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It is commonly accepted that marriage was an important political institution in the middle ages. Marriage was one way of making allies, confirming friendship between the two involved families, or even reconciliation. This was by no means different in the Icelandic freestate. Through marriage chieftains like Snorri Sturluson, and his brother ҂órdur, both secured and increased their influence. On the other hand, both Snorri and ҂órdur had concubines; Snorri most likely while he was still married but ҂órdur between his two marriages. In fact, concubinage was common in the Icelandic freestate and the attempts of the church to abolish the custom had little effect. Even though there were differences between legitimate marriage and concubinage my thesis is that both institutions were of great importance politically, perhaps even increasing in the struggle for power we witness in the last hundred years og the Icelandic freestate. The concubines were generally of lower social status than the men they had relations with, but frequently daughters of wealthy farmers with influence in their territories. Becoming a concubine was probably a result of negotiation between two families, as was the case with marriage, and though this connection the women's father or/and brothers and the chieftain became allies.

"In discussions relating to their role during the Middle Ages, women are typically assumed to only have been "pawns in a political game dominated by men", or to have primarily acted as intermediaries of power. In this book, however, the varying expressions of power are studied by changing the focus from a political and economic exercise of power controlled by men, to an approach based on interaction and communication between the sexes. In this volume, gender is instead interpreted as a total social phenomenon comprising all spheres of medieval society. This approach provides new opportunities to investigate how power operated on different levels within a societal structure. Thus, power is neither seen as emanating from a centre nor as dominated by only one sex. Instead, it is regarded as an all-embracing societal web, woven through threads of mutual dependence between men and women.

In this book, scholars belonging to various disciplines, such as history, history of arts and literary history, discuss how cooperation between the sexes found expression in culture, judicial spheres and social organisation. The contributions do not only consider the Nordic countries, but also how gender constructions were affected by, and transformed through, the influence of contemporary cultural, juridical and ideological currents in Europe. - Vanliga uppfattningar i diskussioner om kvinnornas roll under medeltiden är att de utgjorde "brickor i männens politiska spel" eller att de i första hand verkade som förmedlare av makt. I denna antologi studeras dock maktens olika uttrycksformer genom att fokus förflyttas från politisk och ekonomisk maktutövning kontrollerad av män till ett interaktionistiskt synsätt baserat på samspelet och kommunikationen mellan könen. Genom att se på genus som ett totalt socialt fenomen omfattande det medeltida samhällets alla sfärer öppnas möjligheter att undersöka hur makten verkade på olika nivåer inom samhällsstrukturen. Makten betraktas därmed varken som utgående från ett centrum eller helt dominerad av ett kön. I boken diskuterar forskare tillhörande olika discipliner såsom historia, konstvetenskap och litteraturvetenskap hur samverkan mellan könen tog sig uttryck inom kulturen, rättssamhället och den sociala organisationen. Bidragen behandlar inte bara Norden utan även hur könskonstruktioner påverkades och förändrades genom inflytande från samtida kulturella, juridiska och ideologiska strömningar i Europa.
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