Among the many homicide provisions in Swedish medieval law, we find one particularly intriguing for the light it throws on gender expectations and female aggression. The fourteenth-century Södermanna Law stipulates that “Warþer man dræpin at systur æller at dottor sinnæ ligge i twæböte fore þy at þa gatu han ei mæþ wapnum wart” (The Södermanna Law, Manhelgdsbalken 26 § 1)1 [If a man is killed while staying with his sister or daughter, that killing should be paid for with a double fine because they could not defend him with weapons]. The double fine (twæböte) refers to the wergild: the sum of money that was due for a homicide, and in Swedish law, it generally included compensation to the killed person's relatives as well as a fine to the authorities. The wergild can be read as a person's worth in money. In Swedish medieval law, the wergild would vary depending on the person's gender and age. The social status of the victim did not impact the wergild, which is also the case for Icelandic medieval law (Miller 1990, 29). In addition, the size of the wergild was based on the context of the killing. The wergild was a way to avoid violent retaliation from the killed person's relatives, and in Swedish medieval law, wergild and revenge killings are two interlinked parts of the same legal system. The provision from the Södermanna Law reveals that this particular context contained aggravating circumstances; the killing warranted an increased wergild because the women he was with would not be able to fend off the attacker. The provision is perplexing for several reasons; we find no other rules that mention that a homicide was deemed more serious—or indeed less serious—because of the company that the victim had kept when he died. The provision tells us that women clearly were not expected to be able to use violence that involved weapons—at least not successfully. However, it also indicates that the lawmakers had contemplated whether women could be expected to defend their male relatives and had concluded that they could not. The regulation thus signals that female use of violence was a contested and discussed topic in medieval Sweden.This article aims to explore differing and, at times, conflicting views of violent women in Swedish medieval provincial law. The provincial law codes divided all individuals into two groups: one group of people who had access to violence and were seen as capable of defending themselves, and another group that was seen as excluded from the use of violence. In medieval Scandinavia, violence was a normative practice that defined individuals and created hierarchies. Without doubt, women belonged to the group that was not expected to be able to mount a defense or use armed force in an effective way. Furthermore, the Swedish provincial law codes demonstrate a tendency to portray women as perpetrators of violent acts that were done deviously and secretly as opposed to openly and honorably. There are, however, some provisions that reveal a different view of violent women, in which women were not only expected to use direct physical violence, but also seemingly did so for the same reasons as men. I claim that this can be explained by the existence of parallel contemporary discourses on gender. Not surprisingly, in both discourses, men were defined as normative, dominant, and socially superior, but while one view emphasized women as failed men, the other view portrayed men and women as opposites. These different and, at times, conflicting views led to the inconsistent treatment of female violence in the law codes.Using the Swedish medieval law codes as historical sources is not without difficulties. Their origin and dating have been a contentious topic, which has generated a heated scholarly debate. Some scholars have argued that the Swedish legislation is much older than the manuscripts suggest. They have seen the laws as customary law that had been transmitted orally and kept intact for centuries before being written down. The law codes were used retrospectively as sources to time periods long before the laws were compiled. In the 1980s, this methodology came under scrutiny and was harshly criticized (Sjöholm 1988; Norseng 1991). Today, the dominant view is that the provincial laws were compiled between the late thirteenth century and the first half of the fourteenth century; however, the remaining manuscripts are generally younger (Ekholst 2014, 8–10; Vogt 2010, 61). One of the laws is probably older; the Older Västgöta Law likely dates from the first half of the thirteenth century, but the differences between this law and the others can also be explained by its strong regional traits (Lindkvist 2014). The earlier tendency to use the laws retrospectively is to be avoided unless there are other sources that can corroborate that a provision or section dates back further in time. The provincial law codes are thus to be used primarily as sources to the period 1225–1350.The provincial law codes are