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Gatekeepers of Valhalla

EVEN IN A HISTORY chock-full of myths and legends, few civilizations stand taller than the Vikings. Even a child can point to a horned helmet and identify it as Viking gear (despite the fact that the Vikings never wore these; they were added to the Vikings legend in the 1800s, but that’s another story). These famously ferocious sea raiders ruled much of Europe and even parts of Asia in their prime, and many parts of the modern world still bear their mark. But what is really known about these Scandinavian scoundrels?

The short answer: not much. Virtually all the information that exists about the Vikings comes from secondary sources. The Vikings did not have a written culture as the term is understood today, using runes only for very short messages and labeling rather than writing down a story. They preferred to pass down their histories and traditions orally through songs and sagas, a practice that continued even past the introduction of Christianity and the Latin alphabet to the Vikings. So the only documents that exist from the Viking era that give accounts of their civilization come from the people whom the Vikings conquered—hardly a neutral source. The Christian monks who had just lost much of their treasure and many of their brethren to these attackers would not be kindly disposed to the Viking people when they recounted the story of the attack. Thus, much of what is written about the Vikings, in books such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and The Annals of Ulster, has to be taken with at least a grain if not a sea full of salt.

Centuries later, the Viking sagas were eventually written down, and many of those accounts survive. So stories composed by the Scandinavians for the Vikings do exist, and their study has been instrumental in understanding more about how these ancient peoples lived. For example, one saga led archaeologists to find a Viking settlement site in Newfoundland, L’Anse Aux Meadows, which is believed to have been settled hundreds of years before Columbus arrived in America. However, these sagas cannot be accepted at face value as absolute truth. Viking sagas were told for entertainment purposes, often after meals at mead halls. These stories were crafted to glorify and inspire, not to educate. The deeds that are recounted in these sagas likely did not happen exactly as they are described.

Recent archaeological findings have given historians unparalleled new insight into Viking life. Bones and household objects cannot lie the way that stories can. The past thirty years have yielded some remarkable findings that offer a new glimpse into the Viking world. Archaeologists have discovered Viking artifacts such as coins, combs, and other household items all over Europe—evidence that the Vikings were involved in extensive and far-flung trade as well as in plunder. In fact, their trading predated their raiding. The Vikings were far from a peaceful people—they did pillage and murder, and their religious concept of an afterlife was based on glory for warriors—but they were more than just battle-hungry men and women. They left their homeland and went to sea in search of more hospitable places to live and people with whom to do business. Polygamous practices at home meant more heirs to divide inheritances and land between, and so they had to sail away to find other spots to build homes and farms. They spread their products and ideas across the world, opening up new routes for trade and commerce. When the Vikings intermarried and joined non-Viking societies, they did so peacefully and easily. Not interested in spreading any sort of ideological agenda, they instead became part of their new, adopted culture. These businesslike, necessity-driven people were a far cry from the bloodstained, vicious men of legend.

Archaeology has also unearthed more information about the role women played in Viking society. A 2011 study published in the journal Early Medieval Europe set the Internet ablaze with the headline that half of all Viking warriors were women. A more careful reading of the study does not back up this claim but instead reveals that, at a burial site, out of thirteen “Norse migrants,” six were female and seven were male. Previous studies relied on grave goods (objects buried alongside bodies) to determine the gender of the deceased, but this was an inexact science. This new study proclaimed gender with more certainty by using bone analysis rather than grave goods. This study proved two things: one, that women traveled along with men on voyages to new lands, most likely to immediately be part of a settlement after an area had been conquered; and two, that modern people are absolutely desperate for proof of women Vikings, as evidenced by the enthusiastic online reaction following the study. People want to believe that women were there beside the men, slashing with iron swords and uttering harsh battle cries. People yearn to know if Valhalla is populated with the souls of women warriors as well as male ones.

