Rethinking ‘Shieldmaidens’ in Medieval Icelandic Literary Sources: Material Engagement Theory and the Dynamics of Mass Violence

A notable resurgence of interest in skjaldmeyjar (commonly termed ‘shieldmaidens’) in the fields of archaeology and gender studies has been ongoing over the last decade. Yet most saga scholarship on the subject continues to assume a post-feminist critical position reading gender identities as social groups in a structural hierarchy. These perspectives highlight the problematic and anachronistic nature of the concept of gender itself, which has attained so many layers of polarization that applying it to premodern cultures inevitably carries over some contemporary bias. This article repositions the discourse on skjaldmeyjar by shifting critical focus away from gender and onto these figures’ individual modes of personhood. Instead of seeking to gender, this inquiry aims to emphatically un gender: not impose or coin any labels, but do away with labels altogether. What happens when all the familiar stereotypes are discarded? Close readings of skjaldmeyjar reveal the material objects with which they are semantically linked (shields, weapons, armour) are not passive props but play active roles in shaping and redefining the body-self parameters of their wielders and wearers. These observations are brought into dialogue with recently posited reassessments of mind and materiality in archaeological theory to illuminate the ways in which material objects actively contribute to identity formations and personhood configurations. Personhood is thus no static state of being, but an active embodied process. An extended exposure to the violence of war does not come without personal cost. This opens the door to investigating the psychosomatic dimensions in literary depictions of skjaldmeyjar , with particular emphasis on trauma and combat stress. From said observations, an apparatus is constructed to illustrate the dynamic of these psychosomatic effects.