Viking armies may have had high ranking female officers at the battlefield, say scientists who conducted a DNA analysis of the skeletal remains of a warrior and found that it was a woman.
Researchers at Uppsala University and Stockholm University in Sweden conducted a study on a mid-10th century grave in Swedish Viking town Birka, one of the most well-known graves from the Viking Age.
The burial was excavated in the 1880s, revealing remains of a warrior surrounded by weapons, including a sword, armour-piercing arrows, and two horses. There was also a full set of gaming pieces and a gaming board.
The morphology of some skeletal traits have long suggested that she was a woman, but since this grave has been the type specimen for a Viking warrior for over a century, it has always been assumed to have belonged to a male Viking.
Now, researchers have found that the DNA retrieved from the skeleton demonstrates that the individual carried two X chromosomes and no Y chromosome.
"This is the first formal and genetic confirmation of a female Viking warrior," said Professor Mattias Jakobsson at Uppsala University.
Isotope analyses confirm a travelling life style, well in tune with the martial society that dominated 8th to 10th century Northern Europe, researchers said.
"The gaming set indicates that she was an officer, someone who worked with tactics and strategy and could lead troops in battle," said Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, form Stockholm University, who led the study.
"What we have studied was not a Valkyrie from the sagas but a real life military leader, that happens to have been a woman," she said.
"Written sources mention female warriors occasionally, but this is the first time that we have really found convincing archaeological evidence for their existence," said Neil Price, Professor at Uppsala University.
The finding were published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology.
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