Saxo Grammaticus, author of the seminal twelfth-century Danish text Gesta Danorum, certainly thought so, or at least wanted his readers to think so. He writes, “There were once women among the Danes who dressed themselves to look like men, and devoted almost every instant of their lives to the pursuit of war.” He states this in a digression, almost as if he knows that modern audiences will have trouble accepting his statements and, understanding that, wants to emphasize that he is not making this stuff up. His work, not surprisingly, is a primary source for many of the stories that exist about Viking pirate women.

Despite Saxo’s claims, many scholars insist that, while women were indisputably a part of Norse society, they were never warriors. Danish historian Nanna Damsholt calls Saxo’s stories “pure fiction.” Professor and Viking scholar Judith Jesch also disagrees with Saxo and other sources, claiming that she has never uncovered any credible evidence that women were a part of the Viking raiding parties. Although archaeologists have uncovered women buried in ships, they have not been able to prove that these women were anything more than members of a seafaring society. Nevertheless, the stories of women Vikings, whether they are based on fact or fiction, have powerfully persisted over the centuries. Besides the Viking women profiled in this chapter from the Viking age, there are legends stretching through the centuries of Scandinavian women, possibly Viking descendants, who took to seafaring piracy, such as Christina Anna Skytte, Elise Eskilsdotter, Ingela Gathenhielm, and Johanna Hård. Clearly something about these peoples and this land breeds stories of women pirates, if not pirate women themselves.

A vital question to ask about Viking women pirates is whether Vikings really ought to be called pirates at all. They did most of their raiding on land and did very little actual fighting at sea. They traveled to the places that they pillaged by boat, and they were undoubtedly a seafaring culture, going so far as to bury many of their dead in their boats. They did pioneer methods that were copied by later pirate groups, such as Queen Elizabeth’s sea dogs and the buccaneers. But were the Vikings pirates? If one accepts Queen Teuta and her ilk as pirates, then the Vikings can probably be lumped into the category as well. Jo Stanley addresses this, explaining that piracy is based in theft and that for the Vikings “to conquer enemies, to defeat others, could be seen as theft: of their lives, their ships, and their right to fight for a cause.” She goes on to say that almost any time a woman is a sea-based warrior, there is a tendency to call her a pirate anyway, so it makes sense to include Viking women in female pirate history. As the centuries advance, the definition of piracy evolves constantly, and to make too narrow a definition leaves out a great number of women who made their mark on the seafaring world and could have served as role models and inspiration for the more traditional pirate women who came after them.

The earliest documented Viking raid was at the monastery at Lindisfarne, a small island off England’s northeast coast, in the summer of 793 CE. Lindisfarne was a renowned monastery, producer of the Lindisfarne gospels, and a place of learning where many Christians had donated treasures and riches for the glory of God—and in hopes of saving their souls. Although the inhabitants of Northumberland had been shoring themselves up for some sort of disaster all year due to a number of ill omens, such as lightning storms and whirlwinds and even reports of “fiery dragons” in the air, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, this attack was beyond their worst expectations. The carnage and extent of the damage was more than they ever feared possible. According to Simeon of Durham, a twelfth-century church historian, the monastery was looted for valuables; even the altars were dug up. Many of the monks were killed, either by sword or by drowning in the sea. Other monks were carried off by the Vikings to become slaves. A contemporary historian explains that the attack would have been felt as an incident that affected not only Lindisfarne but also England’s very soul.

Lindisfarne was far from an isolated incident. The hits kept coming as the Vikings worked their way from England to Ireland, increasing their reach as they snapped up new camps and islands. No coastal area felt safe, although the monasteries were by far the most frequent targets of the Vikings. Christians across Europe felt that the attacks were a punishment from God. A quote from Jeremiah 1:14 reinforced their suspicions: “Out of the North an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land.” Nobody had the resources or fighting skills to resist these northern marauders. From 793 until the beginning of the eleventh century, they roamed wherever they wanted and took whatever riches they liked.

