13th September 2017
Interesting news from Sweden where a grave attributed to a male Viking warrior turns out to be that of a woman Viking warrior. The grave was originally excavated in the 1880s, and it was assumed that the warrior was male. Although there are Viking pictures and poems of warrior women the archaeologists never tested their belief that the body buried with full military honours and equipment must be a man. New DNA testing overturns this – this was a woman commander's grave.
The extravagant grave in Birka, Sweden contains full warrior equipment that includes a sword, an axe, a spear, shields and two horses. The Viking herself was buried with a board game on her lap – a strategy game that would have helped in planning battle tactics. These artefacts suggest that not only was she a warrior, but a high ranking military official, and it is reasonable to think that to have reached this position and to be buried in such a way she must have seen battle herself.
This is not the only Viking grave in which a woman has been buried with weapons yet most have believed them to be symbolic, or heirlooms, or related to the status of the woman’s family. The sex of this particular warrior in Birka was first questioned back in the 1970s, when a bone analysis suggested the assumption of the sex was wrong, but the research was ignored and female warriors were resigned to myth.
I am so pleased that the lead researcher, Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, has been explicit about her discovery. She says: ‘The results call for caution against generalisations regarding social orders in past societies.’ I hope that discoveries such as this will encourage people to continue to challenge preconceived ideas about gender that are harmful to broadening our understanding of history, and that it will lead to more untold histories of women being uncovered.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/high-ranking-viking-warrior-was-woman-180964831/