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posted by martyb on Tuesday September 12 2017, @11:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the Valkyries,-Amazons,...Xena? dept.

DNA proves fearsome Viking warrior was a woman:

A 10th century Viking unearthed in the 1880s was like a figure from Richard Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries: an elite warrior buried with a sword, an ax, a spear, arrows, a knife, two shields, and a pair of warhorses. [...] a new study published today in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology finds that the warrior was a woman—the first high-status female Viking warrior to be identified. Excavators first uncovered the battle-ready body among several thousand Viking graves near the Swedish town of Birka, but for 130 years, most assumed it was a man—known only by the grave identifier, Bj 581. [...] Now, the warrior's DNA proves her sex, suggesting a surprising degree of gender balance in the Vikings' violent social order.

Her name was Lagertha.

Reference: Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, et. al., A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.23308


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday September 12 2017, @02:17PM (4 children)

    by looorg (578) on Tuesday September 12 2017, @02:17PM (#566737)

    After a quick read of the paper one can only conclude there are strong indications of wishful thinking on the part of the author. They are applying various modern feminist theories to their findings. They are questioning previous assumptions, which may or may not be correct. But they don't prove that she was a female viking warrior. The sex of the body has been known since the 1970:s, concluded based on normal osteological analysis, ie the pelvic bone gave her away as female. So no DNA analysis was really needed. So one is left to wonder why they are hyping this now.

    From the burial finds one can only really conclude that the grave was of someone with high status, weapons - horses - treasure and a boardgame. Not that she was necessarily a fearsome viking warrior, she could have been a trader or a leader but not necessarily a warrior. So it becomes somewhat interesting that the author blames previous scientists or archeologists for trying to hide women but what she is doing is just the reverse of trying to push the female status higher based on the same information. It's not certain one is more right or wrong then the other, since a lot of males have been classified as warriors due to he same grave content but they might not necessarily have been great warriors, they might just have been rich arseholes that wanted to go to the afterlife in style.

    "Do weapons necessarily determine a warrior? The interpretation of grave goods is not straight forward, but it must be stressed that the interpretation should be made in a similar manner regardless of the biological sex of the interred individual."

    "The skeletal remains in grave Bj 581 did not exhibit signs of antemortem or perimortem trauma which could support the notion that the individual had been a warrior. However, contrary to what could be expected, weapon related wounds (and trauma in general) are not common in the inhumation burials at Birka ..."

    "Although not possible to rule out, previous arguments have likely neglected intersectional perspectives where the social status of the individual was considered of greater importance than biological sex."

    The body, BJ 581 (BJ here stands for Björkö, which is the name of the island where Birka was located, the number is just the number -- there are thousands of graves in the area) , showed no sign of combat scars or any indications of being a warrior at all. It's all based on the items found in the grave. Her main argument here is that male bodies have been classified as warriors based on similar finds while female bodies are downplayed. She isn't necessarily concluding that she was an actual warrior. Since Birka was a trading post it's not very common for the bodies buried there to show battle scars or trauma so it's hard to draw conclusions one way or another based upon that information.

    It's probably not to hard to find alternative explanations but they are all downplayed here in favor of the warrior theory, which there are basically no basis for -- except that male skeletons become warriors if they are found with a blade, while female skeletons usually are not. So once again she is questioning the warrior classification of all male skeletons more then she is actually trying to turn her female skeleton into a warrior. For all we know she was the female slave they killed to keep a male company in the after life, then for one reason or another the male body was never buried or later removed.

    "DNA Proves Fearsome Viking Warrior Was a Woman"

    ... suggesting a surprising degree of gender balance in the Vikings' violent social order.

    No, it really doesn't. I know it's just a headline but that isn't really true if one bothers to read or just glance the entire paper. This is one of few graves with female bodies and treasure, hardly balances out the matter considering the umpteen graves of males bodies with similar or the same grave content. If anything is shows that this women might have been the exception to the normal social order. She is like that one female that managed to pass SEAL training, hardly the norm.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @03:50PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @03:50PM (#566786)

    ...intersectional perspectives...

    Well, when your only tool is a hammer, as the saying goes...

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday September 12 2017, @05:55PM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday September 12 2017, @05:55PM (#566877) Journal

      Well, when your only tool is a hammer, as the saying goes...

      … all gods look like Thor? :-)

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @12:54PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 13 2017, @12:54PM (#567200)

    ... they might not necessarily have been great warriors, they might just have been rich arseholes that wanted to go to the afterlife in style.

    Erm, it is Viking society we are talking about. No arsehole got rich or stayed rich, especially after death, without also being at least a competent warrior, at least at some point in their life.

    You know how it goes ... "A wimp and his gold are soon parted".

  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday September 13 2017, @03:37PM

    by Bot (3902) on Wednesday September 13 2017, @03:37PM (#567250) Journal

    My unbiased AI says she was a warrior, but all those splendid arms and stuff were gifts.
    Vikings were males, Beta males gonna beta and vikings were plunderers, golddiggers gonna golddig. QED

    --
    Account abandoned.