The Vikings did not confine themselves to the British Isles, either. The Frankish king Charles the Bald, after losing cities such as Paris, Bordeaux, Limoges, Rouen, and Toulouse to the Vikings, finally decided to pay protection money to the Vikings to stop the carnage. By the beginning of the tenth century, the French had forked over twelve tons of wine, livestock, silver, and grain in a Mafia-style arrangement.

Farther afield in eastern Europe, the Vikings were so intertwined with the founding of Russia that even the country’s name comes from a Viking term. The Swedish Vikings were called the Rus, Swedish for “boatman,” which makes sense since the Vikings came downriver by boat. Legend has it that the Viking king Rurik unified the warring Slavic tribes and established the foundation of the Russian nation.

The recently discovered Newfoundland settlement demonstrates that the Vikings’ settlements stretched all the way to North America. There were very few parts of the globe that did not feel the Vikings’ presence.

Despite all their success, Vikings did not enjoy a particularly comfortable life. According to Joan Druett, author of She Captains, longships, while excellent sailing vessels, did not offer a lot of living space, so while on voyages the Vikings had to sleep onshore in leather sleeping bags with their weapons at arm’s reach. They ate raw meat, kept watch around the clock, and used dogs as first aid: their loyal hounds licked their wounds clean. On top of this primitive lifestyle, the actual raids brought more hardship and suffering, to say nothing of the frigid winters back home. Perhaps the rough life they lived is what made the Vikings such consummate warriors.

A number of women warriors show up during the Viking age. There is not a wealth of information available about each one, but the very fact that the literature is peppered with so many of them sends a message. Unfortunately, the tales have been taken from their Norse roots and rewritten through a Christian lens, which spins many of them as cautionary tales to be heeded by good Christian women. Jo Stanley, in an essay about Viking women in her book Bold in Her Breeches, claims that “society was being persuaded that lethal, wild, vengeful, and free-roving ways of living should be given up and that women should accept a meek and home-based role, and a Christian one at that.”

The Norse and Icelandic sagas, passed down orally but eventually written down, offer another option to explore the Nordic view of women, although the stories were almost certainly meddled with by Christian scholars, whose work reflected contemporary worldviews rather than true accounts of the Viking age. They do not for the most part cover pirate women, instead relating the tales of Aud the Deep-Minded, who was known as a settler; Freydis, the sister of Leif Erikson; and other women. Viking women wove tapestries, which have newly been the subject of research: textile as text. Stories told in cloth, although they do not always feature women, are presented from a woman’s perspective and are a compelling window into the mind of the storyteller. The stories that exist about these women may have been put down with a clear agenda in mind, but the reader is free to imagine what the authors left out and to attempt to construct another version of these tales, one free of religious or political motive.

In book 3 of the Gesta Danorum, the reader is presented with Sela, who we are told is a “skilled warrior with experience in roving.” Her brother, Koll (sometimes called Koller or Kolles), king of Norway, is jealous of the pirate Horwendil’s (or Orvendil) success and wants to eclipse him in popularity. (It is telling that a king could feel envy for the life of a pirate.) Koll sets off with his fleet to find Horwendil, and eventually the two run into each other. Rather than decimate their fleets in battle, the two men decide to settle their difference in single hand-to-hand combat. They promise to fight with honor and bury the loser as befits his station. When Horwendil bests Koll, he decides (for reasons not given in the narrative) to chop off another limb of their family tree and fight Sela, too, who is called in some translations “a warring Amazon and an accomplished pirate.”

Why was Sela in close proximity to the fight? Was she sailing in Koll’s fleet at the time? Did Koll choose her as a sort of second in the duel with Horwendil? Saxo’s account leaves out all these details. Some versions of the story claim that Sela and Koll were bitter rivals, one on each side of the law. Whether or not they disliked each other, it is generally agreed that both siblings were slain by the pirate Horwendil, although the lavish funeral rites bestowed on Koll are not mentioned in Sela’s case.

