A VIKING WOMAN WARRIOR AFTER ALL. Annalisa some years ago flagged for me an archaeological report that “of 14 Viking burials in Eastern England, 6 were of women, 7 were of men, and one was indeterminate. Significantly, some of the women had been buried with swords or shields, and some of these women had been incorrectly identified as men because of the weapons”. Here is my post on these Viking women. I commented that “No mention is made of another possible inference: that the Viking women were warriors.”
Annalisa called my attention to this article on The Local website about a reworking of findings about a tenth century Viking warrior whose grave was discovered in the late 19th century in Birka Sweden. “The remains were assumed to be those of a man as they were buried with weapons, horses, and other military paraphernalia.”
Recent DNA study has established that the Birka warrior was a woman. There is no y chromosome.
Further, she was probably a military leader. Complete warrior equipment was buried along with her – a sword, an axe, a spear, armour-piercing arrows, a battle knife, shields, and two horses. She also had a war planning game in her lap, “which indicates she was a powerful military leader,” says Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, an archeologist at Uppsala University.