written in Old Swedish and were valid in the different regions of medieval Sweden.2 These provinces have been described as more or less independent territories that were tied together by the king. The legislation that took place during the Swedish Middle Ages is connected to the state-formative processes that occurred at the same time (Lindkvist 1997). These attempts would eventually lead to a more centralized kingdom, symbolized in the creation of a law that was valid over the entire kingdom: Magnus Eriksson's Law of the Realm successively replaced the various provincial law codes after 1350. The Swedish provincial law codes thus represent contemporary regional legislation. Each law code contains different types of legislation: customary law might predominate, but we also find royal legislation that defines and restricts feuding practices among aristocrats. Moreover, all of the provincial law codes also contained a section relating to the Church; these sections were certainly influenced by canon law, but, in comparison to the systematic canon law, the Swedish Church sections appear incomplete and lacking.3 Indeed, the main purpose of the Church sections seems to have been to mete out and broadly establish ecclesiastical versus secular jurisdictions. However, the jurisdictions were not clearly separated in practice, and many cases that should have been dealt with by ecclesiastical courts were treated at secular courts (Korpiola 2001).The Swedish provincial law codes belong to the Germanic laws and, like their much older continental and early English counterparts, they, too, have a strong casuistic and descriptive tendency. Some parts are poetic, filled with alliterations and proverbs; other parts consist of lists of different forms of crimes and their subsequent punishments. Indeed, the Germanic standpoint was that specific crimes entailed specific penalties (Drew 1988, 35). Patrick Wormald has described the Germanic law-making as dictated by “arbitrary obsession rather than rational choice” (1999a, 12). This description is also accurate for some parts of the Swedish laws, and one can even question the law codes’ functionality as legal tools in court. But laws fulfill many different functions. Providing guidelines for judges and lawyers might be the most common function today, but legislation is also an ideological and political project that tells us about the type of society that the legislators wanted to create. Wormald states that early law can be read as literature, but that this “is not to imply that they were exercises in creative imagination; but rather, that law-making in writing was a better expression of an image of society than of practical remedies for its discontent” (1999b, 431). Wormald ties the early law codes to an ideological aspiration for people to live under written law, lex scripta, and highlights the political relevance of legislation in itself. The early English law codes embodied a notion of agreement between the king and subject (Wormald 1999b, 50, 134, 476). In the same spirit, Thomas Lindkvist explains that the manuscript of the Older Västgöta Law can be taken as evidence of “attempts to legitimize the traditions of the province” (2014, 96).Indeed, the provincial laws functioned as a way for the elites to understand and define social relationships: between the king and the aristocracy, between the king and the peasantry, between the peasants and their slaves, and between men and women. As such, they outlined the rights and duties of the groups. To give a few examples: the king had the right to punish aristocrats for feuding in an unacceptable way; peasants paid taxes to the king but could also expect that the king upheld justice and peace in society; and men should represent women in court, and they therefore were responsible for the members of their household. The Nordic legislative texts are, however, in no way complete and present an image of society rather than fully functioning legal remedies, to borrow Wormald's words. The provincial law codes certainly contain customary law that was used to arbitrate conflicts and correct wrongdoings in local communities; however, unfortunately, we cannot know how they actually functioned as legal guidance since there are no court records remaining for this time period. For a later time period, from the mid-fifteenth century and onward, we have court records from Swedish towns. They demonstrate that town courts were aware of what the law stipulated and, as a general principle, followed the law, but they also frequently departed from it (Ekholst 2014, 68–9; Österberg and Lindström 1988). In the way they have been preserved, the older provincial law codes are then to be seen primarily as ideological texts that created order and meaning in a changing world.We find provisions mentioning violence and aggression in all the different sections of the law codes. Violence is represented as an ever-present factor in village life, and physical aggression