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DNA Proves Fearsome Viking Warrior Was a Woman

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

Phoenix666 writes:

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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Original Submission

• Re:Feminists Would Still Have Hated It Re:Feminists Would Still Have Hated It (Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday September 12 2017, @06:03PM (1 child)

  by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Tuesday September 12 2017, @06:03PM (#566885) Journal

  Do you truly think it didn't occur to them? I don't know, maybe I'm giving the identity-politics brigade too much credit, but there is a very good reason my brand of feminism involves outreach to men and trying to help them break out of the prison the kyriarchy puts them in (and why I tend to say kyriarchy rather than patriarchy...). Society tells boys and men not to be kind, not to be nurturing, not to have emotions, and above all never to ask for help. This is why I think any feminism that intends to make real progress needs to face these issues and help our menfolk too. If nothing else, how many men are we losing from professions like nursing and teaching because society tells them it's unmanly? And let's not even get into the circumcision thing; no one's genitalia should be mutilated, no matter which set they have or neither or both.

  All that said, yes, there *is* some "secret fear" (and it's not even secret if you're paying afuckingttention) that most men do not deal with. It can be quickly if somewhat imprecisely summed up as "in the field of dating and romance, men worry about women rejecting them, women worry about men raping and/or killing them for said rejection."

  --
  I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...

  Parent

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• Re:Feminists Would Still Have Hated It (Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday September 12 2017, @10:37PM

  by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Tuesday September 12 2017, @10:37PM (#566993) Journal

  Wikipedia for kyriarchy [wikipedia.org] includes:

  …Kyriarchy relies on the creation of a servant class, race, gender, or people. The position of this class is reinforced through "education, socialization, and brute violence and malestream rationalization." Tēraudkalns suggests that these structures of oppression are self-sustained by internalized oppression; those with relative power tend to remain in power, while those without tend to remain disenfranchised. Structures of oppression also amplify and feed into each other.

  That checks out, especially the internalized oppression part. It's definitely a more complete theory.

  It can be quickly if somewhat imprecisely summed up as "in the field of dating and romance, men worry about women rejecting them, women worry about men raping and/or killing them for said rejection."

  That might be too imprecise for me, particularly the word worry. Do you have statistics I can take a look at?

  Parent