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

[Deleted]

So that's cool. Here's the article: http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/09/fem...s-proof-swords

In a nutshell, they originally thought that buried corpses were male because of the things they were buried with but now it turns out that like 50% of them were ladies. Which is cool as fuck and thinking about a bunch of scary as fuck lady vikings jumping out of a boat on british shores to take what we've got makes me happy on the inside. Butttt....

It also raises questions about the "rape and pillage" nature of viking invasions apparently. I'm not really sure how, but they seem to think it does.

This is cool and pretty interestings but I kind of have to wonder like... Presumably soldiering was more physically demanding back then than it is now. Like, I don't know much about modern day soldiering but I understand it's physically difficult because of the weight you have to carry and so on, though I sort of imagine that they had to carry lots of weight too back then, and like because swinging a sword or axe and blocking with a shield or whatever is pretty physical, doing that with a ton of weight carried too is like... Gotta be difficult right? And if they are coming over on their boats, they are only going to have limited space on the boats so you would assume they're only going to send capable people (unlike if you were defending your own lands from an invasion where like, everyone who can hold a sword may be useful)... How come so many of them were women compared to nowadays? Like, did they just train like motherfuckers till they were like ripped or were the standards just lower then? I mean the average woman is less physically like... built, you know, than the average dude, so...

[Flutterguy]

We don't know exactly what physical condition the women were in. We can only guess. It's like how for the longest time they thought full plated knights beating on each other was awkward and clunky, almost humorous, but as it turns out they were much more mobile than anticipated.

Fact is, if these women trained with their male counterparts, i imagine they built the strength enough to engage in combat and when you're raiding a village, it doesn't exactly take a whole lot of martial prowess to overpower someone. On one side you got a farmer and the other a trained warrior that knows how to deliver a killing blow. The male vikings may have still been stronger, but you only need so much strength.

[Deleted]

I sort of imagine that they had to carry lots of weight too back then

Bows and crossbows weren't that heavy and were extremely effective - something a slender female could easily carry and use with precision.

[Cybran]

http://content.usatoday.com/communit...g#.VAbcgCqxWUl

Women may have accompanied male Vikings in those early invasions of England, in much greater numbers than scholars earlier supposed, McLeod concludes. Rather than the ravaging rovers of legend, the Vikings arrived as marriage-minded colonists. "Although the results presented here cannot be used to determine the number of female settlers, they do suggest that the ratio of females to males may have been somewhere between a third to roughly equal," the study concludes.

Original source. Nowhere does it say that the females were warriors. Too much romanticizing. Get real.

[Deleted]

Bows and crossbows weren't that heavy and were extremely effective - something a slender female could easily carry and use with precision.

A gun isn't hugely heavy either. It's all the other stuff you have to carry though right? Like, water etc?

- - - Updated - - -

http://content.usatoday.com/communit...g#.VAbcgCqxWUl


Original source. Nowhere does it say that the females were warriors. Too much romanticizing. Get real.

Bummer : (

[Blueobelisk]

Cybran just murdered this thread.

[Deleted]

I love female Vrykuls and female Barbarians in Diablo 3. There's something sexy about tall women.

[Flutterguy]

http://content.usatoday.com/communit...g#.VAbcgCqxWUl



Original source. Nowhere does it say that the females were warriors. Too much romanticizing. Get real.

It doesn't make any claim other than that women arrived with their male counterparts and that vikings in general were probably less rapey and pillagey than lore suggests, which shouldn't surprise anyone because documentation during those times is spotty at best and our only available sources are anecdotal, namely from the perspective of those being invaded.

[Deleted]

Cybran just murdered this thread.

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?

Warlike grave goods may have misled earlier researchers about the gender of Viking invaders, the study suggests. At a mass burial site called Repton Woods, "(d)espite the remains of three swords being recovered from the site, all three burials that could be sexed osteologically were thought to be female, including one with a sword and shield," says the study.

[TheGravemind]

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 surrounding graves simply merged into yours due to natural erosion.

[Deleted]

Or surrounding graves simply merged into yours due to natural erosion.

Maybe, I don't know much about this sort of thing or what can happen. I mean I assumed that like, you put a sword in someone's hand and put them in the ground, like... when you dig them up, the sword is still going to be in their hand, mostly?

I mean, this isn't like digging up millions-of-years-old fossils where parts are like totally dissolved and like random bones are scattered all over the shop, right?

[Flutterguy]

Or surrounding graves simply merged into yours due to natural erosion.

If there was a merge, where's the other body?

[GKLeatherCraft]

Vikings are cool, and it would be great if more information was found about them, that was less guessy and tails, and more fact like, love reading up about them.

[Flutterguy]

Vikings are cool, and it would be great if more information was found about them, that was less guessy and tails, and more fact like, love reading up about them.

It's tough because the documentation just isn't there for that time or any time, really, before a modern age. Even accounts from only 200 years ago can be difficult to verify. I don't think people quite fully understand just how little reliable information there is out there on old civilizations and peoples. Would be nice if there was some kind of holy grail of Viking society, but there probably isn't. No "How to be a Viking" to find.

