I honestly don't find it surprising. the vikings were huge on gender equality.
1. Research has found that in invading vikings, there was literally a 50% chance that the invader was female.
2. The mere concept of Valkyries nuke a lot of "traditional gender role" ideas from orbit.
3. Although the words "man" and "woman" originate with the norse/germanic, they actually didn't originally mean male and female. You actually had to go out of your way to specificy gender (a person could be a male man or a female man.) Man literally meant what we mean by human now. (And human meant a man who acts like a man... aka, humanely.) Women didn't mean female, it meant a man who wasn't head of household (which could be male or female. In fact, all boys and girls were all considered women). Further, a term that is now gone, is Werman, which meant head of household. Both a male or a female could be a Werman. It was completely fine to have a female Werman and a male woman. (Or a male and male werman and woman even).
The whole "man is male" and "woman is female" didn't come about until the Christian religions invaded the north and forced their religion and their gender roles onto the Norse social roles.
Reading between the lines, it seems it's possible that's where the term "Were-" as in werewolf got it's name... Wermen were used to being in charge of their area and taking care of those under them, and the church saw that as how the *church* should be seen, and told the wermen that they weren't wermen, just men. Then stories turning wermen into beasts... werewolves... cicrulated. Basically social engineering to dominate and destroy the culture and instil the catholic church as dominant.
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I honestly don't find it surprising. the vikings were huge on gender equality.
1. Research has found that in invading vikings, there was literally a 50% chance that the invader was female.
2. The mere concept of Valkyries nuke a lot of "traditional gender role" ideas from orbit.
3. Although the words "man" and "woman" originate with the norse/germanic, they actually didn't originally mean male and female. You actually had to go out of your way to specificy gender (a person could be a male man or a female man.) Man literally meant what we mean by human now. (And human meant a man who acts like a man... aka, humanely.) Women didn't mean female, it meant a man who wasn't head of household (which could be male or female. In fact, all boys and girls were all considered women). Further, a term that is now gone, is Werman, which meant head of household. Both a male or a female could be a Werman. It was completely fine to have a female Werman and a male woman. (Or a male and male werman and woman even).
The whole "man is male" and "woman is female" didn't come about until the Christian religions invaded the north and forced their religion and their gender roles onto the Norse social roles.
Reading between the lines, it seems it's possible that's where the term "Were-" as in werewolf got it's name... Wermen were used to being in charge of their area and taking care of those under them, and the church saw that as how the *church* should be seen, and told the wermen that they weren't wermen, just men. Then stories turning wermen into beasts... werewolves... cicrulated. Basically social engineering to dominate and destroy the culture and instil the catholic church as dominant.