Ancient World Review

Did Viking Shieldmaidens Actually Exist?

Vikings is a great show (until recently, at least), but like all historical dramas it has to play fast and loose with its own timeline, not to mention the actual history of the events it depicts. It's also inaccurate in various details such as its depiction of the armor that the Vikings wore in battle, but all of this is to be expected due to time and budget constraints as well as the fact that the series mixes mythology and real history for dramatic effect.

One of the show's most popular characters, Lagertha, a female warrior or shieldmaiden, is also a source of controversy since it's unclear whether shieldmaidens ever existed. Strictly speaking, of course, the question is irrelevant because Vikings is a fictional drama, not a documentary, but it would be interesting to know if characters like Lagertha actually fought alongside the men in real life.

Like her husband, Ragnar Lodbrok, the character of Lagertha is taken from Viking mythology. "Her tale, as recorded by the chronicler Saxo in the 12th century, may be a reflection of tales about Thorgerd .., a Norse deity," according to Wikipedia. Shieldmaidens in general appear in the Sagas and the female Valkyries may have been based on them.

"Few, if any, scholars nowadays believe that women warriors led war bands in Viking-age Scandinavia; they have either been relegated to the world of amazon myths or explained away in other ways," according to Medievalists.net (2015). On the other hand, there is some archaeological and documentary evidence that Viking women fought in battle, at least in certain situations:

"There are few historic attestations that Viking Age women took part in warfare, but the Byzantine historian John Skylitzes records that women fought in battle when Sviatoslav I of Kiev attacked the Byzantines in Bulgaria in 971. When the Varangians (not to be confused with the Byzantine Varangian Guard) had suffered a devastating defeat in the Siege of Dorostolon, the victors were stunned at discovering armed women among the fallen warriors." (Wikipedia)

Taken by itself, this Byzantine account doesn't prove that female warriors were a standard feature of Viking society. After all, the women killed in this battle could have been wives or daughters forced to fight by a desperate situation. If the story's accurate, however, it does show that Viking women -- some of them, at any rate -- were capable of taking part in battles. How often this happened is another matter.

Ultimately, the question boils down to the interpretation of burials. Recent findings suggest that women accompanied the Viking men (in England, at any rate) in greater numbers than previously assumed, but whether these women--or the men, for that matter--were raiders is another question. Many of the sources I've seen claim that "almost half" of the Viking burials discovered in England belonged to women, but calling them warriors may be a misinterpretation of the original study (see Related links below). As it turns out, these Vikings were probably colonists rather than raiders as such, so it would have been natural for them to take their families along with them. Some of the women were buried with weapons, though, and the question is why?

Here are two examples from the stories about the burial study:

"Viking women accompanied their male partners to Britain in far greater numbers than had been previously thought," according to the Daily Mail (2011). "Almost half of all bodies in burial grounds researchers examined were those of women - with some carrying swords and shields." (Emphasis added)

The women buried in these graves may have been under-counted in earlier studies. "A study has revealed that previous research examining the gender ratio of Vikings in Medieval England may have underestimated the number of Viking women because they assumed that graves showing individuals buried with a sword and shield were men.  According to USA Today (2011), the newer study, which determined sex by analyzing the skeletal remains, showed that nearly half the examined remains were female, including one of the ‘warrior’ skeletons buried with a sword and shield." Source: Ancient Origins. (Emphasis added)

Even if half of the bodies discovered were women, it sounds like only a few of them were buried with swords and shields. Whatever the case, these grave findings suggest that female warriors did exist. After all, if a male skeleton is found buried with weapons, it would be natural to assume that he was a warrior of some kind, so the same thing could be assumed about a female skeleton. I'm not sure why a woman would be buried with weapons otherwise (unless they had some kind of symbolic value). Even if there were female Viking warriors, however, this still wouldn't prove that shieldmaidens as such actually existed as a distinct warrior caste in Viking society.

Shieldmaidens are a classic example of what I would call hidden history. Maybe they were real. Maybe not. The question, as far as I can tell, is still up in the air and will probably never be resolved conclusively until more archaeological or documentary evidence is uncovered. If shieldmaidens did exist, I have my doubts that they were as gorgeous as Katheryn Winnick, the actress and martial artist who plays Lagertha in Vikings. Most likely, they were hard-bitten characters with nasty tempers when they were crossed. One way or another, it doesn't help that the whole issue has become so mixed up in contemporary identity politics.

Related: The Role Of Women In Viking Society

Better Identification Of Viking Corpses: Half Of The Warriors Were Female

Study Didn't Show That Half Of Viking Warriors Were Women

The Holy Island Of Lindisfarne

Video from 2013.

