'hence the cocktail parties, females in improbable roles ( for 8 cent), Mad Max hairdos & make up, etc.'
Yeah. There weren't a lot of talkative women and female blacksmiths in the poem, IIRC. A lot of language describing armour, weapons and fighting.
The best of these old poems has to be Njal's Saga. One of the characters gets a talkative wife. Naturally, he slaps the shit out of her. She complains to her brothers. They answer along of the lines of he obviously didn't beat her hard enough if she is still opening her mouth and send her back to him.
Years later, her husband's enemies surround them. Time for a hall burning! The women and children, however, can leave (to become the enemies new wives, whores, slaves, whatever). The talkative wife's husband tells her to cut off her long, blonde plait and give it to him, so he can use it as a rope to escape.
She tells him she now avenges herself of the beating her gave her and leaves him to burn.
Oooo!