Birka Warrior Was A Woman – DNA Reveals

AncientPages.com - During the Viking Age females took part in battles and women could become great warriors. Archaeologists have examined an ancient tomb in the Viking town of Birka. The grave contains a skeleton, various  weapons, including a sword and armor-breaking arrows, horse and a board game.
The person who was buried in the grave was a person of great military importance. A comprehensive DNA study now reveals the Birka warrior was in fact a woman.

A reconstruction of Birka

As previously discussed on Ancient Pages, established in the middle of the 8th century, Birka was an important trade hub for goods from Scandinavia, Central and Eastern Europe and the Orient.

It was also the site of the first Christian gatherings in Sweden, organized in 831 by Saint Ansgar, a noble man, later Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, who preached and made converts for six months at Birka.
Strangely, the town was abandoned and ceased to exist as a manufacturing and commercial center around 960 A.D.
The grave of the Birka warrior was discovered in the late 1800s, but it the first now the trues story about the person who died there can be told.

The drawing is a reconstruction of how the grave with the woman originally may have looked. The illustration was made by Þórhallur Þráinsson © Neil Price

Scientists from the University of Stockholm and Uppsala University in Sweden have a detailed DNA study of the body. DNA scan  show the person buried in the tomb has X chromosomes, but lacks Y chromosomes, which means that the warrior was woman.

This is how the tomb at Birka possibly looked like. The grave plan was created by Evald Hansen and based on the original plan from grave Bj 581 from Hjalmar Stolpe's excavations at Birka in the late 1800s (Stolpe 1889).

This is an important discovery because we are not dealing with a person mentioned in the Sagas, but a real human being who was a great military leader and a woman.

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According to Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson archaeologist and researcher at the Department of Archeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, who was in charge of the research study, the board game place in the tomb shows the woman must have been an officer, someone who worked with tactics and strategy and could lead troops in battle.

Did you know Viking enjoyed a board game called Hnefatafl? Image credit: Photographer: Phil Lacher

“Written sources mention female warriors occasionally, but this is the first time that we’ve really found convincing archaeological evidence for their existence,” says Neil Price, Professor at Uppsala University’s Department of Archaeology and Ancient History.

Interestingly there could be even more evidence that indicates shield-maidens did exist. Some years ago, archaeologists uncovered beautifully preserved, 1,000-year-old Viking boat burial in Scottish Highlands. It is today known as the Ardnamurchan boat burial.

This discovery also suggests that  mythical female warriors known as Shieldmaidens may have been the basis for the mythical ‘Valkyries.’

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