Kaelin in Viking Age Scandinavia

Just so you know (as illustrated in more detail on the previous page), I usually concentrate more on life in the current middle ages, and making that life as much like a Viking Age woman's life as possible.  Some stuff is vague because I don't think that Kaelin-in-the-Viking-Age would have known that.  WE might know that now, with lots of history books, but she would have had no idea.  

My father was born in Norway, the second son of a family that was getting by, but not doing terribly well.  His brothers mostly stayed with the farm, but my father decided to take his inheritance and go on adventure. My father, being large and sturdy and good at making things, found passage to Grekland.  There he earned some treasure, and on his way home, he met my mother. 

My mother's family was from the sea to the south. They had come away from their homeland after a war. They settled on the sea, where we go trading all the time. My grandfather had no sons. His eldest daughter (my mother) took only her dowry when she went to marry my father.  My middle aunt manages the trade my grandfather left. My youngest aunt married a man from the mountains. When we go trading, we visit them. I learned to make pottery on the east side of the sea, where my aunts live. 

After my parents married, they traveled back north to find work because they didn't like it in the east-land. They settled in a mountain-y place first, where I was born. My father found work as a woodsman, and eventually was granted a piece of land in Denmark, where we moved when I was young.  

When I was old enough to be useful, I was sent to foster. My foster family lived over a range of hills to the south of my parents. The older women of the household taught me many things, and I was well acclaimed for my hand work. I met my best friend Mathilde, who had come to foster at the same time. After a few years, another group of girls came to foster, and some of the older ones got married and left.  My foster sisters are Gersvinda (Gytha) and Mathilde, and Aeithni (and later Livia).  

Gytha and I were good at organizing households, and so we got work as husfreyas. We traveled with the households of a few of the Jarls we worked for, and got to meet lots of exciting people. Mathilde married the first born son of a Jarl, and we sometimes stay at her house.  Her older brother got his own boat, and has a family. Gytha will someday inherit her parent's farm, as will I, being the only living children of our parents. We all live in in the middle of nowhere, about an hour's journey from the coast, and about two hours from the "big" trading center (Hedeby).   

I make and sell textiles and ceramics. In the summer, we go to the Thing a lot, and spend a lot of time harvesting and storing food (of course). The guys go Viking and bring back shiny things, and we all go trading. I mostly trade for stuff we need, though I do love beads and an occasional shiny thing. I don't have a lot, but so far I am getting by.