Jeweled Gotlandic women : A study of the interplay between feminine jewellery in graves and hoards in Viking age Gotland

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the social role of women in the Viking Age on Gotland. The female jewellery articulated the Gotlandic identity on the island in the Viking Age, unlike the men's jewellery which expressed similarities with other places in Scandinavia. Therefore, the female jewellery can be seen as traces of an important cultural expression that distinguished the Gotlandic women from others. The understanding of which types of jewellery that are considered to be linked to the female gender during the Viking Age is based on a number of excavated graves. The jewellery in graves have been researched for a long time. However, there is another category that includes jewellery which have been neglected, namely hoards. Therefore, this thesis investigates female jewellery in graves to understand the composition of jewellery in hoards. The purpose of this is to interpret if the hoards can express a female gender identity, similar to the female gender identity in graves based on the composition of jewellery. This is realized through the use of performativity and embodiment theory. The similarities and the differences between the jewellery in graves and hoards are investigated through a correspondence analysis. The result show that the differences between the composition of jewellery in graves and hoards are meaningful. The graves consists of a more complete set of jewellery made of bronze, whereas the hoards are interpreted to consist of parts of a complete set or a larger number of the same type of jewellery. The hoards also contain more jewellery made of precious metals than the graves. The hoards are intrepreted as savings of vaiable jewellery that could be resumed and used again by women. The Guta Law is applied in this thesis to contribute to the understanding of who owned the jewellery that women wore. The result is that women did not own the jewellry individually. Instead it was owned collectively by the family but that women might have had the responsebility of the jewellery during their lifetime. It is interpreted that women, through the use of Gotlandic jewellery, had the social role in society to show off the family wealth and their Gotlandic identity. Therefore, it is argued that women played a crucial part in public gatherings and had an active role in the Gotlandic society in the Viking Age