#FEMALE NORDIC WARRIORS PROFESSIONAL#

They were so named by Western observers and historians due to their similarity to the semi-mythical Amazons of ancient Anatolia and the Black Sea. 1600–1894) located in the area of the present-day Republic of Benin.

The Dahomey Amazons (or N'Nonmiton, meaning our mothers in the Fon language), were a Fon all-female military regiment in Dahomey, an African kingdom (c.

Nzinga of Ndongo and Matamba fought and held off Portuguese control of present-day Angola for over thirty years during the early 17th century.

Muirisc, daughter of Úgaine Mór (Hugony the Great), the sixty-sixth high king of Ireland, c.

Gráinne O'Malley, legendary 'Pirate Queen' of Ireland.

She lived during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Ching Shih, legendary 'Pirate Queen' of China, famous for commanding over 300 ships and an army of 20,000 to 40,000 pirates.

While imprisoned, Bonny is reported to have said of her doomed lover: 'Sorry to see him there, but if he had fought like a man, he need not have been hanged like a dog.' All but one of the male crew members, drunk and afraid, hid below deck as the two women fought on with the help of the unknown man.

In October 1720, their ship was attacked by a royal fleet. Anne eventually became Jack's lover, and they had a child. Anne Bonny and Mary Read sailed alongside Calico Jack, Mary dressing as a man.7.5 Persian mythology and history of Iran/historical Persia.6.16 Scandinavian folklore and Germanic paganism.6.13 Italian history, folklore and Roman mythology.6.11 Historical Republic of Poland and Grand Duchy of Lithuania.6.2 Celtic mythology and Irish mythology.6.1 Britons, Roman Britain, and history of Anglo-Saxon England.

#FEMALE NORDIC WARRIORS PROFESSIONAL#

'In our opinion, Bj.581 was the grave of a woman who lived as a professional warrior and was buried in a martial environment as an individual of rank.

'Many other interpretations of both funerary treatment and gender are possible, but Occam's razor would suggest that to reach for them as a first resort is to attempt to 'explain away' what seems to be the most obvious and logical conclusion,' the researchers wrote in the study. However, the researchers concluded that the most straightforward interpretation is likely correct: The functional weapons buried with the woman are also suggestive of warriorhood, but the researchers acknowledged that it's impossible to know if these items were actually her possessions or reflected her activities. While the woman does not have any known injuries preserved in her bones, as other warriors who went to battle do, she was buried in an area that 'reinforces a warrior interpretation - being situated outside the gate of the Birka hill fort and adjacent to two other burials containing numerous weapons,' the researchers wrote in the study. The interpretation of this grave as a warrior burial was never challenged until the burial was revealed to be that of a woman. They found that the so-called male warrior had XX-chromosomes and so was biologically female. In this study, which is published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, an archaeologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, and her colleagues did a genetic analysis. So in 2017 a DNA analysis was carried out. Moreover, the burial was the westernmost grave in Birka and was originally marked with a large boulder, which would have been visible to the settlement.īecause of the grave goods, Stolpe assumed that the grave was that of a male, but in the 1970s, an anatomical analysis of the bones suggested that they belonged to a female, and in 2016 a second analysis confirmed these findings. There was also a bag containing three antler dice and 28 gaming pieces, including a king piece marked with an iron nail, that sat on the deceased's lap. Sharp weapons surrounded the deceased: a sheathed sword, an axe, a fighting knife, two spears, two shields, a quiver of 25 armour-piercing arrows and a small iron knife. The remains of a mare and a stallion, their legs tucked under them, rested at one end of the chamber. The burial had been placed in an underground wooden chamber, and the body was dressed in Eurasian steppe-style clothing. In 1897, Hjalmar Stolpe uncovered an unusual burial from one of the cemeteries surrounding the emporium at Birka. How the burial might have looked just before it was closed in Viking times.Ĭredit: Drawing by Þórhallur Þráinsson Copyright Antiquity Publications Ltd

Female nordic warriors