was an expected outcome of conflicts between villagers and neighbors. The violence did not necessarily target another person; it could be aimed at a person's property. Setting fire to a neighbor's fence or mutilating his animals are two examples of vindictive violence that can best be understood within the context of an honor culture.4 Violence—against property and people—was used to express hostility or retaliate for an insult: thus, mutilating an animal was symbolic violence against the owner and, furthermore, could be seen as a gendered form of violence aimed at emasculating the owner.5Swedish medieval law defined violence directed at people as saramal (wound cases). These provisions bear a clear resemblance to the very specific assault regulations found in the older Germanic law codes. The enumerations of different injuries can be surprisingly detailed; some Germanic regulations even distinguished between injuries to the upper and lower eyelid, which entailed separate pecuniary punishments (Oliver 2011, 99–101, 159–62). This surely can be seen as evidence of an obsessive legislative procedure; however, the long lists might have filled a rational function, perhaps to minimize conflict in court (Carbasse 2006, 98). A precise punishment would be meted out for a specific wound, and this could—in theory—easily be determined by examining the victim's body. The outcome of an assault case would then be obvious to all. In Swedish law, too, we find that the provisions regarding assault focus on the results of a violent act rather than the intent behind it. In several cases, however, it is clear that the severity of the injuries also functioned as a way to reveal the intentions of the perpetrator, especially whether he intended to kill or merely injure the victim (Ekholst 2014, 86–90). In the law codes, we find inventories of body parts and lists of subsequent punishments, which in turn were dependent on whether a part had been injured or cut off. One fine pertains to chopping off a nose, another to cutting off a thumb, and so forth: “Huggær man hand aff aþrum. at markær sæx. . . . Huggær man fot aff manni. at sæx markær. . . . Huggær man næsær aff manni. at markær sæx. . . . öghæ ok öræ j samu botum” (The Uppland Law, Manshelgdsbalken 24 § 1)6 [If a man chops off another's hand, that is six marks fine. . . . If a man chops off another man's foot, that is six marks fine. . . . If a man chops off another man's nose, that is six marks fine . . . [and] eye and ear the same fine].The Swedish law codes reveal a graphic and concrete perception of violence; the provisions are generally based on what was visible or, indeed, audible. They assumed that bruises or wounds could be counted, and each bruise or wound was seen as a clearly distinguishable unit, paid for separately. One telling example is a provision stating that each bone fragment taken from a wound should be counted and then paid for separately: Nu lösis ben ur skenu fylghir öris bot lösas ur siax þa fylghia siax æra: lösis ur þæt siunda ok skælla all i skalu: þa ær skena fiærþærtiugh.7(Now, if a bone fragment has been loosened from the wound, that is paid for with a fine of one öre. Have six bone fragments been loosened, then a six-öre-fine follows. If a seventh is loosened and do all of them jingle when put in a bowl, then the wound warrants a forty-mark-fine.)The fines for wounds would accumulate up to a certain maximum sum; this sum was often the quite high fine that was due for a so-called full wound (Hemmer 1928, 211). Moreover, different types of wounds carried different names—some names indicate how the wounds had been inflicted: that is, which type of weapon or tool had been used. The most important difference was between a lethal weapon and an everyday tool. Other wounds were defined and named based on the physical appearance of the injury. Typical elements are whether the skin had been cut through or not, or if a body part had been completely penetrated.8 Most of the regulations take for granted that the assault was made with weapons and in battle-like situations between men, unless it is otherwise specified. It is assumed that the aggressor was a man, even in cases where the tool used to injure another person was not a weapon. Moreover, the victim is also assumed to be a man, except for a few provisions that specify the penalty for injuring a woman.As mentioned above, the provincial law codes helped to establish hierarchies and delineate societal groups. Violence was a key factor in this process, and it impacted how a person was defined. To start with, the lawmakers assumed that the normative legal subject was a man; it was implicitly understood that the perpetrator was male, and so, too, was the victim, if nothing else was stated. Furthermore, when formulating the provisions, the legislators created a standard male figure that was the assumed legal subject in almost all regulations. This individual is referred to as a bonde (peasant), and he