There are very few medieval sources that mention female warriors among the Vikings. Even the few ones that do, like for example Saxo Grammaticus (who described a battle that supposedly took place 500 years prior) do so in rather vague terms. In many cases, there seems to be some kind of mix up between history and mythology; mainly the various myths surrounding the Valkyries and the Goddess Freya.

In terms of archeology, it has been supposed that some women might have been given weapons as grave gifts, so that they could pass these objects on to their husbands; who might have been improperly buried in a distant land. No woman has ever been found in a complete battle attire, not even the famous and controversial Birka warrior.

In any case, it would seem unlikely from a social point of view that female warriors were common, if present at all. Military equipment was expensive and women were valuable political assets to those who could afford such equipment. A wealthy Norse farmer/nobleman would have used his daughters to strengthen bonds with the surrounding gentry, weaving cloth or working the fields; not for joining a raiding party. This is supported by similar cultural practises by earlier and later cultures in Europe; though the "viking lifestyle" might have been more supportive of women in combat than the mainstream Norse cultural paradigms; in the sense that the 17th century would also see a (very small and highly publicised) number of female pirates in the caribbean.

In terms of literature and mythology, it has been proposed that the purpose of the sagas about shield maidens were not actually meant to glorify them, but to warn girls about the danger or stupidity of wanting to participate in the "world of men". This is because in most of these sagas, the shieldmaidens often either die rather horribly ór they marry and start a family. In other words, they might have paradoxically been meant to affirm 'traditional' gender roles.

The literary association between Germanic peoples and women combatants goes back further than the Vikings by the way. At the battle of Aquae Sextiae (102 BCE) Roman historians mention women being part of the line of battle, with the women cheering on the men and killing themselves and their children after being defeated by the Roman army.

Context is everything though, as the Cimbrian War, in which this episode supposedly took place, was not a standard case of a Roman legion facing a Germanic warband; rather, this was a tribal migration in which the Germanic tribes involved carried everything they owned, including their families, with them. This makes the participation of women likelier, as it would have truly involved a desperate all or nothing situation. Similar instances of "women joining the men in battle" are known from the Goths during their crossing of the Danube several centuries later.

These events could have later found their way into myths, as is suspected of the Völsunga saga (in which shieldmaidens feature) which deals with the annihilation of a subtribe of the Burgundians. In the latters case, the shieldmaidens could represent the valiant way in which (certain noble) women resisted, fought or helped when the battle turned and defeat was inevitable.

The literary sources have been covered, but in terms of the archaeological sources, let's talk briefly about abnormal burials. Right now, we're in a very exciting position: we can do chromosomal analysis, allowing us to reassess the sex of skeletons (and even to sex infants from tooth enamel). Until the 1980s, sexing skeletons was done based on things like the width of hips and other secondary sexual characteristics, as well as taking into account things like grave goods. Which, obviously, has some problems: not everyone exhibits these characteristics in the same way, and we've historically been easily swayed by seeing grave goods we expect belong to one gender. Superimposing our own social norms, especially around gender, onto the past is a trap that archaeologists and historians often fall into, and we need to be extremely careful about doing so.

The idea of the "Shieldmaiden" was boosted in the media by the reanalysis of the Birka chamber grave in Sweden. This was initially supposed to be a male skeleton, by the good old antiquarian tradition of taking a good squint at grave goods and going 'that's a dude there', but after testing in 2017 was shown to have two X chromosomes which would typically identify the skeleton as female.

This person was buried with a large number of varied weapons, two horses - one bridled for riding - and a gaming board with a bag of pieces in their lap. There were no 'domestic' finds such as spindles, loom weights, agricultural implements, etc. From the very beginning, this was interpreted as the grave of a high-status warrior, something which was enhanced by the gaming board and the number of pieces - these are very rarely found as a full set, and usually associated with military leaders. Their clothing was associated with the Eurasian steppes; their tassled hat seems to have been made in Kiev, which is in line with Rus influence in Birka during this period.

