FEMALE BURIED AS A VIKING WARRIOR CONFIRMED BY GENETIC STUDIES
I do a Facebook Page called Ancient European Swords (feel free to like it; we ban Nazis on sight so although it would be harder to be more Eurocentric, it is, hopefully much less Euro-perior than other pages on similar topics) and this study came to my attention yesterday. And holy shit is it awesome. Lemme tell you why.
Pop Culture’s Myth of the Skjaldmær — Shield Maiden
For years pop culture has bombarded us with the “Shield Maiden” – the female Viking warrior. Everybody knows Lagertha from the History Channel’s Vikings. According to Norwegian Archeologist Dr. Nanna Løkka the “Shield Maiden” has actually displaced the “Scantily Clad Viking Chick As Centerfold” as the top Google image search result for “Viking Women”.
Many clickbait pages have touted archeological studies which ‘prove’ there were female Viking warriors:
From pop culture it is easy to get an impression that we are steeped in evidence that Viking women were all badass sheroes with a babe against the breast in one arm and a sword in the other or some other nonsense like that. The truth is we have very little evidence that Viking women were warriors (until yesterday) at all.
The Literary Evidence
One of our best sources for how Vikings lived, thought and behaved are the written accounts. These basically come in a couple of forms. There are the Eddas — the Poetic and Prose Edda which are our primary sources for Norse mythology. But all of these date from about 200 years AFTER the end of the Viking period and long after the Scandinavian countries and Iceland were Christianized. In any case, the only women with weapons are Valkyries — supernatural women. So, right there you have every sexist who ever studied Vikings saying: Duh. Female Vikings with weapons are imaginary.
Then you have the sagas. Like the Eddas, these were written down post Christianization. In the favor of the sagas, you have evidence for significant amounts of truth in some of them. We can show, for instance, that events attested to in the Sagas really did occur in Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and other places. But other things in the sagas are more fanciful and nebulous — dragons, elves, undead and so forth. Female warriors are attested to in several sagas — Brynhildr in the Saga of the Volsungs, Hervor in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, the Brynhildr of the Bósa saga ok Herrauðs, the Swedish princess Thornbjǫrg in Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar.
Note: so far, Hervor is my favorite. Runs away from home to become a raider, goes to her father’s tomb to claim the magical sword Tyfing. When this gets boring, she marries and has kids. Who says women can’t have it all?
You can find endless discussions of passages from the Sagas which describe women who fight but basically the argument ends with — well, there’s no solid archeological evidence so obviously it’s mythical nonsense. There also is a tendency to look at the negative endings these women come to as proof that Vikings disapproved of women warriors harshly viewed violations of gender norms. The problem with that argument is — these are fucking VIKING SAGAS. Everyone comes to a bad end. There isn’t a damn character in the Saga of Volsungs (including the Gods who face Ragnarok) who dies rich and happy from old age!!!
Archeological Evidence: Jewelry and Amulets
In the last twenty or so years, some non-grave related finds have started to appear which may — or may not — depict female warriors or armed women. These are highly stylized amulets or pendants similar to the image below.
There are now about 40 of these images usually in silver or bronze. Like the images above there are not tons of details in these figures and arguments rage — are they depicting women or men? Ok, if they are women prove they are not the mythological Valkyries. Oh, you can’t prove they aren’t Valkyries? Too bad for you little feminist Viking fan-boi snowflake!
And that’s pretty much where discussion of these items ends. If you get the sense that it has been an uphill battle for believers in the idea that Viking women were autonomous human beings with a wide spectrum of human behaviors and activities, well, you would be correct.
Archeological Evidence: Graves and Grave Goods
Good news! According to archeologist Dr. Neil Price, we know of hundreds of thousands of Viking graves! Yea! Lots of information!
Bad news! We’ve examined about 10,000 of them.
Worse news about female Viking warriors: we have identified only 20 likely female Viking graves containing weapons. And most of those graves (Grave BB from Bogøvej, Gerdrup grave from Sjælland, Grave A505 from Trekoroner-Grydehøj, Løve near Larvik, Mårem in Telemark, Kaupang had several [Ka. 3, Ka. 10, Ka. 16, Ka. 294-296], Birkjholberget cemetary in Kaupang, the Oseburg ship burial, Kinta graves 59:2 and 59:3, Birka bj. 834, Dalstorp A24 are examples) were basically a woman buried with an axe, a woman buried with a spear, or a woman and a man buried with a sword but the sword was positioned closer to the woman in the grave than to the man. Even worse, most of the axes were generic axes; not specifically battle axes. In other words, VERY INCONCLUSIVE.
Nordre Kjølen, a very recently described burial of a woman with a sword, spearhead, axe and several arrows with a shield under her head was the best of them.
Why are there so few females buried with weapons in a warlike culture?
Well, until pretty recently there were no definitive and inexpensive ways to prove ancient grave remains were those of a man or woman. So virtually all Viking graves have been categorized this way:
Grave has brooches, beads, keys — WOMAN.
Grave has weapons — MAN
For all we know half the graves we have could be female warriors. I doubt it. But hell, we just don’t know.
GRAVE BJ 581 CHANGES EVERYTHING.
Give me a minute to set the scene, please.
Between 750 and 1150 CE the town of Birka in Sweden was a bustling, thriving trade center. I’ve seen it called a proto-city. It had a large village; it had a port, there was a military style garrison and a hillfort to watch over it. And of course, where people live, they also die. Birka had a very extensive set of burial grounds.
