The IRON WIDOW burns down the patriarchy in a big way

 

 

In a world where girls are disposable, living and dying for the convenience of men in the home, the boudoir, in the building of empires, one girl defies the ages-old custom, determined to avenge her sister’s death even if she dies too.

This book is MANGA in novel, rather than graphic novel, form, and thus a tale of blended spirit and mech tech, of young men with tortured psyches and young women who can reach them when nobody else can. There are plenty of exciting, easy-to-visualize battle sequences. But when our young heroine, Zetian, is paired with the most violent pilot in the Imperial Army, all her unprecedented spirit power may not be enough to save her.

The story is fast paced and very readable, with gentleness and friendships as well as brutal training and individual striving against obstacles that seem insurmountable. While its roots are firmly in MANGA, the novel form allows a depth of insight into the main character and her society that would be lacking in a graphic novel. Zetian is both engaging and repelling; we want her to succeed even when we don’t approve of her methods. The male characters are less developed, serving (unusually) as tools for her instead of her for them. In that sense it’s a subverting book, determinedly flipping the accepted social order on its head even while Zetian maintains a public façade of meekness.

The tale’s Chinese cultural roots are deep and wide, from the ancient custom of binding girls’ feet to the newest ways that media empires shape public perceptions in support of state objectives. Embedded racism in this post-disaster society serves both individual and Imperial aims as all lower-designated (refugee) racial groups are weak separately, their mutual antipathy fostered to keep them from making common cause against the dominant elite.

A worthy read that doesn’t hesitate to burn down the patriarchy both individually & collectively.

Content warning: physical & psychological violence.

Shield Maidens: not of Rohan but of real Viking bands

The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women

By Nancy Marie Brown

(author of Ivory Vikings, Song of the Vikings, The Far Traveler)

 

“The first Viking housewife with her keys appeared in a Swedish history book in the 1860s, replacing an earlier historical portrait of Viking women who were strikingly equal to Viking men. The Victorian version of Viking history has been presented ever since as truth but it is only one interpretation.”

If her three previous books on Vikings weren’t sufficient evidence, ‘Valkyries’ seals the deal: this author knows whereof she writes. The language and the history are assured, the detail illuminating. From the grave goods at Burka to the ruins of long-vanished trading ports, the deep-rooted history of Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings to the warrior-woman Hervor’s life constructed from snatches of song and saga, it’s part archaeological report, part history, part legend, part anti-patriarchal commentary, and altogether readable.

Like the old Norse sagas, this book slips easily between fact and fiction; unlike them, it tells you which is which. Keeping in mind that the sagas were first written down by Christian monks after being retold & embroidered for possibly hundreds of years first. In at least one known instance those first copyists deliberately rejected the idea that a warrior might be female.

So when the most complete skeleton, with the largest collection of arms, out of over 500 excavated graves at Burka was identified as female by DNA testing, there was some pushback among academics whose whole career had been invested in ‘men = warriors, women = homemakers.’

This unknown female warrior was tall – 5’7 to the largest known king at 5’8 – and her grave goods wouldn’t shame any warrior king. Her two-edged sword & her long thin knife in its ornate sheath both came from the East Way (trading route), toward Byzantium, although it’s impossible to know if she traveled there herself or traded or killed someone who had acquired it. She had two horses, a bow & twenty-five metal-tipped arrows, an axe, two spears, and 2 shields. In short, she was buried with more arms than almost every other known Viking grave in the world.

Small wonder that our author named her Hervor, after the female warrior most often mentioned in the oldest (pre-Christian) sagas.

During Hervor’s lifetime, from about 930 to 970, the whole world of the Vikings changed due to the spreading presence of Christian missionaries. When she was born she was not unusual as a fighter, but by thirty or so years after her death, The Norse pantheon of gods had given way to the Christian monopoly and women had been firmly herded back to hearth and home. Patriarchy was the ruling social structure.

Only in the past 40 years or so has the supremacy of the Viking warrior as male been interrogated. This book makes a great stride toward bringing that knowledge out of dusty academia.

If academia isn’t your thing, here’s a pop-culture twist: If you are a Tolkien or LOTR fan, you will recognize many references in this Norse history as having been reinterpreted by that fantasy writer into Lord of the Rings. Mirkwood and the Vestfold are the first two that struck me. The Riders of Rohan have often been referred to as Vikings of the Grasslands, and King Theoden’s hall is likely based in part on the Shining Hall. After reading ‘The Real Valkyrie’ you may find yourself wondering if Aragorn was thinking of Hervor when he said to Eowyn, “You are the daughter of kings, a shield-maiden of Rohan. I do not think that will be your fate.”

It was not Hervor’s fate, either, to wither in a cage. She died a warrior’s death and was buried in a warrior’s grave with everything she would need to continue her glorious battles in the afterlife:

And hers is only one of the stories of warrior women within these pages. There are tales and histories enough to fire the fighting spirit of any modern woman who reads it, and to give pause to any man who previously assumed all Viking warriors were male.

There’s an excerpt from the book available at

https://crimereads.com/viking-women-real-valkyrie/

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Martin's Press (Aug. 31 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250200849
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250200846

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