Book 8 offers another case of sibling rivalry—this time between Tesondus (also known as Thrond) and his sister Rusla. In some translations, Rusla is called Rusila, although Rusila appears to be a different maiden who, along with her sister Stikla, fought King Olaf for his kingdom. Rusla is also sometimes linked to the mythological figure Ingean Ruadh (the Red Maiden). Tesondus had lost the crown of Norway to the Danish king Omund, which galled Rusla to no end. She could not bear to see her beloved country taken over by Danish rule, and she was annoyed that her brother seemed content to let it happen. So she decided that if her brother was not going to take any action, she would have to do it herself. Rusla declared war on her people who had declared allegiance to the Danes. Omund was not pleased with this dissension and sent a unit of his best soldiers to put an end to her rebellion. Rusla destroyed the Danish contingent, and that gave her a brilliant idea. Why not aim a bit higher than independence from the Danish? Why not take over Denmark and rule both nations herself instead?

Fortune turned her back on Rusla, whose invasion of Denmark did not go well, forcing her to turn tail and run to save herself and her troops. As she retreated from the Danes, she ran into her brother, whom she overpowered in short order, stripping him of all his ships and troops but refusing to kill Tesondus himself; that decision would prove to be her fatal mistake. King Omund sent his fleet to Norway to attack Rusla’s fleet, and again she was defeated by the Danish forces. As she retreated for a second time, her brother Tesondus attacked and killed her. Some stories claim that he beat her to death with oars. For taking care of Rusla for him, Omund gave former rival Tesondus a governorship.

This story has more meat to it than Sela’s story, but there are not enough details to satisfy the reader’s curiosity. What was Rusla’s life like before she took to the sea? Did she regard the repulsion of Danish forces as her patriotic duty or a splendid adventure? When Omund’s forces followed her back home to Norway for a second battle, did she realize that she would not beat them? Did surrender ever cross her mind? And why did she spare Tesondus’s life? Could she have believed that, when their places were reversed, he would do the same for her?

Book 8 also tells of three women longship captains, who, although they had the bodies of women, had been blessed with “the souls of men.” Wisna, Webiorg, and Hetha were all fighters by land as well as sea. Each woman receives only a few lines of text devoted to her. Wisna is said to have been made a standard-bearer in battle and then to have lost her right hand in combat. Webiorg felled a champion before being killed in battle, and Hetha was appointed the ruler of Zealand (part of modern-day Denmark). Although there is almost no information about these women, the scanty tidbits are juicy enough to pique the reader’s interest.

While it may be initially surprising that this warrior culture, packed to the hilt with testosterone-laden images and heroes, had so many women warriors, a look at the religious structure at the time reveals that women were always, at least symbolically, part of battle. Yggdrasil, the tree of life, was the center of the Norse world. At the tree’s roots lived the Norns, mythical women who shaped the destinies of humans and even gods. These women were similar to the Fates of ancient Greek mythology. The powerful male gods, such as Thor and Odin, were subject to the whims of the Norns. In their hands they held life, death, and everything in between. It seems that, in Norse mythology, women ran the world.

Besides the Norns, Norse mythology also includes the Valkyries. These attendants of Odin moved among the Viking battlefields, selecting who would live to fight another day and whose battle was permanently ended. Among the slain, they also chose who would go on to glorious Valhalla, the big dining hall in the sky where warriors prepared to help Odin during Ragnarök, which is the Viking end of the world. The unselected dead were escorted to Fólkvangr, a field of the afterlife ruled over by goddess Freyja. The Valkyries are portrayed as beautiful and noble, helping weary warriors to their final destination, but they are also sinister—some early tales show them gleefully cackling while weaving a tapestry of fate made of human entrails and severed heads. They exist in various permutations across many pre-Christian traditions but have remained in Western popular culture almost exclusively as Viking Valkyries. These women, existing alongside men and performing a vital part of the battle rituals, demonstrate an acceptance by the Old Norse that women did have a part to play in war.

