Chapter summaries Unquiet Women: From the Dusk of the Roman Empire to the Dawn of the Enlightenment Max Adams

Chapter 28: A Female Viking Warrior’s Grave?

Spoiler Notice

This page contains a factual summary and analysis of the chapter. As it examines an archaeological debate, there are no fictional plot spoilers.

Summary

Max Adams describes the 2017 genomic study that confirmed the skeleton in Birka grave Bj581—long classified as a high-status male warrior—was biologically female. The grave, excavated in the 1880s, contained a full weapon set, two horses, and gaming pieces. While the lead archaeologist, Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, interpreted the burial as evidence of a real female Viking warrior, medieval historian Judith Jesch raised objections about the reliability of the original grave records and whether the woman was interred alone. Adams notes that grave goods are symbolic, placed by the living, and may not be direct occupational portraits. Alternative possibilities include a widow burying her husband’s military equipment. The chapter situates the find within a wider discussion of historical female military leaders like Æthelflæd and St Olga, while emphasising that no female warrior skeleton from this period had yet shown the combat-related trauma that would settle the debate definitively.

Key Events

1880s excavation: Grave Bj581 at the Viking trading settlement of Birka yielded a skeleton with a sword, axe, spear, arrows, two shields, stirrups, gaming pieces, and the remains of two horses. It was recorded as a high-ranking male warrior.
2013 conference report: A re-examination of the skeletal material first raised the possibility that the bones belonged to a woman.
2017 genomic study: Led by Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, analysis found no Y-chromosome, confirming the individual was female. The authors concluded the burial represented a female Viking warrior.
Judith Jesch’s critique: In a September 2017 blog post, Jesch questioned whether the analysed bones were correctly associated with grave Bj581, and whether the goods necessarily defined the occupant as a warrior.
Broader historical context: Adams cites Æthelflæd, the ‘Lady of the Mercians’, and St Olga of Kiev as documented women who led military forces, and notes the Cáin Adomnáin law’s implication of female combatants in early Ireland.
Ongoing debate: The chapter ends by stating that definitive proof of a female fighter—skeletal pathologies from weapons training or trauma—is still lacking from this era, leaving the Bj581 interpretation unresolved.

Character Development

In this chapter, no single historical protagonist is followed through a personal arc; instead, the “character” is the unnamed woman in the grave and the archaeologists who argue over her identity.

The Birka woman (grave Bj581): Her biological sex has been clarified, but her lived identity remains a contested projection. She is cast alternately as a high-status warrior, a shaman-like figure wielding mysterious power, or a widow interred with a husband’s martial symbols. Her “development” is the peeling away of old assumptions, revealing the complexity behind a single burial.
Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson: Represents the scientific consensus that a skeleton buried with warrior gear should be read as a warrior, regardless of sex. Her 2017 study brought the grave to international attention.
Judith Jesch: A scholar of women in the Viking Age, who insists that interpretation must account for the fallibility of nineteenth-century archives and the symbolic, not literal, language of burial goods. She does not dismiss the possibility of female warriors but demands methodological rigour.
Historical comparators: Figures like Freydis (Vinland sagas), Æthelflæd, and St Olga illustrate that women did exercise military leadership and, at times, personal combat, though their lives do not answer the Birka question directly.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

The gap between myth and material evidence: Scandinavian myths teem with Valkyries and shield-maidens, but the archaeological record had, until Bj581, yielded no widely accepted female warrior burial. Adams cautions that mythology should not be mistaken for social reality.
Grave goods as coded messages: The chapter repeatedly insists that objects placed with the dead are symbols chosen by the living, not straightforward biographical inventories. A weapon does not automatically equal a warrior, just as a spindle whorl does not automatically equal a woman.
Gender assumptions in archaeology: The sin of assigning sex based on grave goods, and the reverse danger of projecting modern gender expectations onto past cultures, runs through the whole analysis. The re-examination of Bj581 becomes a case study in the need for separate osteological and artefactual analyses.
Female agency and power: Whether through the warrior’s sword or the seeress’s wand, the chapter frames women’s perceived control over fate—on the battlefield or through divination—as a persistent theme that men of the period found both fascinating and threatening.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter crystallises the book’s method by turning a recent, high-profile scientific claim into a lesson about how historians and archaeologists handle ambiguity. The Birka grave is not merely a curiosity; it forces readers to question every burial they have encountered in earlier chapters. Adams underscores that the loudest public debate often rushes ahead of the careful, unglamorous work of checking archives, preserving context, and admitting what we simply do not know. By including Jesch’s scepticism, he models the sceptical, evidence-first approach he wants readers to adopt. In a book about women whose stories are often fragmentary, this chapter shows that even when science seems to provide a triumphant revelation, interpretation remains a deeply human, contested act.

Study Questions and Answers

What are the two principal objections Judith Jesch raised against the claim that Bj581 proves a female Viking warrior? Jesch pointed out, first, that there has been insufficient scrutiny of whether the analysed bones genuinely belong to grave Bj581—given the 130-year gap since excavation, the original field notes and curatorial records need thorough verification. Second, she argued that the presence of weapons does not automatically identify the buried woman as a warrior; the grave goods could belong to a deceased husband whose body was lost or buried elsewhere, with the widow interred with his martial regalia as a mark of status and memory.
According to Adams, why is it important to separate the osteological identification of sex from the interpretation of grave goods? Adams explains that grave goods are placed by the living and carry symbolic messages that may not be literal biographies of the deceased. Historically, archaeologists sometimes assigned sex based on gendered assumptions (weapons with males, jewellery with females), which can create circular reasoning. Modern practice demands independent osteological analysis to avoid projecting contemporary gender roles onto the past and to recognise that the relationship between a skeleton and its objects is culturally coded, not straightforward.
What kind of evidence does Adams suggest would finally settle the question of female Viking warriors, and why is it still absent? He argues that convincing proof would come from female skeletons displaying clear pathologies of weapons training—such as specific musculoskeletal stress markers—and traumatic weapon injuries. To date, no early medieval female burial from this region has shown such skeletal trauma. Without it, the Bj581 burial remains open to alternative interpretations, and the case for routinely fighting women in the Viking Age lacks the hard physical evidence that burial goods alone cannot supply.