On a recent trip to Copenhagen I was fascinated by this painting by Kristian Zahrtmann that I saw in the Statens Museum for Kunst (the National Gallery of Denmark). It was painted in 1908, and is an imagined scene showing Queen Christina of Sweden smoking a pipe and...
All sorts of images are conjured up when we imagine the Scandinavian woman of the Viking era: a tough and robust fair-haired woman charging into battle alongside her equally robust male counterpart–horned helmets and all (even though the...
