Abstract
The focus of the present paper is on the Viking beliefs connected with death, life after death and burial customs in relation to women. It is neither a philological analysis of the written sources that we have at our disposal nor an archaeological analysis of the contemporary evidence. The paper is rather a mentality study of what people believed would happen to women after death.I start from a general presentation of death as understood during the Viking Age and then I continue by referring to the fate of women. I discuss such aspects as the possible death realms open to women after death, the existence and characteristics of the female revenants, the belief in rebirth, and the possibility of communicating with the dead. The last part of the thesis deals with the burial customs practiced in relation to the Viking women: the method of burial, the placement of grave goods, the significance of the ship burial, the raising of memorial stones etc. I finally come to the conclusion that even though women seem to have been quite important in the Viking Age, it is difficult to obtain a unitary picture of the Viking beliefs about death,life after death and burial customs regarding the Viking women.