"The Holy Island of Lindisfarne, also known simply as Holy Island, is a tidal island off the northeast coast of England, which constitutes the civil parish of Holy Island in Northumberland. Holy Island has a recorded history from the 6th century AD; it was an important centre of Celtic Christianity under Saints Aidan of Lindisfarne, Cuthbert, Eadfrith of Lindisfarne and Eadberht of Lindisfarne. After the Viking invasions and the Norman conquest of England, a priory was reestablished. A small castle was built on the island in 1550." (Wikipedia)

"The ruined church and monastic buildings that still stand on the island today are not Anglo-Saxon; they are the remains of the new priory built on the island in the late 11th century by the monks of Durham. So where is the original monastery? And what happened to it after the attack?" Source: DigVentures.

"All that is known to survive are some carved stone monuments of Anglo-Saxon date, which were found by archaeologists clearing away some of the collapsed rubble from the priory ruins in the late 19th and early 20th century."

Good times at Lindisfarne, 793 AD. From Vikings, Season 1.

Note: "... a major ... geophysical survey funded by National Geographic was carried out by Durham University in September 2012. This has shown that there is limited archaeological evidence for the monastic boundary that had previously been postulated, but an alternative boundary has been identified, which is associated with an area of possible industrial activity. It also identified a probably infirmary cloister associated with the later priory and a possible structure aligned on the two standing churches." Source: Durham University.

Viking Longhouses And Great Halls

Viking longhouses and great halls were related structurally, i.e. they shared the same basic design and the construction techniques and materials (1) used to build them were generally the same. The main differences between them were their size and function.

(1) "...the longhouses were built around wooden frames on simple stone footings. Walls were constructed of planks, of logs, or of wattle and daub." (Hurstwic) If the roofs and walls were covered with sod, the grass and other plants in the sod would frequently keep growing, giving the longhouses a characteristic green and bushy appearance. 

Most people lived in longhouses during the Viking period. According to The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings (p. 36), "the most typical Viking-age farm building was the longhouse, which accommodated both people and animals under one roof."

The Vikings built longhouses wherever they went. For instance, the next video shows a reconstruction of a Viking longhouse that once existed in a Canadian settlement.

The great halls, aka mead halls, were usually bigger and more elaborate since they were the political centers of Viking life. They served as meeting and feasting places, so they were designed to accommodate larger numbers of people.

Mead halls evolved from the basic longhouse design. They were usually royal residences, but this wasn't always the case and some of the early mead halls were pretty primitive:

"In ancient Scandinavia and Germanic Europe a mead hall or feasting hall was initially simply a large building with a single room." (Wikipedia). "From the fifth century to early medieval times such a building was the residence of a lord and his retainers. The mead hall was generally the great hall of the king."

Some of these mead halls were huge. Back in 2014, for instance, the remains of  gigantic feasting hall "the size of a football field" was discovered in Sweden, according to the International Business Times. "The longhouse, an early iteration of the magnificent banquet halls of medieval Europe, dates back to between the 5th and 12th centuries A.D..." The IBT described it as "straight out of Beowulf."

Next video is about a Viking longhouse excavated in Iceland.

Calling a mead house a "great hall" is probably a misnomer since the term normally refers to "the main room of a royal palace, nobleman's castle or a large manor house or hall house in the Middle Ages," according to Wikipedia. The Viking great halls had the same function, however, even if they were smaller and more primitive, so this is probably just hair-splitting on my part.

The most famous mead house in literature has to be Heorot, the "palace" of King Hrothgar, aka Hroðgar, in Beowulf. According to Wikipedia, "The hall was large enough to allow Hroðgar to present Beowulf with a gift of eight horses, each with gold-plate headgear. It functions both as a seat of government and as a residence for the king's thanes (warriors). Heorot symbolizes human civilization and culture, as well as the might of the Danish kings—essentially, all the good things in the world of Beowulf. Its brightness, warmth, and joy contrasts with the darkness of the swamp waters inhabited by Grendel.^"

The biggest Viking longhouse in the world, currently the home of the Lofotr Viking Museum.

The Viking Homestead

Closed captions helpful.

"The vast majority of Norse people lived on small farms. However, the nature of these settlements varied widely from one region to another. In prosperous regions, farms tended to cluster into small villages or hamlets. In less prosperous areas, individual farms were well separated. In Iceland, farms were widely separated, and nothing like villages existed." Source: Hurstwic.

"Typical farm settlements took the form of a central cluster of buildings enclosed by fences. Outside the fenced areas were the fields used for cultivation or grazing. Each homestead typically consisted of a longhouse and multiple out-buildings."