[Deleted]

Bows and crossbows weren't that heavy and were extremely effective - something a slender female could easily carry and use with precision.

This is totally and utterly wrong, please stop spreading this false information around!
This is one of the many stupid hollywood myths that are so far away from reality that it hurts. In every movie or fantasy game you see that small, girly woman using a bow. It does not make any sense.

Firstly crossbows have not yet been invented during the viking times.

Secondly a bow requires far more strength to use than any other weapon does. To use a bow that is capable of penetrating through think layers of padded and chainmail armor, you need a poundage way higher than you would normally use for hunting.


Bows that were used in war that had the range and penetration necessary, were around 80-100 pounds in drawwight.
Modern archers rarely even touch drawweights above 45 pound for target shooting or 60 pound for hunting. A 100 pound bow is increadable hard to pull, I'm certainly sure you would not be able to.
A bow is everything but a weapon for a slender and weak person and requires years and years of intensive muscle training.

The british even used bows that were even heavier and were ranging above 180 pounds. An archer capable of drawing such a bow had to train his whole life for it and they were everyting but slender and weak. In fact the bows even changed their physical anatomy and skelleton structure over time.

In fact such a person would be better dealt with a normal sword or spear because a sword only weights around 2-3 pounds and you don't need strength to cut, you just needed enough to wield it.

[Mihalik]

The physical demands placed on a Soldier haven't changed since the time of the Roman Legions or Ancient Greeks (military units of which we have well documented gear).

The weight a soldier carries around literally hasn't changed since the times of the Roman Legions, what have changed is what they carry around. Lammeral armor and Pillums (throwing spears) where replaced by chain mail and axes and shields, which in turn were replaced by muskets and ammo, which in turn were replaced by Rifles and Machine gun ammo, which in turn were replaced by lighter rifles and ammo, kevlar and batteries for nightvision goggles etc. They also had to carry field rations, tools, etc.

Shieldmaidens are a important part of Scandinavian and Germanic mythology. Their existence is somewhat debated tho.

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.

Just because Vikings buried their women with a sword and shield doesn't actually mean they were warriors. Another issue with having young female warriors in campaigning is that of children. Reliable forms of contraception at that time were largely unavailable, campaigning with children is extremely difficult as a ship borne raider is impossible. In other words, somebody had to give birth to kids, raise kids and take care of the farms while the men were off plundering. All those things were extremely labor and energy intensive tasks in the pre-industrial era.

Perhaps the best example of the value of women in Viking societies was the fact that they had extensive autonomy, legal rights, right to hold property, right to divorce, their testimony being considered of equal value to that of men etc.

[Cybran]

Bows that were used in war that had the range and penetration necessary, were around 80-100 pounds in drawwight.

You can identify archers by the bone density of the arm that they used to hold the bow with. The bone becomes thicker and shorter (i think) as a result.

[Deleted]

It isn't radical to suggest there were women warriors. The existence of Shield Maidens is disputed, but given there is a great deal of myth and legend surrounding individual shieldmaidens it isn't impossible to say they were there. Even in Briton we know of women who fought alongside the men in isolated instances, Boudicca and her daughters for example. But generally women were at the back to kill any fleeing Britons.

It's my opinion that pregnancy forced women to stay out of fighting for the most part, but fighting doesn't always stay away from them. It would be beneficial for everyone if women knew how to fight, to defend themselves or to join ailing ranks of men, especially if brought into a warlike scenario like Norse women and British women were on occassion.

[Deleted]

Perhaps the best example of the value of women in Viking societies was the fact that they had extensive autonomy, legal rights, right to hold property, right to divorce, their testimony being considered of equal value to that of men etc.

While this, of course, does not indicate that they were allowed or accepted as warriors, it does however makes it possible.
A woman there had extensive rights and the mindset of the vikings weren't that sexistic as other cultures have been, so if you turn it around there is nothing against the possibility of women being warriors.

In fact if you have a very liberal society for that time and you were off to raiding some country, why would you not take accepted and proven women as warriors with you? You have one warrior more in your ranks and nothing to lose anyway, because otherwise this spot would have been empty anyway.

To make it more clear: If you have a tribe with around 50 male warriors and 50 women and you're going to raid someone, you could go with 50 warriors.
Or you could go with 75 warriors, 50 males, 25 female with makes your army bigger and more powerful with no real tradeoff against it.

The only reason why women were not used in war during the ancient and medieval times were the sexistic mindsets of the male dominated society back then.
Vikings however didn't have that mindset and thus the possibility is there.

To effectively fight against someone, body strengh is far less important than skill. A woman is perfectly capable of aquiring enough strengh and stamina to battle a male because all were using weapons.
Weapons are equalizers, they make up for physical differences and replace them with skill. Skill however is something you can learn.

[TheGravemind]

If there was a merge, where's the other body?

Decomposed? There are simply so many variables that it's difficult to tell. Not all graves decompose at the same rate (see: bogs.)