symbolizes both the average plaintiff and defendant. The peasant is depicted as a man who owns his own land and farm. He is the master of the household: he has dependents and represents them at court and in the community. The peasant has a legally established right to bodily integrity and respect; he has the right to defend himself when attacked and is assumed to carry weapons, referred to in some of the laws as folk-weapons (The Hälsinge Law, Rättegångsbalken 14 § 2. The Södermanna Law, Additamenten 2).Adult manhood was represented in the ability to pay taxes, to carry folk-weapons, and to participate in the activities of the ting. The ting was the local court assembly where judicial conflicts were solved by oath-takers or jury procedure, both of which required the participation of the peasants. The oath-takers were meant to help prove the defendant innocent by swearing that the person was reliable and that her/his word could be trusted. A jury, however, would decide whether the defendant was guilty or not. These two procedures were used simultaneously in medieval Sweden. In addition, it was at the ting that local political and economic decisions were made. As in many other medieval judicial systems, women were, in general, excluded from these activities.9 It can be added that even if medieval Sweden had more free landowning peasants than other parts of Europe, this standard person–the bonde–is largely a legal fiction and does not necessarily reflect the socioeconomic reality. But it was the killing of this man that was seen as a standard homicide, which would lead to the payment of a basic wergild: 40 marks.If a woman, a child, or an elderly man was killed, their wergild doubled because it was assumed that they could not defend themselves properly with weapons in hand.10 A provision from the Uppland Law can be taken as an example. This law states that if a man is either too young or so old that he cannot carry full folk-weapons and is relieved from taxes and duties, the killing of this man should be paid for with a double fine: instead of forty marks, the fine was eighty marks (The Uppland Law, Manhelgdsbalken 11 § 2). The double wergild can be seen as a special protection for those groups that were considered vulnerable: children, women, and the elderly. But since violence was connected to or, in fact, equated with power, these groups were also considered powerless, and that was never positive. Provisions in Swedish law codes also suggest that what mattered was the power relationship between the aggressor and victim. Because the fundamental legal subject in the laws is a man, the aggressor is assumed to be a free man, and other cases are presented as exceptions to this norm. For instance, the Dala Law specifies that if a woman was killed by another woman, then her wergild would not be doubled.11 The provisions obviously measure and compare the assumed physical strength of the aggressor and the victim, but it should not be forgotten that access to violence was also an ideological question. A fully grown male slave was not allowed to use violence or carry weapons either, yet he was not protected by an increased wergild because he was considered property (Nevéus 1974, 75–124).Violence helped maintain social hierarchies in several different ways, for example, within the household, which was the most important social and economic unit in medieval Sweden. The household comprised a married couple, their children, and either servants or slaves. Some provisions hint at an extended household that contained adult siblings. The Younger Västgöta Law for example mentions that a brother who is the master of the household has the right to beat a younger sister or brother (The Younger Västgöta Law, Fredsbalken 14). But while extended families must have been more common in reality, the examples of this found in provincial law are very few, and in the legal texts, the household centered on the conjugal unit and not on an extended family. Within the household, violence was used to maintain power relations; as expected, the violence was always exerted downward in the hierarchy. The husband had the right to chastise his wife and all other dependents. In fact, the legislators assumed that spousal homicides primarily took place when the husband had physically punished his wife too harshly.12 There were limits to how much violence a husband could use in order to discipline his wife. If he had broken her bones or caused open bleeding wounds, then he could be prosecuted.13 In these cases, the woman's closest male relative represented her in court. Furthermore, the husband should not beat his wife in public, for example, in front of a people's gathering, at the ale house, or at church. These cases, too, could lead to a fine for the husband. The Västgöta Laws state that the wife herself should receive the fine payment and that the money should be kept separate from the couple's mutual household possessions (The Older Västgöta