Amasonen och jägaren : kön/genderkonstruktioner i norr

Sammanfattning: This thesis deals with Late Iron Age/Early Medieval society and settlement in the coastal region of Västerbotten in northern Sweden. A contextual model using empirical archaeological data, place-names and ethno-historical sources is proposed for interpreting the ways people organized their lives in this landscape. A major hypothesis is that this region had a settled population with a mixed economy of hunting, fishing and farming (primarily husbandry). It is further proposed that these people were at least as egalitarian as those described in later historical accounts. The reference to Amazons in the title comes from Adam of Bremen's account from A.D. 1080. The thesis has four major parts, the first consisting of a theoretical background (Chapters2). One goal is to critically examine the concepts of culture and binary oppositions (hunter/farmer, inmark and utmark, public and private spheres, male/ female etc.). The second part (Chapters 3-4) deals with earlier research and the~ environmental, ethnological and archaeological material. The third part (Chapters 5-7) aims at the evaluation and use of ethno-historical, folklore and place-name material for constructing a picture of farming society with roots in the Viking Age, including issues of divisions of labor, gender roles and notions about illness and supernatural belief systems. The ethno-historical material is used as a point of departure for discussing the immaterial legitimization of these people, their identities and ideologies. It is argued that from at least Viking period and onwards to the 14 th century the coastal region of Västerbotten supported a settled society that socially, politically and ideologically differed in many respects from that of Middle Norrland. This region in time became more and more incorporated into a new context as evidenced by place- names. These changes are to be primarily sought in altered social relations, the establishment of ideas of private ownership and in new religious ideas. The egalitarian beliefs found in this region were common within the whole area of the Swedish shieling system.