Modern research suggests that Valkyries were neither male or female but a third unnamed gender, which had masculine attributes while being physically female. Original depictions of Valkyries support this assertion and are a far cry from the sexy, undeniably female bodies shown in art today. Mortal Viking women seem to share this mix of masculine traits and feminine bodies, much more so than originally thought. Marianne Moen’s study of grave sites suggests that the positioning of grave sites and grave goods suggests a smaller difference between men and women than originally believed. She cites Cedrenus, an author from 970 BCE, who witnessed a battle between the Rus and the Byzantines and claimed that the Byzantines were surprised by the number of women they found among the dead on the battlefield. Even the traditional roles held by women, keeper of the keys or lady of the house, may have been more public (male) than private (female) than previously thought due to the role of houses in trade; a Viking woman would have been more like a store or factory manager than a housekeeper, since houses were used as trade centers by the Vikings. Moen’s research presents some new possibilities for understanding Viking life that are worthy of continued study.

A major pirate woman from this era was Ladgerda (also called Lagertha). Book 9 of the Gesta Danorum tells her story, which starts inauspiciously. According to Saxo Grammaticus, Swedish king Frey kills a Norwegian king and, in an especially cruel move, puts the dead king’s womenfolk into a brothel so that they might be publicly humiliated. Ragnar of Denmark is moved by the women’s plight and goes to Norway to break them out—and cause some havoc for the Swedish king Frey. When the news of Ragnar’s coming reaches the brothel, many of the women dress as men, sneak out, and join his army. One of them is Ladgerda, who “fought in front among the bravest with her hair loose over her shoulders.”

Ragnar must have been shocked upon arriving at the brothel. He expects to be hailed as a strong and handsome hero by the bound and nearly nude women, who would weep in gratitude for his selfless rescue plan. Instead, he finds an armed team of warriors already in place, ready to aid him. Even if he weathered that change of plans, he would have been really surprised to discover that his fierce new comrades were actually the very women he was meant to be saving. It was enough to knock any man down a few pegs, but it appears Ragnar did not worry too much about it; he was too busy engaging in a furious battle—with the women’s help, of course.

Ragnar and the women win the skirmish. Afterward, taking a leaf from the fairy-tale playbook, he goes on a hunt, asking everyone he can find who the mystery woman was: the one who had caused him to “gain the victory by the might of just one woman.” When he discovers that she is Ladgerda, who is not only brave and gorgeous but also of noble birth, he resolves to woo her. She is unimpressed with him but seems to know that rejecting him outright is not particularly safe, so she allows him to woo her as she installs a vicious dog and a bear in front of her dwelling to protect herself from any unwanted visitors (namely, suitors). Ragnar, apparently unable to take a hint, goes to her, kills the bear, chokes the dog, and grabs Ladgerda in his arms. The two marry and have three children.

Lest the reader worry that Ladgerda suffered an ignoble fate, be assured that the story is not over. Her husband leaves her for another woman, apparently realizing at last that a wife who puts out wild beasts to keep men away might not be that into him. However, when Ragnar gets embroiled in a civil war back home in Denmark, he sends to Norway for help. Guess who rides in and saves the day? Ragnar’s ex-wife, Ladgerda, who turns the tide of the battle with her 120 ships, ensuring a victory for Ragnar. However, the reunion of the old lovers is not a sweet one—after the battle, Ladgerda stabs her former husband with a spearhead she has concealed in her dress. She then wipes the blood off herself and claims the Danish throne, for, as Saxo Grammaticus tells us, “this most presumptuous dame thought it pleasanter to rule without her husband than to share the throne with him.”

