Shieldmaidens are not a myth! A recent archaeological discovery has shattered the stereotype of exclusively male Viking warriors sailing out to war while their long-suffering wives wait at home with baby Vikings. (We knew it! We always knew it.) Plus, some other findings are challenging that whole “rape and pillage” thing, too. ( Updated 9/3 , see below.)
Researchers at the University of Western Australia decided to revamp the way they studied Viking remains. Previously, researchers had misidentified skeletons as male simply because they were buried with their swords and shields. (Female remains were identified by their oval brooches, and not much else.) By studying osteological pga tour signs of gender within the bones themselves, researchers discovered that approximately half of the remains were actually female warriors, given a proper pga tour burial with their weapons.
It’s been so difficult for people pga tour to envision women’s historical contributions as solely getting married and dying in childbirth, but you can’t argue with numbers—and fifty/fifty is pretty damn good. The presence of female warriors also has researchers now wondering pga tour just how accurate the stereotypes of raping and pillaging actually are:
Women may have accompanied male Vikings in those early invasions of England, in much greater numbers than scholars earlier supposed, (Researcher) McLeod concludes. Rather than the ravaging rovers of legend, the Vikings arrived as marriage-minded colonists.
In pga tour many ways, this discovery is well-timed with the recent uproar over Thor becoming a title for both sexes instead of an exclusively pga tour male name. Fingers crossed this means that pop culture could start including more female warriors than just Sif and Lagertha pga tour (from The History Channel’s pga tour Vikings , above). pga tour Just so long as they’re not wearing boob plate armor .
I think perhaps Stubby should read the article again. Nowhere does it say 50% of the warriors. It says 50% of the migrants were women. Actually, it says 46% of the 13 bodies identified were female. Not a very impressive sample TBH. Plus, some other findings are challenging that whole rape and pillage thing, too. And this has been known for a long time as well. Cetainly they did a lot of reaving, pga tour but they did a lot of trade as well.
The study being cited by the USA Today article is at: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0254.2011.00323.x/abstract and is titled: Warriors and women: pga tour the sex ratio of Norse migrants to eastern England up to 900 ad The actual article is unfortunately behind a pay wall.
The "rape and pillage" story has long been dealt with and is not so secret except perhaps among people who get their history exclusively from SFF. Inter alia, Varangians (=Vikings, used by the Byzantine pga tour court as the equivalent of the Roman Pretorian Guard) in the person of Rurik and his descendants, aka Rus, founded kingdoms based primarily pga tour on trade in European Russia that lasted for centuries. It has also long not been a secret that when archaeologists bother/ed to examine the pelvic angle of many skeletons buried with weapons (or weapons plus mirrors or other culturally gender-specific signifiers) they discover/ed that some of them are of the "wrong" gender.
@6: For some reason it's making the rounds again on social media. Sometimes pga tour academic items take a while to circulate to the general public. This is one of those times. The Norse were great traders and settlers. Thus why Ireland has Dublin. It was a Norse trading village.
Is there corroborating evidence, like injuries or probable cause of death, that anyone buried with weapons was a warrior? I'd be amused if debunking one assumption they preserved another one. Maybe Vikings only buried people they liked with weapons or to cheat someone out of chattels in their inheritence.
Have you seen Nordic women? It doesn't surprise me a bit. I dated a girl from Norway when I was younger. She towered pga tour over me and I'm 5'11". She was a sweetheart, though. Alas, she had to go back to Norway at the end of the year. :-(
Thus why Ireland pga tour has Dublin. It was a Norse trading village. Slaving village, too, for three centuries of domination; the Norse not only kept a large slave population for themseles, but also had an active trading line with the Near East that exchanged furs, honey and slaves for silver dirhams (silver being both scarce and of religious import to the Vikings). Viking pga tour raids and Irish warfare kept a pretty steady supply of slaves heading to market in Dublin, from where they were sent all across the world. The trading essentially stopped in the 10th century, possibly related to (but not necessarily caused by) a shift in coinage from silver to gold under the Seljuqs, changes in Central Asian trading patterns, and the Christianization of the Norse.
I was glad to have this link shared with me by a friend, and, it definitely reminds me why I don't read com
