Better identification of corpses reveals that 50% of viking warriors were women

[Mihalik]

Other men (who couldn't fight), women who were raising children and slaves could cover all of those roles. If someone was able bodied and you needed people from your small town to fight, why not? The legends of Shieldmaidens likely didn't develop from nothing.

I agree men would be more suitable for the task, but having fewer warriors would be more detrimental than having women. I haven't thrown any statistics out, It is just my opinion that women may have been taken on raids. Or at the very least, knew how to fight and defend themselves in such a way that they wanted to be buried with their weapons. Having female warriors is not unheard of in Germanic and Norse culture, it is just not as likely as men due to the biological constraints of children.

Repeating myself here.

But to be honest, I wouldn't at all be surprised if a culture like that of the Vikings did give some form of military role their women. It's fairly logical that when most of the fighting age men, leave for long seasons of campaigning and trading, the women left behind would have to step up as the heads of households and possibly even defend their communities to some extent. These incidents could have contributed to fueling the Shieldmaiden mythology.

The few historical references we do have to fighting Viking women, come from the Byzantines. During the Siege of Dorostolon, when the Varangians were besieged in a city, the Varangian women took active part in the defense.

It is debatable if women took active roles in campaigning tho. This mostly due to the rather severe lack of historical references by outside sources to the presence of female warriors among the Viking. Victims of Viking raiders wrote fairly extensively about their habits, appearances, practices etc. They are actually the primary sources about Vikings beyond archaeological evidence.

Also

owever, most of these people would not have called themselves Vikings. In the old Norse language, the word víkingr means pirate or raider, and few of these Northern people participated in raiding. Raiding was a part time occupation, practiced by a small percentage of the population. Few Vikings were professional soldiers, although like all men in this era, they were familiar with the use of weapons. These people were farmers first and needed to take care of the farm chores most of the year. They were entrepreneurs: business men who saw raiding as a means of acquiring capital that could be invested in a ship, in a farm, or in a business. Others may have been on the lookout for land on which they could settle. Raiding was thought to be desirable for a young man, but a more mature man was expected to settle down on the farm and raise a family.

From http://www.hurstwic.org/history/arti...t_happened.htm

[Snorkles]

Tall strong women are my vice. I could definitely get on board with this.

Unfortunately I'm a modest 5'9 so it's unlikely I'll ever end up with one without looking like some weird fetish couple.

[Deleted]

Repeating myself here.

I think you may have got your wires crossed when replying to me at some point. Why start a debate if you're following the same line of reasoning I was? I have simply suggested that there is little reason to discount the idea of women being taken on campaigns, not that they were at any common rate.

[Ghostpanther]

Other men (who couldn't fight), women who were raising children and slaves could cover all of those roles. If someone was able bodied and you needed people from your small town to fight, why not? The legends of Shieldmaidens likely didn't develop from nothing.

I agree men would be more suitable for the task, but having fewer warriors would be more detrimental than having women. I haven't thrown any statistics out, It is just my opinion that women may have been taken on raids. Or at the very least, knew how to fight and defend themselves in such a way that they wanted to be buried with their weapons. Having female warriors is not unheard of in Germanic and Norse culture, it is just not as likely as men due to the biological constraints of children.

Furthermore, given the in-fighting between different Viking communities and the regular raids, it would make a huge amount of sense to have a force of battle-ready people back at home. So even women raising children would have likely been combat ready.

You seem to be hung up on " having a larger army, meant better chance of success " thing. Down thru history smaller armies have defeated larger ones on many occasions. In some cases, a army won when it had a 3 to1 or more disadvantage in numbers. The Vikings were not normal fighters compared to the rest of Europe. They where exceptionally fierce and strong fighters.

[Simulacrum]

Wowwwwww okay, what am I asserting? Like, do you actually just hate me? I just linked a fucking article and said over and over how little I knew about it. Hell, when cybran pointed out that it's probably bullshit I didn't even disagree. How is this blowing anyhting out of proportion or making assertions or anything? Like are we not allowed to talk about anything we think is cool unless there are multiple peer reviewed studies backing up it's authenticity? What the fuck, man?

