Sexual Violence Against Women in Old Norse Literature

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This study will be the first comprehensive exploration of sexual violence against women in Old Norse saga literature. Violence towards women is often presented tacitly, ambiguously, or else is 'left in the silent interstices of the text' (Phelpstead, 2013). My research untangles these ambiguities and demonstrates the pervasive and recurrent issue of violence towards women within the sagas, and in so doing furthers our understanding of gendered interplay in ON literature.Sexual violence against women in the sagas has hitherto been seen either as peripheral to the violent machinations of men (Ljungqvist, 2015) or merely as an aspect of male feuding (Falk, 2021); such assessments often disregard women as victims of violence in their own right. I will dismantle these reductive views and, in producing a typology of instances of sexual violence against women, elucidate their narrative purposes, the emotive reactions to which they give rise, and the specific linguistic patterns associated with sexual violence. I will thereby forge a novel understanding of the complexities of gender dynamics within saga narratives by combining theories of violence and emotion. Through close literary analysis and versatile methodologies, my thesis will create a comprehensive understanding of violence against women.