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Since there's discourse about females viking warriors ever since the AC Valhalla announcement, here are some facts from your friendly local historian. While I haven't studied this exact topic extensively, I had classes and done research related to vikings and women in history 1/?
For those who say women weren't warriors and stayed at home all the time: that's just simply not true. I don't know if you're not capable to do a simple Google search, or just delusional, but we have thousands of amazing women throughout history, who not only fought, but 2/?
led countries IN ADDITION to having families and dealing with misogynist assholes in their own respective eras. We know of female pharaohs who led military campaigns, queens who brought peace and prosperity to their countries and viking women who were respected as warriors 3/?
One of the most reliable sources to prove there were warrior women are grave sites. While legends and myths can be debunked or just dismissed, you can't dismiss the evidence of graves. Especially during those eras and tribes where we don't have many reliable 4/?
written sources, researching material culture is fundamental. What is material culture, you may ask? It's the objects we use, to make it simple. If someone wanted to research this age, and we somehow don't leave behind any text, they would look at our furniture, phones, 5/?
other objects that seem insignificant to us, figure out how we used them, what was their purpose. We do the same with material culture from periods where we don't have accounts from the people themselves, from that exact era, which would be a fairly reliable source. 6/?
And there is DNA evidence of women warriors. Look up the Birka excavation, where a warrior's grave was found. They assumed it was a man until recently. Which was mainly the product of misogyny among archaelogists and historians, which is still very prevalent, sadly. 7/?
We also have to consider that, when we study history. That's why there's always new research coming out all the time. This is how you achieve historical accuracy, by constantly debating and finding new evidence that changes the whole picture. 8/?
What we know of history now is not set in stone. For about a 100 years, historians thought the Birka grave was a man's grave, until we had the technology to prove it otherwise. We constantly learn new things about our past, which may sound odd, but that's just the case. 9/?
And you can't really dismiss the fact that in Norse mythology and legends, we have tons of female warriors, gods assuming other genders, and just depictions of women who certainly didn't "stay at home". Do you think the vikings would have these kind of beliefs 10/?
and they didn't reflect on their society? Do you think not one woman would feel empowered to become a warrior when they were brought up hearing these stories? We do have accounts about women in warfare from all over the world, from every time period, so it's not impossible. 11/?
You also have to take into account that men have been diminishing the roles of women since forever. That's why you have to cross-reference all the time, because what an old priest said about vikings in the 12th century may not be the truth, especially not on its own. 12/?
Thanks for reading! Also support #ACSisterhood because we are tired of misogyny in the community. We are here and always been here, and I'm done with uneducated comments from men who don't know what they're talking about.
Also please feel free to add to this if you know more about the topics mentioned! I'm not writing a paper, so I didn't want to go into details, we would be here all day. This is just a summary of my thoughts, studies and research I jotted down on this fine morning.
