“An exclusive toilet case,” says Skogstrand, and identifies such graves as those of the elite. Razors made of bronze, tweezers and an item that possibly was used for manicuring show that men engaged in hair removal and other forms of grooming. The most prominent burial artefacts in male graves in the Bronze Age were for grooming.
#Ancient nordic warriors professional
Professional warriors but also artisans and others.
#Ancient nordic warriors free
Perhaps all free men were expected to master the use of weapons.
In a society where clans and local chieftains were dominant, people had to constantly fight against rivals to protect what they had. Skogstrand discusses the warrior culture of the day. Women were buried with tools such as scissors, knives and spindles.Īrchaeologist Lisbeth Skogstrand challenges traditional views of prehistoric Scandinavian men. The contrast to the women’s graves of the time is blatant.
Skogstrand considers these weapons as representing ideals related to masculine strength. Half of the men’s graves she studied in this period contained spears, shields and other iron weapons. The ideal of the warrior was not as dominant in Østfold, the county southeast of Oslo, along the current border with Sweden. This was seen mainly in the Norwegian counties of Oppland, Hedmark and Buskerud. Men were buried with weapons particularly during a short span of the Roman Period, around 200 AD. Skogstrand says the finds show that being a warrior was not always the ideal. What things did men take with them to the grave? Many have studied these grave artefacts before, but not exactly with this perspective on the male gender. Then too, men could be manly in many ways. Nordic warriors like this one, in the Roman Period, have persisted far too long as male ideals, thinks Archaeologist Lisbeth Skogstrand. So the graves tell us much about was considered important in contemporary societies, even if they might reveal little about the daily life of the general population. The choice of objects the dead were buried with would not have been incidental. These included 197 Norwegian cremation graves in Eastern Norway. Skogstrand bases her ideas on 805 findings from graves in Norway and Denmark. Her study spans 1,500 years, from the Early Nordic Bronze Age from 1100-500 years BC until 400 AD, during the late Roman Period, which was part of the Early Iron Age in Northern Europe. Her doctoral dissertation at the University of Oslo tries to show how masculinity in Scandinavia has changed during periods that lack a local written history. “There were more ways of being a man than we thought,” says Lisbeth Skogstrand, an archaeologist who has contributed with something as novel as a gender perspective on men’s burial mounds. Then came a time when men had more choice in the matter.
Decoration, hair removal and sexy men were in vogue during one historical period - weapons and prowess in battle dominated in another.