Law, Slagsmålsbalken 4; The Younger Västgöta Law, Fredsbalken 6, 7, 8). We also find evidence indicating that the wife was expected to use violence within the household as well. She, too, used violence in a downward direction within the hierarchy, and she had the right to beat her children as well as any servants or slaves (The Östgöta Law, Vådamålsbalken 16). Indeed, in the world of the provincial law codes, the ultimate example of a powerless person, completely lacking legal rights and protection, was a whipped slave woman, whose gender and social class intersected to place her at the very bottom of the social hierarchy, and her low status was expressed in the amount of violence that could be used against her without repercussions or punishment.14The law codes confirm the societal view that women were not expected to use violence and, in addition, that female violence was not of the same caliber or quality as that used by men. A clear example of this is the so-called edsöre legislation: a peace legislation that defined and restricted feuding between the magnates (Larsson 1994, 23–5). This legislation aimed to preserve societal peace on a more general level and was also referred to as the King's Peace. To break the edsöre was to disrupt the order and break the peace that was to prevail on the farm, at church, or at the local court assembly. Furthermore, the edsöre legislation also granted protection and a special peace for women. The so-called women's peace prohibited abduction and rape of women, most likely as part of ongoing vendettas between families. The edsöre sections tend to contain some of the most serious crimes, those that threatened the societal peace and disrupted order in the community at large. If a person breached the edsöre, he was outlawed from the entire kingdom. A few late medieval charters demonstrate that the punishment was put in use, and that it was permissible to kill a person sentenced to outlawry, but it is impossible to know how common it was in Swedish medieval legal culture.15Interestingly enough, the legislation explicitly excludes women as perpetrators: a woman could not break the edsöre. The lawmakers did not doubt that a woman could commit the crimes that were listed as edsöre, for example, home intrusion or attacking someone in their home. The laws explicitly state that if a woman committed “such a crime,” she was not to be outlawed; instead, she was to be punished according to the other sections of the law, and prosecuted for an ordinary assault or a homicide if that was what she had committed. The laws unambiguously equate women and children in this regard: “Gör kuna eller owormaghi þylica gierningar bötin með lagha botum ei ma kuna eller owormaghi friþ lös warþa” (The Södermanna Law, Konungabalken 8 & § 1)16 [If a woman or a minor commits these deeds then they should be punished/fined according to the law, a woman or a minor may not be outlawed]. Clearly, the violent actions of women and children were not seen as serious enough to interrupt the societal peace. Women could be targets in a feud, or they could be abducted or raped, but they were not considered full worthy participants with the ability to create public disorder by their own deeds. This view is confirmed in some other provisions: the Östgöta Law states that if a woman kills a man, the homicide does not warrant a so-called peace fine, which was added to the wergild and was meant to further appease the affronted family (The Östgöta Law, Dråpsbalken 9 § 2). Even if a woman killed a man, she could not break the peace between families, and there was no need to pay a reconciliatory compensation to avoid retaliation and revenge from the killed man's relatives.But in the very same law, the Östgöta Law, we find contradictions regarding female violence. A woman killer could explicitly not break the peace; however, the very same provision then states that if the slain person's relatives wanted to take revenge on the female killer, they had the right to do this, albeit with certain restrictions that did not apply to male killers (The Östgöta Law, Dråpsbalken 9 §§ 1–2). So in reality, a homicide committed by a woman could elicit violent revenge on behalf of the slighted family. In fact, all the law codes provide specific rules for the case when a woman had killed a man, which was to be punished in the same way as a man killing a man. This is in contrast to the case where a man killed a woman, which, as we have seen, was regarded as worse, since the wergild was doubled.17 The obvious conclusion is that, to some extent, women, too, were expected to use violence that resulted in fatalities, and these attacks fit into the general pattern of revenge and compensation, a system that formally and legally only included men. Moreover, there are two other compelling cases that show that women were expected to use the same type of violence as men and for the same reasons: a woman's revenge in a case of adultery and a woman who killed her