4. Write a Saga About Your Feelings
While Vikings are best known for their raiding and plundering of Christian lands through the eyes of Christian writers, the Vikings had a rich collection of their own stories often recorded in the form of epic sagas. The sagas were primarily compiled and recorded in medieval Iceland. Many of them, including Njal’s Saga, heavily features the theme of romantic love. Norse women of the era had relatively high status, compared to other European cultures, and romantic love was an essential part of their relationships.
In Njal’s Saga, the titular Njal is to be executed. His wife is offered amnesty, but she refuses and asks to die alongside her husband to fulfill her marital vows. In another epic of the era, the Gesta Danorum, by Saxo Grammaticus, records the song of a man due to be hanged who learns that his wife has committed suicide to join him in the afterlife. He then welcomes his death knowing that he will see his wife again, as the pagan Norsemen did not view suicide as an eternal sin like Christians of the time.
While the pagan Nordic cultures valued women’s chastity and virginity like every other European culture, the way they went about enforcing it was entirely different and showed the elevated respect for and role given to women in their societies. If a man were proved to have carnal knowledge of an unwed woman, he would likely be murdered as a result. The male family members of the aggrieved girl would set out to avenge her honor and restore her value. Quite different from the stoning and shaming of the women themselves in Christian cultures of the era.