You won't even own up to the title of your own thread? Are you really this disingenuous?

[Deleted]

You seem to be hung up on " having a larger army, meant better chance of success " thing. Down thru history smaller armies have defeated larger ones on many occasions. In some cases, a army won when it had a 3 to1 or more disadvantage in numbers. The Vikings were not normal fighters compared to the rest of Europe. They where exceptionally fierce and strong fighters.

Smaller forces have succeeded over larger due to better military planning and tactics, but would you leave someone capable of fighting at home when you could bring them? I wouldn't.

We also have to think about the fact that, biologically, gender is fluid. You can be female with high levels of testosterone and males with high levels of oestrogen. You can also be outwardly female but chromisomally male, and vice versa. This isn't a new phenomenon. There would have been women unable to concieve with the physical body strength of an average male, it would make sense to train them to fight and bring them with. Not to mention, brute force isn't the main reason for success in warfare, trained skills and discipline accounts for just as much, if not more. Different fighters used different weapons, not all were suited for the shield wall or hand to hand combat.

But I haven't done any explicit research into this area, so I don't know of all the facts against or for. From what I do know, and from what other historians have argued, I think it would be dishonest to discount the idea of female warriors in Norse warfare. Examples are known throughout history of women taking up arms from nearly every culture in the world, and that is from the relatively small amount of written accounts we have which all have their own bias. Biologically, women were far less likely to be involved due to the restraints of child bearing and rearing, but take those out of the equation and it is down to social constructions alone.

[Deleted]

Isn't it likely that they took their woman/wives with them for supportive tasks, like food preparation and repairing clothes?

Another reason they could take them on their pillages is because back "home" they were not better off because of food shortage and the danger of living in a village without (enough) men to defend them or supply sufficient food.

[dextersmith]

I'm sure combat training and genetic build enabled a lot of women. After you've secured a location, you can loot at your own pace, reducing concerns of encumbrance.

[Deleted]

You won't even own up to the title of your own thread? Are you really this disingenuous?

It's taken from the article almost directly? I condensed it by a couple of words to make it fit. What does it matter jesus fucking christ, it's not like this is about sexism or feminism or anything like that it's just an interesting find. Nothing more. Might mean something, might mean nothing, but we know virtually nothing about that time period so anything we discover like this is cool as fuck. They might be wrong about the "warriors" bit, but being buried with (presumably) your weapons suggests that you are a warrior, and the fact that they have actually checked the bones to see who they belong to for the first time and discovered that they were women does raise questions. I mean, the fact that they thought they were men's burial sites because they are "warrior burial sites" and then they discover that the people in them were women... this isn't baseless conjecture or anything. Maybe they were there by accident who fucking knows but it does seem to suggest something.

Why are you so opposed to the idea when we know so little about it? It's not like this is going against an established theory, if anything it fits more into our admitedly limited understanding of how viking society works but none of the conclusions are ever going to be fact when you are making assumptions about what you find in a thousand plus year old grave.

[StayTuned]

I believe that you had to be buried with your sword in case you die, otherwise you would not reach Valhalla. Enemies of Vikings even destroyed their swords after battle to keep them from going there - as additional punishment.

Further, female vikings were all skilled fighters. There was no discrimination between them and women were almost forced to be at least somewhat skilled, in order to protect the children and potentially help their husbands in raids.

Women who died in battle got sent to Valhalla as well, so their words should have been buried with them. Especially adept Viking woman would be inducted into the land of the Valkyries - so there was even a big incentive to be an active warrior woman.

So my guess is that not all skeletons with swords are certainly warriors, but since everyone during that time had a sword and had to fight in order to get to Valhalla... they are under some definition I guess all warriors.


All knowledge taken out of some documentaries, movies and stuff I read. Can't promise that it would withstand scrutiny.

[dextersmith]

To be fair, if you are being buried with a sword and a shield, as the article cybran linked says, chances are you were a soldier?

