In the historical drama The Last Kingdom, women vikings are shown to be highly competent fighters, many as competent as trained men. Was this common in real vikings?

by loogawa
y_sengaku

The news of 'Female Viking warriors' and their burial finds has been recently quite popular, so you can find good information from such previous posts in this subreddit.

To give an example, the comment of /u/Mediaevumed in Female Viking Warriors Re-Examined includes some very useful links to the expert's (rather conservative) commentaries to the current popularity of Female Vikings.

 

[Added]: Until recently (especially till the end of the 20th century), the most of researches insisted on distinguishing the warrior heroines in Old Norse literature from the women in general during the Viking Age, and regarded the former primarily as an idealized literary figure. These recent finds/ news might change this traditional view of the role of females among the Viking Age Norsemen.

As for the classic for such gender study in Vikings, I'd recommend the following article: C. Clover, 'Regardless of Sex: Men, Women and Power in Early Northern Europe'. Speculum 68 (1993): 363-87. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2864557.

 

In the first place, we don't know much even about how young male viking (aspirants) usually trained in their childhood and adolescence during the Viking Age, though.

 

The following is a stanza of the poem by Earl Rognvald Kali of Orkney (d. 1158) in the northern frontier of the British Isles (and settled by Norsemen), well-known as 'the Nine Arts of the Vikings'. The poet lived in the first half of the 12th century, but some of the 'arts' boasted here by him are said to date further back to the Viking Age (usually dated from ca. 800-1050).

'At nine skills I challenge -
a champion at chess:
runes I rarely spoil:
I read books and write:
I'm skilled at skiing:
and shooting and sculling
and more! I've mastered
music and verse'.

Quoted from: Hermann Pálsson & Paul Edwards (trans.), Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981, Chap. 58 (p. 108.)

 

Rognvald Kali is said to left his home in Norway (his father was Norwegian) first at age 15 in saga, but the scribe of the saga does not add further information how he learned these skills in his home, unfortunately.