Social imaginaries, sperm and whiteness: Race and reproduction in British media

This article analyses narratives about so-called Viking babies and Viking sperm. Over the last few years an increasing number of British single women and lesbian couples have been creating families by becoming pregnant with Danish donor sperm, termed ‘Viking sperm’. Through analyses of British media coverage of these new families, this article explores contemporary constructions of race, especially whiteness, and gender, and shows how imaginaries of Vikings, genes and white superiority circulate in British media and among British mothers. The article illustrates how a racial discourse, which often is associated with nineteenth-century racial science, can surface in contemporary times. Yet the article also reveals how colonial and racial legacies of whiteness tend to be erased from narratives of fertility, as the (neoliberal) focus on the individual as consumer frames reproduction as individual (free) choices distant from a colonial past.