i've read quite a large number of the sagas, and they certainly stand out for their female protaganists - which one might point out were also prominent in celtic societies.

it kind of bugs me that so many feminists are so insistent on this idea of perpetual patriarchy. they seem to openly doom themselves to subservience, by providing the most extreme exit plan possible. so many of them are convinced that civilization itself is inherently patriarchal, and you have to go back to the very beginnings of human culture to overturn it. give me patriarchy, or give me death.

i don't think the evidence is there. frankly, i think the evidence is much stronger that patriarchy is a fundamentally jewish concept, and that it's been usurped and brutally enforced by christians and muslims, but that the indigenous groups both in christian europe and in the middle east tended to range from broadly egalitarian to questionably matriarchal. you don't even have to go full gimbutas on this. we have historical records of the power of priestesses in the pre-islamic semitic world - as well as the greek world, for that matter. the hellenic world was quite often dominated by powerful female monarchs (propped up by court eunuchs) - it was quite normal, not the anomaly that it was in western europe, save britain, which largely kept it's celtic traditions and both in england and in scotland.

tied into this is unquestionably the fact that so many historical feminists have been so religious. many of them seem to have even defined the question of feminism as the process of winning the right to participate in the church. the situation is far from irreversible,  but it does require overturning the system that so many seemed to long to be a part of. the only logical way out is to collapse into parmenides and deny the possibility of change: patriarchy is irreversible, so it does not hurt to join the church.

if patriarchy is intrinsically connected to abrahamic religion, however, it can be abolished along with the religion. and, i would promote that positive view.

we don't need to go back to the norse sagas. but, we can see the society as proof that there are alternate paths to this place in time and space.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/09/11/high-ranking-viking-warrior-was-female-dna-tests-prove.html