Ladgerda’s story includes many more details than do the accounts of most of the other women who are featured in the Gesta Danorum, but it still does not feel like enough. Her actions demonstrate clearly just how she felt about being forcibly married, abandoned, and then summoned to help her ex-husband. But what happened in between all these episodes? What became of this remarkably gutsy woman? Some scholars have pointed out the similarity of her tale with the story of the goddess Thorgerd, the subject of several myths. If Ladgerda is in fact a goddess and not a mortal woman, her story makes a bit more sense. She alone among the warrior maidens is able to get the better of a man who desires her and rule a kingdom. She is the only one who gets a happy ending. A little pagan divine intervention might have been the only way for a Viking woman to come out on top in this collection of stories about bringing wild women in line with Christian values. Goddess or mortal, Ladgerda’s pluck, skill, and ambition make her an irresistible heroine and a model early pirate.

Besides the numerous shield maidens and other Viking warrior women who appear in the Gesta Danorum and other sources, there is at least one woman who is explicitly labeled “pirate” from this period. Princess Alfhild, also called Awilda, is often listed alongside other famous female pirates, such as Anne Bonny and Grace O’Malley. She comes to the reader originally from the Gesta Danorum, followed by a sixteenth-century text, History of the Northern Peoples, written by Olaus Magnus. According to Joan Druett, Alfhild entered the modern era through Charles Ellms’s 1837 work, The Pirates Own Book, which is in essence a summary of Magnus’s description of her with a lot of embellishments aimed at selling copies. Ellms’s account is responsible for an oft-cited but totally inaccurate fact. He places Alfhild’s story in the fifth century during a Viking-Saxon skirmish. However, all previous accounts of the princess’s life place her much later, during the Viking age, circa 790 to 1000 CE. Presumably, Ellms picked the first Viking conflict he found as his setting and did not feel the need to do anymore research. The popularity of Ellms’s book ensured that Alfhild’s tale is more often than not attributed to the wrong century.

Dating concerns aside, Alfhild’s story is fascinating. She was, Saxo Grammaticus tells us, a princess, daughter of Siward, King of the Goths. Her beauty was legendary. She was so striking that she went to great pains to conceal her face in her robe, in order to keep her attractiveness from “provoking the passion of another”—frustrating but perhaps unsurprising early evidence of the deeply rooted idea that women are responsible for men’s reactions to them.

Alfhild’s beauty and wealth, despite her best efforts, managed to attract plenty of suitors. Her father in his wisdom offered her two snakes as guardians. Some versions of the story also claim that he locked her up in a high tower, Rapunzel-style. Anyone who wanted to marry Alfhild had to defeat the snakes before he could have the princess. Anyone who made an attempt but failed would be taken away and beheaded. His severed head would be impaled on a stake, presumably to warn other would-be suitors of the peril of the quest.

King Siward’s protection of his daughter might seem extreme, but it was actually pretty common in Viking times (minus the trained snakes). According to Druett, women, and princesses in particular, were property—valuable commodities to be bestowed or bargained. If a woman’s virtue was damaged, she was less valuable. Fathers and brothers took great pains to keep a woman pure in order to make sure she was in mint condition for maximum returns on their investment when it was time to marry her off.

Despite the hefty cost should one be unsuccessful, many suitors did accept the challenge for Alfhild’s hand. There was no shortage of heads on spikes when Prince Alf decided to give it a go. He employed a clever trick to get past the dreaded snakes: he covered his outfit in blood to drive the snakes into a frenzy. He got rid of the first snake with a piece of red-hot steel, which he shoved down the snake’s throat. The second snake met its maker by a spear to the mouth. Saxo’s explanation makes it sound like Alf was particularly clever in his dispatch of the snakes, but the idea of stabbing them could have occurred to any number of previous potential husbands. Perhaps earlier suitors were not as skilled in spear craft as the handsome Prince Alf.

Having killed the princess’s snakes, Prince Alf demanded her hand. What he did not know was that there was a twist—King Siward declared that, for the match to be made official, Princess Alfhild had to approve of the man. No doubt the king thought that his daughter would look on the handsome prince with kindness and the marriage plans would be under way in no time. However, Alfhild had other ideas.

