How Did Jenny Jotichens Influence Modern Society

Professor Jenny Jochens is a medievalist from Baltimore, Maryland that devoted her career specifically to the study of medieval women. She graduated from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, where she was born. Professor Jochens considers her field of study to be Old Norse Society, but she didn’t always have this specialization. She helped create the first Women’s Studies Program in the country. Her and other founders wanted the program to be interdisciplinary and intended to be influenced by the way she taught, by getting involved with biologists, psychologists, and other members of departments in order to cover the whole subject of women in society.
Jochens’ path is unique in the fact that when she was studying Old Norse society in
Jochens discusses the evolution of marriage in Nordic society. Germanic traditions of marriage practiced by tribes were often related to what Jochens called “marriage by capture.”. In this period women were raped by traveling men, by either going to war or wandering and she made pregnantly. Then they may or may not have been kept as their wives. Even the word used for marriage at the time indicated that matrimony was brought on by violence. Germanic marriage also suggested a fundamental connection between marriage and property. The bride’s price or dowry was paid to the family for compensation of taking the woman or child, and in this way, women were sold to their husbands with no right to refuse. There was no minimum age for either bride or groom. the two parties would wait to see if she would outgrow her deformities if the female child was flawed while still
Then slowly covers the day in the life of a horsewoman starting from marriage and reproduction and ends at the economical advantage of handmade fabrics and clothes. Jochens captures the lives of women in Iceland and Norway in amazing detail explaining their work, behavior, marriage customs, family relationships, reproduction, leisure activities, religious practices, and legal constraints and protections. Much of this information applies to everyday life in the entire Germanic world. Conveying the experiences not only of aristocrats but also of ordinary farmers, the author draws from her extensive knowledge of the oldest and fullest record of the Germanic tribes. Women in Old Norse Society places particular emphasis on changing sexual mores and the impact of the imposition of Christianity by the clergy and the Norwegian kings. It also demonstrates the vital role women played in economic production: homespun was used for every conceivable domestic purpose; the lengths of cloth became the standard of measurement for local commercial exchange and were used to obtain commodities abroad. Jochens' masterly command of the Old Norse narratives and legal texts enables her to provide a rich social history that includes the fullest analysis to date of pagan and Christian marriage and the first comprehensive study of infanticide in the North. "Jochens' study is a model of interdisciplinary