[1] In 2007-08, she led the international interdisciplinary research group in "The Power of the Ruler and the Ideology of Rulership in Nordic Culture 800-1200" at the Centre for Advanced Study of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters,[4][5] and, since 1 August 2009, has been its Scientific Director.
[7] As a historian of religion, her publications take Norse paganism seriously and present it in a non-traditional light as having been still strong and vital when it encountered Christianity.
[citation needed] In her 1989 Ph.D. dissertation, Det hellige bryllup og norrøn kongeideologi: en analyse av hierogami-myten i Skírnismál, Ynglingatal, Háleygjatal og Hyndluljód (the sacred marriage and Norse ideology of kingship: an analysis of the myth of the hieros gamos in Skírnismál, Ynglingatal, Háleygjatal and Hyndluljóð), she reinterpreted the sacred marriage between a god and a giantess as a power myth legitimising rulership rather than a fertility myth; she specialises in the interpretation of written sources but made extensive use of archaeology and frequently takes an interdisciplinary approach.
She emphasised the female aspect of pre-Christian religion,[2] particularly in her 1997 book Eros og død i norrøne myter (Eros and death in Norse myths), in which she contrasts the sexualisation of death in, for example, references to drowning as being embraced by the sea goddess Rán with the post-conversion view of female sexuality as shameful.
[3] Steinsland has written newspaper opinion articles,[1] for example in 2000 taking the position that Thor Heyerdahl's Odin expedition to Azerbaijan was inspired by a conjectural "charade" orchestrated by Snorri Sturluson.