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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