While the Northern Isles are completely Scandinavian in language and culture, the Viking-settled areas in and around the Irish Sea had a more varied population. Two graves from Orkney show us two very different women: the young, stout and wealthy mother of newborn twins from Westness, and the high-status, elderly woman from Scar, buried in a boat along with a younger man and a child, a matriarch, perhaps even a priestess of Freya. Pagan graves provide plentiful archaeological evidence for early Scandinavian settlement in Scotland, and for female settlers. The rune stone from St Paul's, London, with its fragmentary inscription which tells us only that it was commissioned by Ginna (a woman) and T-ki (a man), shows two Scandinavians asserting their cultural affiliations at the heart of the English kingdom. These new, higher-class immigrants left their mark in London and the south, areas not previously subject to Scandinavian settlement. There was a further significant influx of Scandinavians into England during the reign of Cnut in the 11th century. These finds correlate well with the distribution of Scandinavian place-names in the same region: taken together, the evidence does suggest a significant Scandinavian presence. Recent finds of large numbers of low-grade, Scandinavian-style female jewellery, particularly in Lincolnshire, have been taken to show the presence of Scandinavian women there in the tenth century. Although the nature and extent of the Scandinavian immigration is contested by scholars, the most convincing explanation of the evidence is that there was a peaceful migration of Scandinavian families to parts of the north and east of England throughout the tenth century. However, place-names and language suggest that there was considerable Scandinavian immigration into those areas of England controlled by the Viking invaders, later known as the 'Danelaw'. Merchants' scales and weights found in female graves in Scandinavia suggest an association between women and trade, while an account of a ninth-century Christian mission to Birka, a Swedish trading centre, relates the conversion of a rich widow Frideburg and her daughter Catla, who travelled to the Frisian port of Dorestad. There is also evidence that women could make a living in commerce in the Viking Age. Both farming and trading were family businesses, and women were often left in charge when their husbands were away or dead. The Viking colonists settled down to the farming life in their new home, or established themselves as traders and became town-dwellers. Families heading for the North Atlantic colonies would also have to take all the livestock they would need to establish a new farm, and the journey cannot have been pleasant. Most journeys from Scandinavia involved sea-crossings in small, open ships with no protection from the elements. In regions with an established indigenous population, Viking settlers may have married local women, while some far-roving Vikings picked up female companions en route, but there is evidence that Scandinavian women reached most parts of the Viking world, from Russia in the east to Newfoundland in the west. Iceland, for instance, was uninhabited, and a permanent population could only be established if women also made the journey there. Women could and did play a part in this process of settlement.
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