The Hierarchy Of Women In Classical Eddic Saga

The Hierarchy of Subhumanism

Most classical Eddic Sagas depict a clear hierarchy of power and thus respect and social status within its tales. This hierarchy is one in which men rest at the top of the pyramid, the monsters these men encounter and typically slay at the center, and the women these men engage with or marry at the bottom. What is important to note in this hierarchy is that the lower levels are defined only by their relationships to the men at the top. Women and the monsters of the eddic stories are both viewed as subhuman and othered, though for different reasons to achieve different purposes and with different contexts for each, but one thing uniting the two is that they both exist as periphery additions to the men in the sagas

It is hardly different in the classical sagas, and I will waste no time with an analysis of these gender structures, as they are well studied and commented on. I will, however, focus on women’s roles and the perspective of women in the sagas. Women fall last in the hierarchy of power and sovereignty. Like monsters, women exist within these stories only to uplift, extend, or serve the male hero. Unlike monsters, women are very scarcely portrayed as having any self-sovereignty or authority in their own right, as monsters achieve this most commonly through physical intimidation, which is revered as masculine. Women are also viewed as subhuman- othered and excluded, just as monsters. Women, however, are given a completely different depiction as a lower subhuman class, in which they are docile, negligible, and expendable, for their lack of inherent autonomy. Most women in these sagas only exist in the capacity to serve men, whether it be as a healer, to provide womanly insight, or more commonly, to rear men’s children to continue his bloodline. Women in these stories are obtainable accessories, passed off and traded as political pawns. There is much published literature about women’s roles during this time as ‘peace pledges’ to relieve the violence the ruling men had created and to mend blood feuds. Best explained by Joel Rosenthal, “one of the prominent roles of a woman was, through her marriage, that of acting as feud-healer or alliance binder”. (Rosenthal 133) Whereas monsters are valuable and irreplaceable parts of the hero’s journey to prove himself as a man, women are, above all, expendable child factories and political peace prizes. Within the Saga of the Volsungs, the unnamed wife of Rerir, who was forcefully taken from her home in the first place, carried her child, Volsung, for 6 long years. There is minimal said about her struggle or pain or her