Norse Shieldmaiden – female DNA in grave

[Alan Hamilton]

Interesting article on a military grave of a female buried with full war gear

https://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-monday-edition-1.4283875/viking-warrior-woman-dna-test-reveals-female-remains-in-military-grave-1.4283883

So now we can have at least one historical high ranking Viking shieldmaiden

[Ruarigh]

It’s not really as simple as that despite what Charlotte and Neil maintain. It’s possible this was indeed a warrior (depending upon how you define ‘warrior’), but that’s not the only option, and there are few issues with the article the news story is based on. You can read the full article on the Antiquity site. It’s open access, and there is supplementary material for download from the main page. You can safely ignore the literary analysis because it is disappointing but the rest does make for interesting reading. Some of my issues with the article are include the fact that the article emphasises this person’s eastern origin and equipment without considering what that means for them as a ‘Viking’ and therefore as a ‘shield-maiden’. There are a few other things about the article that bug me too, like the assumption that this is a ‘warrior burial’ which ignores the past 30 years of scholarship. No one assumes that weapons=warrior these days. There is also the suggestion that this person was a military leader because they were buried with a boardgame and that drives me crazy. Boardgaming is primarily a social skill in this period. There is also the over-use of the word ‘complete’ to describe assemblages, including the gaming pieces. How do they know what constitutes ‘complete’ in any given situation? For the gaming pieces, there are either too many for just one side, or not enough for both sides in a game of hnefatafl, for example. There are also a number of early assumptions in the article that talk about this person being a cavalry leader and/or a horse archer without supporting those statements.

Howard Williams’ Archaeodeath blog has a series of posts about this burial and the furore around the first article on it. They are worth a read for considering the issues. His later posts bring more recent discussion to light.

I believe there is also another female weapons burial currently on display in Oslo at the moment. I suspect that as we do more dna analysis we shall find more. I’m open to the idea that some women could have fought either as women or by adopting a male role in society, but I’m far from being convinced that we shall find evidence of a caste of shield-maidens yet. I guess time will tell. Also, that will not stop me using this evidence to field female horse archers and/or shield-maidens as part of my Viking armies.

Never argue with an idiot. They'll only drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.

https://roderickdale.co.uk/
https://emidsvikings.ac.uk/

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