Jennie

“Until recently it has been assumed that in similar cases in the Scandinavian homelands, exotic and imported artefacts buried with women were gifts from men. This is especially so in western Norway, where artefacts looted from Britain and Ireland have mostly been found in women’s graves. But the new isotopic and genetic evidence on migration has forced us to rethink the interpretation of these burials. The recurring problem is trying to work out whether it was the object or its owner who travelled. When it comes to women in the Viking Age, the conclusion has almost always been the former, which has had an enormous impact on how we have viewed women’s agency – their involvement and individual participation – in the entire period. Partly the issue is that the interpretation of the objects has been based on a number of assumptions that lead to circular arguments, a serpent biting its own tail, going right the way back to the start of the Viking Age.”
― Cat Jarman, River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Road

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“by the late second and first centuries BC, across southern Britain, certain members of society enjoy well-equipped inhumation and cremation burial, the males usually distinguished by swords, the females by mirrors.”
― Barry W. Cunliffe, Britain Begins

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
― Albert Camus