There are a few different versions of what happened next. In some accounts, Alfhild says she does like the look of Prince Alf, but she decides to ask her mother for advice. For some reason, her mom is against the marriage and scolds Alfhild, basically accusing her of giving up her chastity for the first handsome hunk who came along. The conscientious maiden is horrified and immediately rejects Prince Alf. In other versions of the story, she is not at all interested in the prince and disappears before he can attempt to woo her. Magnus, the fifteenth-century author, explains that “a woman’s madness” causes her to give up the prince. Her determination to “stay chaste” is to blame for her spurning the handsome suitor.

The idea that her mother talked her out of the marriage is a fascinating one. What motivation could the queen have had? Did she perceive some character flaw in the prince that the story leaves out? Or did she want to spare her daughter the life she herself lived, wedded to a warlord? Perhaps she wanted her daughter to hold out for a better offer that would be more valuable to the family. Whatever reasons she had, it is rare to see not only a woman deciding whether or not she should marry someone but also another woman having sway in that decision.

Regardless of why Alfhild decided to reject Prince Alf, all stories agree that she did. She ditched her maiden’s garb, presumably including her chaste face-hiding robe, and donned men’s clothes. She gathered together some like-minded women who were apparently also hankering for a new way of life, and together they stole a boat. Before long, this crew of ladies had become pirates.

How could this have happened? Presumably, the princess and her friends did not have any prior sailing experience. She would not have had knowledge of how to find her way by the stars, how to read the tides, and how to take cues from nature, such as understanding the path of migrating birds. Her life in the tower would have done little to prepare her for the hardship and privation that awaited her at sea. She was young, sheltered, and up until recently exceedingly concerned with remaining chaste and avoiding arousing men’s passions. Whatever possessed her to run away and become a pirate? Did she mourn the loss of her home and family but view it as a necessary by-product of her struggle to remain unsullied by man? The reader can only wonder what was running through the princess’s mind as she watched her home fade into darkness while her ship sailed farther and farther away from everything she had ever known.

Never mind Alfhild’s feelings—how did she and her friends manage to sail a longship on their own? Longships were not, as a rule, ideal for novice sailors. These powerful ships are as much a part of the Viking legacy as the (inaccurate) horned helmet. Typically, they were around one hundred feet long. They had long, lean hulls that were made of overlapping planks with waterproofing material in between, all secured together by iron nails. This style of hull construction is called clinker-built. The masts were often gilded, and the rigging was traditionally dyed red. Warriors’ shields were hung off the ship’s sides during sailing; this provided additional protection as well as more decoration.

Although these ships were remarkably beautiful, they were constructed primarily for speed as well as durability. They were used for commerce as well as for war. The longships specifically built for exploration and pillaging were especially light, in order to be easily run aground during land raids. Some were so light they could even be carried by their crew. They could navigate in only a few feet of water. About fifty oars were used to move the boat forward. Some of the longships had a mast and a square sail, which was painstakingly constructed and decorated by the women with bright and luxurious colors and fabrics. The ships did not have a front or a back, per se, and thus could be reversed quickly, a lifesaving technique in treacherous conditions. Because of the Viking custom of burying men in their ships, many have been unearthed over the years and, as a result, much is known about these vessels. The largest mostly intact ship recovered to date is the Skuldelev 2, which is nearly one hundred feet long and is currently on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Norway.

