Viking women warriors

[Erpingham]

Nice set of links to research on possible Viking women warriors by Dr Leszek Gardeła  of Bonn University, for those who want to look into this topic.  Couple of short introductory videos, Facebook page etc. too.

[Ade G]

I read a piece on Shaming in Norse culture recently, it touched on women fighting and surmised that it was dishonourable to kill a woman even if she attacked you so they tended to survive battles and injure/kill male opponents.

[Nick Harbud]

The only instance I can recall of a Norse woman affecting a battle is the incident in Njal's Saga where (I think) Skarp Hedin's wife, due to some past disagreement, refused to plait her husband a new bowstring from her hair, resulting in the death of both of them.

Hell hath no fury....   

[Erpingham]

To save creating a third topic on this, here is an interesting article about the so-called "Viking Woman Warrior" grave at Birka under its more neutral designation Bj.581.

Nice sensible stuff about not letting modern attitudes and controversies swamp what the archaeology says and the fact that the archaeology invites interesting questions about Viking society in that place and time.

[Patrick Waterson]

Yes, a good article.

Interesting to compare the Viking grave layout with that of the Prittlewell Anglo-Saxon grave we were discussing recently.