Detailed analysis of the construction of gender identities has transformed our understanding of many aspects of early
medieval society, yet the study of the Vikings in Britain has largely remained immune to this branch of scholarship. In
responding to this lacuna, this paper examines the gendered dimension of the funerary record of the Scandinavians
in England in the ninth and tenth centuries, and suggests that the emphasis on masculine display, in both the burial
and the sculptural record, is not merely a quirk of survival, but rather it has much to reveal about the negotiation of
lordship in the context of conquest and settlement
