The Valkyries' Loom: The Archaeology of Cloth Production and Female Power in the North Atlantic

Using textiles to understand gender and economy in Norse societies



This groundbreaking study is based on the author's systematic comparative analysis of the vast textile collections in Iceland, Greenland, Denmark, Scotland, and the Faroe Islands, materials that are largely unknown even to archaeologists and span 1,000 years. Through these garments and fragments, Hayeur Smith provides new insights into how the women of these island nations influenced international trade by producing cloth (va...