The Viking Castle of Peel

Tour of the castle begins at 2:24.

"[The castle in Peel on the Isle of Man] was built in the 11th century by the Vikings, under the rule of King Magnus Barefoot. While there were older stone Celtic monastic buildings on the island, the first Viking fortifications were built of wood. The prominent round tower was originally part of the Celtic monastery, but had battlements added at a later date. In the early 14th century, the majority of the walls and towers were built primarily from local red sandstone, which is found abundantly in the area. After the rule of the Vikings, the castle continued to be used by the Church due to the cathedral built there – the see of the diocese of Sodor and Man – but was eventually abandoned in the 18th century." Source: Wikipedia.

Related: The Ruined Cathedral of St. German, Peel, Isle of Man.

The Ulfberht Sword

The Ulfberht sword marked "the transitional point between the Viking sword and the high medieval knightly sword, according to Wikipedia.

"Ulfberht was like a Medieval luxury brand for swords—but unlike your Gucci purse, the swords were of such high quality they were almost … mystical." Source: Ancient Origins.

"Dozens of these swords—made with metal so strong and pure it’s baffling how any sword maker of that time could have accomplished it—have been found in Europe, along with some knock-offs. They are all marked with the Ulfberht name and two crosses, though some of the imitations are missing a letter here or there."

"About 170 Ulfberhts have been found, dating from 800 to 1,000 A.D.," according to the Daily Mail (2014).

"They are made of metal so pure it baffled archaeologists, who thought the technology to forge such metal was not invented for another 800 or more years, during the Industrial Revolution."

The Last Viking & His "Magical Sword" (2015)

"This sword was found in [southern Norway] in 2011. It is a truly unique sword from the late Viking Age, embellished with gold, inscriptions and other ornamentation. The discovery of the sword has not been published until now, when it is being displayed for the first time in the exhibition 'Take It Personally' at the Historical Museum in Oslo." Source: Science Daily (2015).

The sword was discovered in a burial site in Langeid, a village in Norway. This particular grave was "was much larger than the other 20 graves found at the site," according to Ancient Origins, "[b]ut it wasn't only the size that indicated a special grave - the post holes (suggesting a roof over the grave) in the four corners surrounding the grave provided a clear clue to something special waiting beneath."

Sword And Shield Fighting Techniques

Note: Roland Warzecha, the instructor in this video, runs DIMICATOR, a "martial arts school for the reconstruction and practice of historical European swordsmanship"which focuses on "unarmored fighting with sword and buckler, as described in late medieval German manuscripts."

Viking Swords & The Volga Trade Route

Note: "Sword making in Viking times was important work, to the point that the best smiths had their work imitated and copied. On their travels, the Vikings were keen to pick up any innovative new means of improving their sword-making, but until now we haven't known where they have sourced some of their materials. The results ... confirm for the first time that the [sword] material analysed was brought by the Vikings from the Middle East to the Baltic area - and thrown new light on an important trade route that was in use until the 11th Century." Source: Phys.org (2009).

Was The Viking Blood Eagle A Literary Invention?

The execution of Jarl Borg. Vikings Season 2, Episode 7

"The blood eagle is a ritualized method of execution, detailed in late skaldic poetry. According to the two instances mentioned in the Sagas, the victim (in both cases a member of a royal family) was placed prone, the ribs severed from the spine with a sharp tool and the lungs pulled through the opening to create a pair of 'wings'. There is a continuing debate about whether the ritual was a literary invention, a mistranslation of the original texts or an authentic historical practice." Source: Wikipedia.

The Blood Eagle was a particularly nasty form of sacrificial execution, but did the Vikings actually put people to death this way? As far as I can tell, the only primary documentary evidence for the practice comes from sources such as the Orkneyinga Saga, the Heimskringla, the Tale of Ragnar's Sons, and a handful of references in other texts.

Note: The Tale of Ragnar's Sons describes (among other things) the execution of King Aella of Northumbria, a scene also depicted in Vikings.

Jarl Borg in Vikings is an entirely fictional character, I believe. Aella, on the other hand, was apparently a real king, though the sources for his life are limited and very little is known about his reign. According to some accounts, he was executed by the Vikings after they invaded Northumbria following the king's execution of the legendary Ragnar Lodbrok, another figure who may or may not have actually existed. How Aella died is a matter of conjecture, though, because the sources contradict each other:

"While Norse sources claim that Ragnar's sons tortured Ælla to death with a blood eagle, Anglo-Saxon accounts maintain that he died in battle, at York, on 21 March 867." (Wikipedia)

"Well into the last century, most historians of the Vikings accepted that the blood eagle was deeply unpleasant but very real. According to the eminent medievalist J.M. Wallace-Hadrill, its possible victims were not only Ælla of Northumbria but also Halfdán, the son of Harald Finehair (or Fairhair), king of Norway, and the Irish King Maelgualai [Mael Gualae] of Munster; in some interpretations, it is supposed that even Edmund the Martyr may have suffered the same fate."

