The Real Valkyrie

Recent genetic research on the human remains of a 10th-century Viking grave excavated in 1878 in Birka, Sweden, rocked the world of Viking studies when it determined that the warrior buried with numerous weapons and two horses was not male, but female. I loved how this author imagines what that woman’s life might have been like. She also suggests that the woman buried in the Birka grave was merely one of many female Viking warriors, offering data drawn from archaeological finds, from historical accounts, from language studies, and from the sagas to support the theory that ‘shield maids’ really did… show more.

In 2017, Swedish bioarchaeologists announced the discovery that an iconic Viking warrior known as the Birka man was in fact the Birka woman. In The Real Valkyrie, Nancy Marie Brown takes the reader on a deeply researched and richly imagined exploration of what life might have been like for the Birka woman, whom she names Hervor. She asks new questions of sagas, chronicles, and archeological sources—and leads the reader through what those sources can tell us. She introduces us to a broader version of the Viking world, and to many powerful Viking women who have been previously dismissed as… show more.