking partners was far from restricted to them. Jochens herself cites, in chapter 3, Queen Gunnhildr's overtures to Hrutr as mentioned in Njal's Saga, and the saga itself implies that Hrutr was not the first man she had pursued (or caught, for that matter). Otherwise, the chapter is outstanding, summarizing her points and evidence and avoiding many of the pitfalls that her earlier chapters fell into.

Despite the problems of its earlier chapters, this is an excellent book. Jochens manages to prove her point in each chapter, but inexplicably makes it more difficult for herself by choosing poor examples, making somewhat odd interpretations of others, and forgetting mead. The book is definitely worth reading if one is interested in the social aspects of Old Norse society from either the male or female point of view, and much more so if interested in gender politics in that time and place.