num_pages: 336
description: In the tradition of Stacy Schiffs Cleopatra Brown lays to rest the hoary myth that Viking society was ruled by men and celebrates the dramatic lives of female Viking warriors.In 2017 DNA tests revealed to the collective shock of many scholars that a Viking warrior in a high-status grave in Birka Sweden was actually a woman. The Real Valkyrie weaves together archaeology history and literature to imagine her life and times showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians have imagined.Brown uses science to link the Birka warrior whom she names Hervor to Viking trading towns and to their great trade route east to Byzantium and beyond. She imagines her life intersecting with larger-than-life but real women including Queen Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings the Viking leader known as The Red Girl and Queen Olga of Kyiv. Hervors short dramatic life shows that much of what we have taken as truth about women in the Viking Age is based not on data but on nineteenth-century Victorian biases. Rather than holding the household keys Viking women in history law saga poetry and myth carry weapons. These women brag As heroes we were widely knownwith keen spears we cut blood from bone. In this compelling narrative Brown brings the world of those valkyries and shield-maids to vivid life.
language: English
title: The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women
publisher: St. Martin's Press