Viking Wife Swap

A television-style wife swap brings a wealthy Norwegian warrior household into contact with the enslaved couple who work for them. The warrior wife struggles with the exhausting chores she normally delegates, while the thrall wife encounters a comfortable home and a husband who still treats her as a servant. Private interviews expose the unequal rules governing work, speech and marriage. At the reunion, the warrior couple resolve their domestic complaints by agreeing to leave the labor to their thralls, whose objections are promptly silenced.

The two households are on the same property: the thralls live at the bottom of the warrior family’s garden.