For more than a century after it was found, a skeleton ensconced in a Viking grave, surrounded by military weapons, was assumed to be that of a battle-hardened man. No more.

The warrior was, in fact, female. And not just any female, but a Viking warrior woman, a shieldmaiden, like the ancient Brienne of Tarth from “Game of Thrones.”

The artifacts entombed with the 1,000-year-old bones and unearthed in 1889 in Birka, Sweden, included two shields, a sword, an ax, a spear, armor-piercing arrows and a battle knife — not to mention the remnants of two horses. Such weapons of war among grave goods, archaeologists long assumed, meant the Viking had been male.

Gotherstrom, along with nine other scientists from Stockholm and Uppsala universities, announced their results in a paper in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Theirs is the first genetic proof that at least some Viking women were warriors.

The shieldmaiden, whose teeth identify her as being at least 30, also appeared to be of high status. Her grave chamber is on a prominent, elevated piece of ground between the town and a hilltop fort, and it also contained a full set of gaming pieces and a gaming board, typically used by military leaders to work out battle tactics and strategy.

Although some weapons have been found in other female Viking graves, none included only weapons — or so many of them.

“Our results caution against sweeping interpretations based on archaeological contexts and preconceptions,” they write in their paper, but the findings are highly suggestive “that women, indeed, were able to be full members of male-dominated spheres.”

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Rubenov said:

They found Lagertha?

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Piecake said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...s-after-its-discovery/?utm_term=.a2ec93b3f7ae

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Alavard said:

Or maybe not:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/09/have-we-finally-found-hard-evidence-for-viking-warrior-women/

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Not said:

Aw gee if only human females and males were biologically dissimilar enough that we could differentiate gender by skeleton

Aw gee

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