The Lejre Freya Miniature

Apparently the Lejre excavators still haven't realised that the lovely silver miniature they found depicts an aristocratic woman who can't be Odin, regardless of who may be the owner of the throne she sits on. A Danish news site contacted me today and asked me about the issue. Here's what I said (and I translate).

In the art of the Vendel and Viking Periods, just as in today's art, there's a set of conventions for how men and women are depicted. Largely it's a question of clothing and jewellery that real people used as well. The main difference is that Iron Age art only depicts aristocrats, so it doesn't show us all kinds of attire used at the time. The Lejre miniature is dressed in a) a floor-length dress, b) with an apron, and c) with four bead strings on the chest. A, B and C are stereotypically female attributes that never occur on depictions of men. The figure has no male attributes. Ergo, it's a woman.

The issue is already quite settled among scholars who study the period's gendered imagery, Danes as well as Norwegians and Swedes. Just ask, for instance, Margrethe Watt, Lise Bender Jørgensen and Ulla Mannering. What I said here on Aard wasn't controversial. I just happened to be the first to say something that every specialist in the field of Late Iron Age gender studies realises immediately.

Update 28 January: And here's the story on Videnskab.dk, the Danish science news site.

Update 29 January: Ulla Mannering has written about the figurine in Weekendavisen and classified it as female. Lise Bender Jørgensen has told me in e-mail that she agrees. And just now Margrethe Watt wrote me (and I translate),

I'm 100% certain that it's a lady. It is similar to a figurine from Trønninge in Denmark that you are no doubt familiar with. It has been illustrated repeatedly, for instance in Brøndsted's Danmarks oldtid. I am convinced that the dress copies the "Byzantine" empresses' dress with the hanging frontal piece (which can be seen in other elite female representations such as St. Agnes (also commonly illustrated, such as in Herman Hinz 1978, Zur Frauentracht der Völkerwanderungszeit und Vendelzeit im Norden. Bonner Jahrbücher 178)). The same combination of an "apron" and several bead strings is also seen in gold foil figures (a few of them actually illustrated in the pop-sci book about Sorte Muld).

[More blog entries about freya, odin, lejre, archaeology, denmark, vikings, aesir, paganism; arkeologi, danmark, freja, oden, lejre, asatro, hedendom]