Suzanne's Mom's Blog

No sooner had I seen this Science article describing female DNA at a Viking burial site, than I learned there was a controversy about it. Was this a Viking with weapons and war horses — or not? (Turtle Bunbury tweeted the tip.)

Michael Price believes the researchers who analyzed the bones. “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. And like a mythical valkyrie.”

A study published 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. A few female Viking soldiers have been unearthed over the years, but none had the trappings of high rank found in the Birka burial — not just weapons and armor, but also game pieces and a board used for planning tactics.

“In recent years, reanalysis of skeletal characteristics had hinted that the corpse might be female. Now, the warrior’s DNA proves her sex.” And you can see the study at Wiley Online Library, here.

Skepticism may be read here, at Ars Technica, where Annalee Newitz makes the point that 19th C. excavation was often careless and this one may have mixed up bones.

Sigh.