Christianization, Female Infanticide, and the Abundance of Female Burials at Viking Age Birka in Sweden

Abstract

T h e S w e d i S h V i k i n g A g e T r A d i n g site of Birka, located on the small island of Bjorko in Lake Malar, is considered an area of such outstanding archaeological importance that it has been added to the United Nations educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNeSCO) list of World Heritage sites. This complex of archaeological monuments includes remains of an urban trading center located below a fortification on a rocky outcropping as well as several cemeteries surrounding the occupation area. Birka was one of a handful of such prototowns around the Baltic Sea where manufacturing of craft items, redistribution of raw materials such as furs and iron from the North, and long-distance trade took place. exchange connected Birka to Continental europe but also to Central Asia and the Middle east. Birka was also the site of one of the earliest documented Christian missions to Scandinavia by Ansgar (d. 865), a Frankish monk who went to Birka as a missionary in the 830s and again in the 850s. One of the numerous ways in which Birka stands out is that women’s graves outnumber men’s graves discovered in the cemeteries there, in contrast to the dearth of female remains evident in many other areas of Scandinavia. The relatively large number of female graves unearthed at Birka may result from the early missionary activity on the island and the interdiction of infanticide that accompanied conversion to Christianity. I have previously proposed that selective female infanticide may be one explanation for a shortage of women’s mortuary remains generally in Viking Age Scandinavia, an argument that is supported by Old Icelandic family