Literacy as an Instrument of Female Religious Expression in the Medieval Scandinavian Catholic Orthodoxy, c. 1000 – 1400 A.D.

During the early medieval period in Scandinavia, writing could be accomplished using one of two different writing systems. Runes had been in use since long before the Viking Age, and stayed in use until the late Middle Ages. The Latin alphabet was introduced to the area along with Christianity during the tenth and eleventh centuries, and eventually became the main writing system used by Scandinavians to this day. The production and transmission of texts by women, and in religious contexts, both in runes and in the Latin alphabet, have in this thesis been examined in order to shed light on how medieval Scandinavian women participated in different acts of writing, in connection to their religious expression. As much comparable research within the fields of history and Norse literature has so far been focused either on the literate activities of men, or on the roles of pre-Christian women in cultivated literature, this thesis seeks to identify women who expressed themselves within the context of pragmatic literature, and within the Scandinavian Catholic orthodoxy, using either one of the two available writing systems. The research has been conducted through close readings of three main sources, a runestone from the eleventh century, a charter issued in 1352, and a testament issued in the same year. Each case study has been placed in its own historical setting, and analysed with this context in mind. The thesis finds that women of a certain social standing had the opportunity to commission acts of carving or writing by others, and that they through these commissions show a certain awareness of the different purposes which the carved or written word could serve. Through involving themselves in literate processes, these women managed to significantly alter their own surroundings, whether through erecting monuments or influencing the actions of ecclesiastical institutions. Additionally, the last two chapters show that women could appropriate some of the social authority of Church officials in order to further their own spiritual, as well as practical, aspirations. The thesis concludes that women were not excluded from engaging in the production or transmission of texts, nor did they have to take on the social roles of men in order to actively participate in literacy. Instead, they seem to have employed mutually beneficial relations with literate professionals, and thus been able to actively participate in the creation of text through the role of commissioner