Ok, I'm dusting off the account because this question has been front and center of my mind these last two days!

It may change our reading of things, but check out this response by Judith Jesch, one of the foremost scholars of Viking Age gender.

Fundamentally, there are some serious issues with the way the finding is being reported on (both by the article itself and the media) that are rather problematic.

In many ways it is a redux of the similar media flurry over [findings](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/j.1468-0254.2011.00323.x/full_ by Shane McLeod that we may be seriously mis-gendering burials of Scandinavian origin in England. This resulted in a major twitter frenzy after a main stream news agency picked the findings up and ran with them. Medievalist.net does a nice job of summarizing some of the results which is discussed in the thread you linked to in your edit.

The finding is very exciting and certainly demonstrates the big changes that new scientific techniques can bring to the table in our understanding of the Viking Age, but fundamentally our knowledge of this particular person is spotty at best. To declare her as a "high-ranking officer" on the basis of goods alone seems suspect, not least of all because of the phrase "officer" which is deployed without any sort of discussion of what an "officer" would be in the Viking Age (officer of whom? in what "army"? with what "duties"?).

So does this discovery change out understanding of the role of women combatants? Perhaps, but its worth noting their doesn't appear to be evidence (or at least not evidence that is discussed) as to whether this woman saw combat (no signs of a violent death, no discussion of what sort of bodily wear and tear might be visible as the result of combat). We do know that Birka, where the body was discovered, was tremendously rich and did have to deal with pirates from time to time (the Vita Anskari one of our few contemporary written sources references this for example) so even if this woman didn't go "a-Viking" she might have fought. We can't say for certain based purely on the grave goods.

One danger, of course, with this more muted reaction to the findings is that it could result (and perhaps rightly so) in accusations that historians (especially male historians) are setting the burden of evidence so high as to be absurd, that each finding is just "one example" rather than conclusive evidence. This is best exmplified in anti-evolution discussions where each "missing link" is met with the demand for another link. This is something we have to be very careful of, not knee-jerk reacting to something that challenges assumptions with dismissals or denying the evidence right in front of our face just because it comes in pieces rather than as a conclusive whole. But I don't think Jesch is doing that, I think she is raising some very real issues with the way the authors of the new study go about presenting their findings.

And I will say is that the find certainly add more data to the discussion of gender and burial and certainly points, again, to the differences in how gender was treated in Viking Age Scandinavia compared to, say, the Frankish Empire or the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Clearly women in Scandinavia had more status and standing within a martial context than their peers elsewhere in Christian Europe, for instance. And clearly they were actively involved in the "Viking experiment" in all its facets, not just stuck at home tending the farm while men ventured forth. These findings are a slam dunk for demonstrating this, even if they don't tell us whether women (or this woman in particular) were regularly on the battle field itself.

It also should, again, make us think long and hard about our basic assumptions when we analyze grave goods as markers of identity, no matter the case. This can't help but be a good thing for the field. New scientific techniques like the ones employed here will go a long way towards helping with this.

What we are facing, at the end of the day,is a fundamental on-going challenge for the study of the Viking Age. The fact that the vast majority of our written sources are either not written by or for Scandinavians or are not even remotely contemporary with the Viking Age and that our material/archaeological evidence can't "speak." As a result we constantly struggle to mesh historical and material evidence, the one being hyper-specific the other being broad and general. It is always a challenge, but it isn't a challenge that this article necessarily does a particularly good job at taking up.

Undoubtedly, though, these finds will prove fertile ground for more detailed and interesting scholarship from both disciplines. I personally can't wait to discuss them with my students!