Viking pregnancy was deeply political – new study

Britomart by Walter Crane (1900). Library of Decorative Arts, Paris

Pregnant women wielding swords and wearing martial helmets, foetuses set to avenge their fathers – and a harsh world where not all newborns were born free or given burial.

These are some of the realities uncovered by the first interdisciplinary study to focus on pregnancy in the Viking age, authored by myself, Kate Olley, Brad Marshall and Emma Tollefsen as part of the Body-Politics project. Despite its central role in human history...