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The thing that strikes me about these discussions it that if female viking fighters were at all common, discovery of possible evidence of such would hardly be n

The thing that strikes me about these discussions it that if female viking fighters were at all common, discovery of possible evidence of such would hardly be news. The vikings are not some mythical or extremely ancient entity. They thrived in the 8th-11th centuries and came into contact with numerous other cultures and these cultures had extensive writing and records that survive to this day. Female fighters is something that certainly would have been widely recorded by nearly all of the cultures that the vikings came into contact with, yet there's no real record there. Things like the Byzantine Empire's Varangian guard were even heavily composed of Scandinavians where surely such tales and discussion would have received much attention. Yet again, no. This seems to be a decidedly modern invention that, though certainly better intentioned, feels akin to things like phrenology in that people spin together hamstrung and disparate bits of data to try to create a view with a facade of 'science' behind it, when it's really just about trying to confirm biases.

qw 9y ago
There are both historical accounts of battles and physical evidence referenced in this Wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield-maiden https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield-maiden
- indubitable 9y ago
  First one quick aside, Wikipedia tends to fare very poorly when we get into contemporary issues or issues involving social matters. And that is certainly in play here. The "Historical Accounts" features such amazing information as the story of a pregnant woman grabbing a sword and scaring away an attacking force, while topless of course. The "Historical Existence" section is literally nothing but stating that there are two scholars that argued they existed, and one scholar that argued that they did not exist. The main point is again that we have hundreds of years of activity from a civilization that heavily interacted with numerous other civilizations. And the written word had long since been developed and spread. If female fighters played any meaningful role whatsoever, you would not be here trying to debate it using obscure bits of low quality evidence - it would be as self evident as vikings being male. They would have regularly participated in battles, been regularly observed (and noted) by other cultures and so on. But instead you're left to cite tales of a pregnant woman scaring off an attacking force bare breasted, or reference "physical evidence" like 'there was a female skeleton inside a grave that had weapons!' To be clear, why do you think vikings were men? I needn't provide you with some obscure tale of a man buried in a grave or whatever. These battles were regularly recounted, vikings were regularly interacted with, and the entire civilization is reasonably well recorded. And there's no real ambiguity. Any ambiguity is in us taking isolated incidents and trying to extrapolate them upwards while ignoring the other 99.99999% of evidence.
dragonwriter 9y ago
> Female fighters is something that certainly would have been widely recorded by nearly all of the cultures that the vikings came into contact with My understanding is that plenty was written about them, but these records have generally been dismissed by historians as mythological rather than factual in nature.

qw 9y ago

There are both historical accounts of battles and physical evidence referenced in this Wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield-maiden https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield-maiden

indubitable 9y ago
First one quick aside, Wikipedia tends to fare very poorly when we get into contemporary issues or issues involving social matters. And that is certainly in play here. The "Historical Accounts" features such amazing information as the story of a pregnant woman grabbing a sword and scaring away an attacking force, while topless of course. The "Historical Existence" section is literally nothing but stating that there are two scholars that argued they existed, and one scholar that argued that they did not exist. The main point is again that we have hundreds of years of activity from a civilization that heavily interacted with numerous other civilizations. And the written word had long since been developed and spread. If female fighters played any meaningful role whatsoever, you would not be here trying to debate it using obscure bits of low quality evidence - it would be as self evident as vikings being male. They would have regularly participated in battles, been regularly observed (and noted) by other cultures and so on. But instead you're left to cite tales of a pregnant woman scaring off an attacking force bare breasted, or reference "physical evidence" like 'there was a female skeleton inside a grave that had weapons!' To be clear, why do you think vikings were men? I needn't provide you with some obscure tale of a man buried in a grave or whatever. These battles were regularly recounted, vikings were regularly interacted with, and the entire civilization is reasonably well recorded. And there's no real ambiguity. Any ambiguity is in us taking isolated incidents and trying to extrapolate them upwards while ignoring the other 99.99999% of evidence.

dragonwriter 9y ago

> Female fighters is something that certainly would have been widely recorded by nearly all of the cultures that the vikings came into contact with My understanding is that plenty was written about them, but these records have generally been dismissed by historians as mythological rather than factual in nature.