Or recognition of someone being equal, or a sign of unity - she was one of us.

[Revi]

That number sounds exceedingly high, and probably not accurate simply because men are more fit for fighting and generally more disposable. We do know from the sources that exist that women were equal to men in most viking societies, but that doesn't mean they had the same tasks or responsibilities. We also know they had great respect for their shield-maidens abilities to fight.

I think the rapey aspect of history is exaggerated though. I have no doubt it happened, like it happened every time two opposing factions fought at any point in history, but I doubt they were any worse than others in that time, and rape was certainly not one of the motivations behind the voyages.

This particular find is such a small sample it doesn't give us any statistics, but it's interesting for sure.

[Deleted]

Or recognition of someone being equal, or a sign of unity - she was one of us.

True! I dunno how militaristic vikings were, I've really heard of them is the looting and pillaging and so on but obviously that can't be the whole story. Being buried with a weapon even if you were not a soldier to show unity or equality or something in a heavily militaristic society makes sense, but I dunno how much of that looting and pillaging stuff is true really, and how much it ran through society as a whole? Like, somewhere like sparta you can imagine such a tradition could arise when the whole society is built around combat and war as I understand, wheras somewhere like rome not so much, despite having a lot of wars, the combat stuff didn't neccesarily run through society as a whole I guess?

- - - Updated - - -

That number sounds exceedingly high, and probably not accurate simply because men are more fit for fighting and generally more disposable. We do know from the sources that exist that women were equal to men in most viking societies, but that doesn't mean they had the same tasks or responsibilities. We also know they had great respect for their shield-maidens abilities to fight.

I think the rapey aspect of history is exaggerated though. I have no doubt it happened, like it happened every time two opposing factions fought at any point in history, but I doubt they were any worse than others in that time, and rape was certainly not one of the motivations behind the voyages.

This particular find is such a small sample it doesn't give us any statistics, but it's interesting for sure.

Bolded bit is the big thing I guess. I mean, for all we know there could have been only like 7 women who came across and we just happened to find them because they were buried in a way that preserved them better or something or whatever. I guess that's the nature of archeology and stuff though. You have to find whatever bits and pieces you can and try and construct a narrative that fits for it all.

It sort of reminds me of uhh... Mass Effect and stuff. Like, Liara has all these ideas about how the Protheans were and was in awe of their society and stuff because of things she had recovered on archeological digs and stuff and she thought they were a certain way.

Then she meets one and he's a dickhead and nothing like she imagined.

[Jaxi]

You should be cautious, since they only identified 14 viking burials.. 50% of 14 does not mean 50% of all viking warriors were women. Not even close. It does give more evidence to suggesting shield maidens, but don't get ahead of yourself.

[Templar 331]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ip5T89jfJoA

Replace dwarf with viking. XD

But it's interesting hearing women being treated more equaly in those times.

[Reeve]

Cool idea, but the article linked at the beginning of the linked article says the remains were of Norse immigrants, and not necessarily Vikings (raiders).

[Deleted]

Cool idea, but the article linked at the beginning of the linked article says the remains were of Norse immigrants, and not necessarily Vikings (raiders).

What's the difference? I thought all norse people were vikings?

[Deleted]

What's the difference? I thought all norse people were vikings?

No, Vikings were seafaring raiders. So all (most?) Vikings were norse but not all norse were vikings.

[Reeve]

What's the difference? I thought all norse people were vikings?

Viking is just an anglicized word for raider. The original word it's derived from is something like i viking, which means to go raiding. Norse immigrants would be the folks who would come and settle the land after the vikings landed and took over the area.

[Independent voter]

Yeah, women had to make more babies than war famine and disease could take away. And then they had to raise them.

Mongol women were good with horse and bow, they trained the little ones with bows up to a certain age. The bows they wielded were no where near the strength of the men's. But if you wanted to attack a Mongol village while the men where out raiding, you'd better have a sizeable force.

Genghis' wife was captured and when she was returned she was pregnant. He never said a word about it and it never was a problem until he died and they had to pick a successor.