Archeologists have excavated 1,100 of the 3,000 or so graves around Birka. In 1889!!!! the grave Bj 581 was excavated. The findings were published in 1941. The grave was located on a rise between the town and the hillfort that was “in direct contact with the garrison.” What was in the grave? Well, lets take a look:
Contents of Bj 581:
- Double edged sword (Probably a Petersen Type C but a Type H or I are also possible — this is based on the drawing of the grave goods. I have NOT been able to access the 1941 paper describing the grave yet. Working on that now.)
- Axe (Probably a Petersen Type M — this is very important because Type M would not be good for splitting wood. Tree axes tend to have wedge shaped profiles when you look down at the top. These axes do not. This axe was designed to go as deeply into a human body as possible. That was the only thing these were good for. Again, based on the illustrations of the grave.
- Spear, type unknown.
- Seax or war knife. The illustration of the grave indicate scale and this was not a small utility knife.
- Arrows. Not hunting arrows; arrows designed to pierce maille armor (chainmail). Useless for hunting; go right through a deer.
- Two shields.
- A complete set of game pieces for strategy games. Often found in elite warrior graves. The paper authors emphasize this quite heavily and are relying on this specific piece of evidence to make the cast that this person was an “officer” or leader of warriors. I am less certain about what this means. I have tremendous respect for the authors who are top-notch archeologists but this seems more tenuous of a conclusion to me.
- Two horses, a mare and a stallion.
Just as interesting is what was NOT in the grave: no brooches, no beads, no keys — none of the characteristic female Viking grave goods.
So obviously, this was the grave of a man, right?
Everybody thought so until The Swedish Research Council funded a study of the geographic movements of people in the Viking period. The goal was to do an osteological study of skeletal remains in the Mälaren Valley. So the researches examined 664 skeletal remains, men, women, children, with the hope of finding out which were local, which were not and get an idea of who was moving where at that time. Everything was all boring and normal and then they came to Bj 581 and suddenly they were all like: This is a woman. In a warrior grave.
So, they re-examined the bones two more times. Pretty damn certain these are female bones — all three times the researchers agreed. This was a woman. She was about 5’ 6” and was over 30 years old when she died. There was no indication of traumatic injury to the bones.
They did not have funding or a mandate to do anything further. So they published their findings and wondered if somehow the bones of a woman got mixed up with the bones that were supposed to be in this grave?
Published September 8, 2017 is a genetic study of the skeleton from Birka grave Bj 581.
The conclusion: “…the individual in grave Bj 581 is the first confirmed female high-ranking Viking warrior.”
This woman shows a genetic affinity to present day inhabitants of England and Scotland, Iceland and Orkneys, Denmark and Norway and a lesser affinity to present inhabitants of Lithuania and Latvia. There is also an affinity between the female warrior and southern and south-central modern Swedes.
Analysis of the strontium in her molars show she was not native to the Birka area and had travelled in her life.
IMPORTANT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTS:
1. The dead do not bury themselves, the living select what is buried with the dead. Could these items be heirlooms, the property of the buried woman’s husband who may have been left on a battlefield in distant place? We have examples of children buried with weapons, obviously the kids were not full time warriors. Why is this different?
Yes, the archeologists note it is possible that the weapons are not hers. But this really requires special pleading – none of the children buried with weapons are buried with a full panoply of war gear. It’s difficult to argue that they would have buried her with every bit of her husband’s most valuable equipment… and absolutely NO typical female grave goods.
2. Did the remains show any signs of battle trauma?
No, but graves near communities which are not known battle sites usually do not.
However, contrary to what could be expected, weapon related wounds (and trauma in general) are not common in the inhumation burials at Birka (e.g., 2 out of 49 confirmed males showed signs of sharp force trauma). A similarly low frequency is noted at contemporaneous cemeteries in Scandinavia (e.g., Helgesson Arcini, 1996). Traces of violent trauma are more common in Viking Age mass burials (e.g., Loe, Boyle, Webb, & Score, 2014; Price et al., 2016).
In other words, bodies buried near battle sites, frequently in mass graves, often show signs of battle trauma. Bodies buried at settlements do not.
AND FINALLY, 3. If the genetic results had come back as male would either of the two above questions have arisen at all? No? Why not? Think about it.
Very important last comment on the meaning of this find:
This does not prove that Shield Maidens/female Viking warriors were the norm or common. What we have is simply really solid evidence for at least ONE female warrior. However, in the context of jewelry and amulets that depict armed females, Sagas which mention female warriors and archeological evidence for at least twenty armed female burials which COULD be warriors and THIS ONE HIGH-STATUS ELITE FEMALE WARRIOR BURIAL…
The burden of proof has now shifted away from proving female warriors existed and the new question is: how common were female warriors?
So, I say to all women who love their spears, swords, shields, seaxes as much as any man could – Skål!!!
Final discouraging note:
I’ve spent all day defending this find online from sexists and jerks. I have NO OBJECTION to the people who want to see enlarged muscle attachment points on the bones consistent with other warrior graves — valid point. That has not been examined with Bj 581.
What I hate are the following:
Obviously her husband’s stuff.
This bullshit is being published only because of the TV show Vikings. What crap.
They faked it.
That is discouraging to me...