So how did Princess Alfhild and her friends manage to keep their longship afloat? Saxo Grammaticus does not offer any details on how they accomplished this feat, but he does not leave them unaccompanied for long. By miraculous good fortune, the women happen upon a group of men who have just lost their captain. They are either impressed with Alfhild’s beauty or press-ganged into service, depending on which account is to be believed. The men end up on Alfhild’s ship under her command. Both versions of the story have preposterous elements. No self-respecting band of sailors would accept an outsider captain, especially a woman, simply based on her looks. Men have been known to do foolish things for a pretty face, but this would put their very lives and livelihoods at risk. And if the men were captured, what would cause Alfhild and her crew to commit this act of kidnapping? Did they need extra help on the ship, or were they simply hungry for some male companionship? The reason for their voyage in the first place was to escape marriage, so it seems improbable that they would experience a change of heart and decide they did want men on their boat after all. In any case, Alfhild’s crew expanded, and they continued pillaging as before.

Although we have accounts of what Viking raids were like, told from the perspective of those who survived them, we do not have any information on Alfhild’s particular style of pirating or on any of her raids. Saxo does reveal that Prince Alf made many trips to find her, so it can be inferred that she was hard to locate for some time. She was said to have done deeds “beyond the valor of a woman,” so it is implied that some of her pirating voyages were successful. She at least manages to elude capture for a while.

Eventually, after an escapade that involves walking over some frozen sea to engage in battle, Alf and his men catch up with Alfhild and her pirate women. (By this point in the story, the men she conscripted earlier have mysteriously disappeared.) Alf and his men start to fight with her crew, and they are struck by how graceful and supple limbed their foes are. Borgar, Alf’s comrade, knocks off Alfhild’s helmet and reveals to Alf that his opponent is actually his beloved whom he has been seeking all this time. (This part of the story doesn’t add up, as Viking helmets did not obscure the whole face and would not have been effective in concealing Alfhild’s identity.) As soon as he recognizes her, he realizes that he must “fight with kisses and not with arms.” In what is most likely supposed to be a romantic passage, he holds her close, forces her to swap out her manly attire for a more ladylike costume, and impregnates her with a daughter, who is called Gurid. Alfhild’s second in command, Groa, suffers a similar fate with Borgar, one of Alf’s crewmates.

At the end of the story, the women are returned home, the men are back in charge, and the order of the universe is restored. Nobody bothers to ask Alfhild how she felt about being forcibly captured by the man she had already refused once. But modern readers cannot help but worry about poor Alfhild’s state of mind as she sailed back toward home, virtually a captive. Offered a fate she wanted no part of, she had cast off her identity and become someone new. She succeeded at sailing and pillaging, two difficult tasks, but in the end her success was completely disregarded. Despite all she accomplished, she is still a woman, and a when a woman is wanted by a man, her own wishes and desires do not matter. No matter how high she rises, she cannot overcome her own biology. Why is there not more outrage on Alfhild’s behalf? Why does the story not end with the couple returning home, only to have King Siward, or better yet, his wife, chopping off Alf’s head for disrespecting their daughter’s wishes and placing it on a spike next to all the other suitors? Alfhild does not get justice in Saxo Grammaticus’s version—someone else will have to pen that story.

Saxo Grammaticus crafted Alfhild’s story as a moral-laden fable. This, combined with the plot hole of how Alfhild managed to sail a longship, makes her legend hard to swallow as is. However, that does not mean there is no truth to her story. Enough characters in her saga have been confirmed to lend some credibility to her existence. It might be that she did in fact live, but her life could have unfolded very differently from the story that Saxo laid down in his book. Perhaps it was his effort to contort her life story into a cautionary tale that necessitated the narrative leaps in logic that are so galling to readers. Regardless of whether Alfhild actually lived, her story is a beloved one, ending notwithstanding. Since the twelfth century, she has been a part of the Norse folklore, enduring long past the stories of people who definitely existed.

The Viking age was in decline by the dawn of the eleventh century. By then, they had run out of people and places to conquer and had for the most part settled down across mainland Europe. It would be nearly three centuries before female pirates would become headliners again. It would take a century-long war—the Hundred Years’ War in Europe—to give a number of women the opportunity to step out of their traditional roles and become warriors and leaders. Some of them would become not just warriors but also pirates.