rapist.In Swedish medieval law—as in many other legal systems—a husband had the legal right to act out revenge on his wife or her lover if he found them in bed together.18 In Swedish provincial law, the husband had the right to kill his adulterous wife and her lover and would receive no punishment for these acts. The killing would be considered legitimate at the local court assembly in a process that has been referred to as “the dead man's process” (Wallén 1958). It is, perhaps, surprising that women also had the right to this form of revenge in Swedish law and that the regulations actually start from the wife's perspective. If a woman found another woman in her marital bed, she was expected to want to exert revenge on the other woman. All the law codes, with one possible exception, however, restricted the violence she was allowed to use in order to avenge her honor. Her violent revenge was thus more limited than that of a cuckolded man. Some law codes granted a wife the right to kill the other woman, but not her husband. Other provisions expected the wife to want to rip the other woman's clothes, or cut off her nose, but not kill her.19 Cutting off someone's nose was highly symbolic and indicated that the person so afflicted had been found guilty of a sexual crime (Groebner 1995, 2–5). These cases show that the legislators certainly expected women to react to a slight and that their revenge was assumed to be one of physical aggression.As discussed above, the edsöre legislation included cases of abduction and rape, and it can be added that these two crimes can be separated in Swedish medieval law (Ekholst 2014, 190–208). The abduction cases follow patriarchal rules, with the plaintiff being the woman's legal guardian, usually her father. He was considered the victim of the crime, and her consent was completely irrelevant (one reason for this could be that the law was instituted to prevent consensual elopements). The provisions on rape are phrased differently. Many elements can be recognized from other legal systems—and current legal practice—for example, the focus on the woman's active resistance as a requirement for the crime to be defined as rape. She was expected to yell so loudly that it could be heard, or she had to be able to show torn clothes or display scratches on her body or on that of her attacker as proof that she had put up “proper” resistance. Nonetheless, since the rules put focus on the female body, they do indicate that the woman, not her guardian, was seen as the victim. This is made even more evident by a subparagraph stating that if the woman thereby kills the man, that killing is not punishable; it was considered to be legitimate, as in the case of adultery mentioned above. “Takar man cono mæþ wald dræpær cona han i þy oc witna swa tolf mæn ligge o gildær” (The Västmanna Law, Konungabalken 3 § 1)20 [If a man takes a woman with force, and the woman thereby kills him, and if twelve men testify to this, then his death shall not be paid for]. So, in these cases, the legislators assumed that the woman could either resist so fiercely that she killed her aggressor or that she enacted immediate revenge.These examples reveal two views of female violence. One view defined women as unable to use violence in an efficient way and, therefore, categorized women as powerless. Another view, albeit expressed more rarely, emphasized that women could use the same type of violence as men and for the same reasons: they would respond with aggression to a slight to their integrity and personal honor. In the law codes, however, one can find yet another understanding of female violence, which stresses that women are quite different from men.Swedish medieval law also confirms a common medieval view of women as more devious and prone to act in secret and treacherous ways. The misogynistic Malleus Maleficarum, a late medieval guide to help detect and prosecute witches, states that since women were created from Adam's rib, they were bent and always ready to deceive (Summers 1971, 44). The Malleus was already a controversial text when it was written and may not be taken as indicative of general views of women, but it does represent one perception of women. The Swedish provincial laws certainly confirm this standpoint. In the Swedish medieval legal system, the difference between homicide and murder was that a murder took place secretively and in a non-battle-like setting. While we do find women named as perpetrators of homicides, women clearly were more closely connected to the type of lethal violence that was defined as murder. To start with, lawmakers expected women to kill in a setting far removed from the battlefield. While men killed each other outside in the field, women killed within the household and the family.21 The most apparent of these crimes are abortion and infanticide. These two offenses can be hard to separate in Swedish medieval law. Some of the law codes refer to a crime called belgmorð (belly murder)