{"id":557,"date":"2019-01-11T13:44:09","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T11:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogg.mah.se\/historiskastudier\/?p=557"},"modified":"2019-01-11T16:38:57","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T14:38:57","slug":"hyper-masculinity-vs-viking-warrior-women-pop-culture-vikings-and-gender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogg.mah.se\/historiskastudier\/2019\/01\/11\/hyper-masculinity-vs-viking-warrior-women-pop-culture-vikings-and-gender\/","title":{"rendered":"Hyper-masculinity vs Viking warrior women: pop culture Vikings and gender"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Simon Trafford<\/a>, Institute of Historical Research, University of London.
\nTwitter: @SimonJPTrafford<\/a><\/h3>\n

On 8 September 2017, a short article with the title \u2018A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics\u2019<\/a> was published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology<\/em>, authored by Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson and a number of other scholars. It brought DNA analysis to bear upon a skeleton dating from the C10th and found in 1877 at the famous site at Birka, in east-central Sweden not far outside Stockholm. Richly furnished with goods including eastern-style apparel, weapons, gaming pieces and two horses, the grave was interpreted on its discovery as that of a high-status male, but subsequent osteological examination in the 1970s and in 2016 had strongly suggested that the skeletal material was female; the new analysis conducted by Hedenstierna-Jonson and her colleagues confirmed on genetic grounds that the human tissue recovered from the grave was indeed biologically female.<\/p>\n

Noting accounts of shield-maidens and female warriors in saga and early Scandinavian literature, the article asserted that the new scientific results showed that \u2018the high-status grave Bj 581 on Birka was the burial of a high ranking female Viking warrior\u2019 and that it suggested \u2018that women, indeed, were able to be full members of male dominated spheres\u2019 (Hedenstierna-Jonson et al. 2017, 858). A press release published at the same time as the article was picked up by various news outlets, and the story soon started to appear in traditional print media. But far more dramatically, though, it also exploded virally across the internet, with a rash of articles appearing in many outlets not normally much concerned with archaeology.<\/p>\n

Popular engagement with the \u2018Viking warrior women\u2019 story is a topic of interest in its own right that reveals a lot about the relationship of scholarship and the online public realm in the age of social media and viral culture. In a fascinating series of blog posts<\/a> commencing very soon after the story broke, Prof Howard Williams, an archaeologist at the University of Chester, started to catalogue reactions, exploring both the popular appeal of the Viking warrior women story and the ways in which it found expression. A number of reasons for the enormous interest in the story were clear: firstly, it was about Vikings, perennial favourites who \u2013 unusually for medieval historical figures \u2013 have a clearly defined image in popular culture, an image, which, furthermore, embraces both men and women. Secondly, the popularity of the story rested in part on a well-established and popular media trope in which new scientific evidence is seen to provide a clear and comprehensible answer to a question that has long been debated by humanities scholars but has proved intractable or insoluble. In this case the new scientific evidence in question was DNA testing, already firmly established as a firm media favourite and cure-all, apparently able to provide accurate and near-miraculous answers across a range of fields, from identification of perpetrators of crime to establishing familial connections to clarifying large-scale historical questions of population dynamics and migration. Thirdly, the idea of warrior women performs the distinctive feat of appealing simultaneously to heterosexual male fantasies of liberated Amazons and to feminist aspirations of finding powerful women in past societies.<\/p>\n

Also very notable in the online coverage were consistent themes in the way in which the story was presented. In practically every case, an allusion was made to received impressions of the Vikings and\/or of warrior women from televisual culture, which generally also allowed the use of an eye-catching picture. Most frequently depicted was Lagertha, one of the central characters from the History Channel drama Vikings<\/em>, but others \u2013 such as Xena, Warrior Princess or Daenerys Targaryen (from Game of Thrones) were also cited, regardless of the fact that neither of them are in any way presented as Vikings.<\/p>\n

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Figure 1 – The Independent, 8 September 2017<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Figure 2 – The Huffington Post, 11 September 2017<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Figure 3 – Refinery 29, 10 September 2017<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Reaction from scholars to the story and to the popular interest in it was mixed but before very long, some powerful criticisms had been brought to bear, notably from Prof Judith Jesch of the University of Nottingham here<\/a> and here<\/a> and, a little later, as we have seen, from Howard Williams<\/a>. While recognising the interest of the research and welcoming the considerable attention and enthusiasm that it had attracted, a number of problems were noted. The arguments are numerous and sometimes quite complex, but summarising ruthlessly, these points were central:<\/p>\n

 (1) That the authors of the article had been too dismissive of previous scholarship and in particular had not given proper weight to the specific cultural context in which descriptions of \u2018warrior women\u2019 had occurred.<\/p>\n

(2) That questions existed over whether the grave was actually a complete intact sealed context and whether material had been removed from it or inserted into it before excavation or mis-labelled or lost after excavation.<\/p>\n

(3) That insufficient credit had been given for existing studies of gender fluidity in the early medieval world, including gendered grave-goods apparently \u2018mis-matched\u2019 to the occupant.<\/p>\n

(4) That the automatic equation of interred weapons with a \u2018warrior identity\u2019 for the buried person ignored 30 years of mortuary archaeology which had comprehensively rejected the static signalling of societal roles by burial ritual.<\/p>\n

In sum the academic critics asserted that the Hedenstierna-Jonson et al. article had been far too bold and reductive in stating definitively that Bj581 was the burial of a high-ranking warrior woman without recognising the uncertainty involved or the possibility of many other interpretations of what had been found. As Howard Williams said<\/a>: \u2018We might suggest that rather than a \u2018female warrior\u2019 we see a distinctive, complex social and political identity, perhaps relating to multiple individuals living and dead as well as mythological ideas, materialised in this rich burial\u2019.<\/p>\n

Discussion continues on the subject: in particular there was further debate at the Weaving War <\/a>conference in Oslo this past December in which both Hedenstierna-Jonson and Jesch participated. Here, though, I want to think more about what the episode says about links between medieval scholarship and popular culture, and, in particular, how contemporary debates about gender powered the spectacular virality of the story. I want, in particular, to examine what is really a very simple proposition \u2013 that the huge popularity of the Vikings, in combination with the extreme hypermasculinity of the traditional Viking image has fed a hunger for female roles and involvement ever since their first emergence as a part of popular culture, but that this has been given particular impetus in recent times by a number of special circumstances.<\/p>\n

Viking Hypermasculinity<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Firstly then, to Viking men. The case for the hyper-masculinity of popular Vikings is one that requires no special pleading at all, for it is abundantly clear and constantly re-iterated in books, films, television, advertisements, cartoons, and a panoply of other media. A standard set of behaviours is attributed to Vikings across the broad range of popular culture:<\/p>\n