Oh! It just dawned on me that this is not specifically gifted *girls*
In the VA Scandinavia, education was informal, gifted individuals were sought out and tutored by people who thought them gited... in a number of fields: they had special words for differing types of intellectual skill, including factual knowledge of history/genealogy, poetics, and law, which is kinda cool. Like early medieval fields of study
There's a classic ghost story formula where someone goes to a gravesite and demands that the ghost teach him.
A voyage away from home was seen as crucial to the education of a young man, but it's hard to tell, as far as I know, exactly which classes of men got which kinds of opportunities.
Literacy (in runes, not roman letters) seems to have been fairly general eg Maeshow). There is at least one description of a houseman putting effort into identifying the talents of someone in the house, and then encouraging the skill of carving (Cant...remmeber...ref...arg).
Vikings seem to have had a way of thoroughly enjoying giftedness of any kind.
The history from the sagas is of variable reliability, but it's lots of fun:
Check out Viking age court poets, in general. On precocity, Egil Skallagrimmson was said to steal a horse and ride to a party his dad wouldn't let him come to, and upon arrival, recited a complex stanza (at 3 or 5 or something). The Saga of the Confederates is about a gifted lawyer. (but I'm not sure I want to know what jokes Jonlaw will come up with if he reads it
) Snorri Snorrason kicks ass in many many ways. Sneglu Halli is hilarious, not in any way about a real person, but definitly about an intellectually gifted yet physically... erm... not... individual who grows up to overcome his weaknesses... well, except for porridge. That one kills him.
Steinunnr and Jorunnr are two female poets, just while I'm stuck on chromosomes. We dont' really know how they came to be poets, but they did.
Sorry, that was ajumble, but I'm being called, and don't have time to edit.... eh