The question is: what does this mean? Although they were 'female', we cannot be sure this person was a woman - indeed it's entirely plausible that they were a man and was accepted as such, or that they saw themselves and their gender in a way that we do not have a name for. It's also possible that they did not take on the traits of a warrior in life, but were granted them (for some reason best known to the people who buried them - after all, the dead do not bury themselves) after death. We certainly see in a similar period children buried with weapons, or adults buried with clearly non-functional weapons, all of which clearly have the purpose of endowing 'warrior-hood' on them. However, the context of the burial - at a hillfort, nearby other burials with weapons, in an incredibly rich fashion - suggests that this person did indeed take on the role of warrior during their lifetime. There is also another double-grave at Birka (Bj 834) where the woman seems to have been the more important person buried and which also contains a multitude of weapons.

And... however, again: there are also a number of other graves in Scandinavia where people with XX chromosomes have been buried with 'warrior' grave goods, such as the Gerdup grave in Denmark, a double grave containing a man who seems to have died by hanging and a woman who has been buried with a spear (or possibly a magic staff), possibly indicating some sort of special ritual status which may have included a stepping outside of gender norms. Was this person a warrior, or were they a ritual specialist, possibly someone who practised seidr? Or is thrusting a spear into a grave to close it - not dissimilar to Coifi casting a spear into the temple at Goodmanham - an important ritual act that was done for these specific people? Gardela (2013) suggests that it may have been an act of apotrophaic magic to prevent them from rising again as revenants, but also notes that it's important to remember that spears are often associated with valkyries, who may or may not have been real weapon-carrying norse women, and who it has recently been suggested may have been important in burying the dead (so slightly facetiously: are the women associated with spears... Scandinavian funeral directors?).

So, essentially: the answer is in flux, and I would watch the scholarship over the next decade or as skeletal remains are reanalysed, as it's possible that we may form a new and interesting picture of gender and warriorhood. It's also important to remember that there have always been exceptional individuals; if the Birka burial is indeed of a warrior and a woman, and that proves to be much more rare then we think, they may simply have been just that - exceptional.

Sources: Dowson, T. 2006. Archaeologists, feminists and queers: sexual politics in the construction of the past, in Geller, P. & Stockett, M. (ed.) Feminist anthropology: past, present, and future: 89–102. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Gardeła, L. 2013. The dangerous dead? Rethinking Viking Age deviant burial, in Słupecki, L. & Simek, R. (ed.) Conversions: looking for ideological change in the early Middle Ages: 99–136. Vienna: Fassbaender.

Gardeła L. (2013) 'Warrior-women' in Viking Age Scandinavia? A preliminary archaeological study, Analecta Archaeologica Ressoviensia 8, 273-339.

Hedenstierna-Jonson, C., Kjellström, A., Zachrisson, T., Krzewińska, M., Sobrado, V., Price, N., Günther, T., Jakobsson, M., Götherström, A. & Storå, J.. 2017. A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 164: 853–60. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23308

Ghisleni, L., Jordan, A.M. & Fioccoprile, E. (ed.). 2016. ‘Binary binds’: deconstructing sex and gender dichotomies in archaeological practice. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 23: 765–87. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-016-9296-9

Hedenstierna-Jonson, C. 2006. The Birka warrior: the material culture of a martial society. Stockholm: Stockholm University.

Nakhaeizadeh, S., Dror, I.E. & Morgan, R.M.. 2014. Cognitive bias in forensic anthropology: visual assessment of skeletal remains is subject to confirmation bias. Science and Justice 54: 208–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scijus.2013.11.003

Price, N., Hedenstierna-Jonson, C., Zachrisson, T., Kjellström, A., Storå, J., Krzewińska, M., . . . Götherström, A. (2019). Viking warrior women? Reassessing Birka chamber grave Bj.581. Antiquity, 93(367), 181-198. doi:10.15184/aqy.2018.258