One possibility is that the Blood Eagle was a real execution method sensationalized by later writers. For instance, the Welsh scholar and translator, Gwyn Jones, argues in A History of the Vikings (1968) that this "inhuman rite" was "unhappily no fiction ... but owes its eminence in pseudo-lore almost entirely to fiction ..." (footnote pp 119-220, 1968 edition)

It's also possible that the Blood Eagle is entirely fictitious. This seems to be the current consensus, but there's a lot of disagreement. Revisionist historians have challenged the idea that the Vikings were just a mob of cruel barbarians wearing horned helmets, but their depictions of "cuddly" Vikings went too far in the other direction. One of the main problems with our picture of the Vikings is that much of what we know about them was written by their enemies.

If the Blood Eagle is a literary invention, there's a good chance that this grisly method of execution was dreamed up by Christian writers trying to demonize the pagan Vikings. According to Wikipedia, "[t]here is debate about whether the blood eagle was historically practiced, or whether it was a literary device invented by the authors who transcribed the sagas. No contemporary accounts of the ritual exist, and the scant references in the sagas are several hundred years after the Christianization of Scandinavia." Considering the Christians' history of inventing martyr stories set in the Roman Empire, I wouldn't be surprised if they concocted similar atrocity stories about the Vikings.

Video from 2010.

When I first started to research this subject, I assumed there was a high probability that the Blood Eagle was a real thing because the Vikings are thought to have conducted human sacrifices and the Blood Eagle is, in a way, just another form of ritual sacrifice. As it turns out, though, the question of whether the Vikings killed people for religious purposes isn't all that straightforward.

There is some archaeological evidence that the Vikings  may have sacrificed humans. For instance, "[a]t Trelleborg [Sweden] a sacrificial site was found from the time before the Viking fortress was erected in 980-81. In five c. 3 metre-deep wells human and animal skeletons were found, together with jewellery and tools. Of the total of five human sacrifices, four were young children aged between 4 and 7. " Source: National Museum of Denmark.

Blood sacrifice, including human sacrifice, was an intrinsic part of pagan religions. The historical sources for Viking human sacrifice are questionable, though, because they all seem to come, once again, from Christian accounts:

According to the National Museum of Denmark, "[t]here are several horrifying accounts of human sacrifices from the Viking period. The German bishop, Thietmar of Merseburg, describes how the Vikings met every nine years at Lejre on Zealand [Denmark] in January 'and offer to their gods 99 people and just as many horses, dogs and hens or hawks, for these should serve them in the kingdom of the dead and atone for their evil deeds.'"

A similar ritual (at a different location) is also depicted in Vikings.

"The German monk Adam of Bremen wrote a similar account in 1072 about the sacrificial tradition at [Gamla Uppsala] in Sweden, where the temple was devoted to Thor, Odin and Frey. Here the Vikings also met every 9 years to ensure the goodwill of the gods. 9 males of all kinds of living creatures were sacrificed in a holy grove nearby. According to Adam of Bremen dogs, horses and humans hung from the trees. The number 9 was apparently of magical significance to the Vikings and was involved in a number of rituals." (National Museum of Denmark)

"There has been extensive debate over whether these accounts were real or simply Christian propaganda."

I wouldn't be shocked to learn that the Vikings actually executed royal prisoners using the Blood Eagle. Even if the descriptions in the sagas were written for entertainment, they may have had some basis in fact. At this point, however, it looks like this particular form of execution was a literary invention derived from the skaldic poems and embellished by later Christian writers in yet another attempt to make the pagans look like cruel and bloodthirsty savages:

"One of the features of a skaldic poem is that it’s incredibly convoluted, like a cryptic crossword puzzle. If you have a reference to what appears to be the Blood Eagle in a skaldic verse, it’s quite likely this is a poetic conceit. Roberta Frank, at Yale, argues that the Blood Eagle is just the idea of a carrion bird scratching at the back of the dead. If you create lots of corpses, you are a very good warrior. That’s what is being referred to. But when later writers made prose stories around these skaldic verses, they seem to have interpreted it literally. So it’s quite likely that there was no such thing as this horrible form of torture, but it grew in the telling." Source: National Geographic (2017).

Related: The Vengeance of Ivarr the Boneless (Smithsonian, 2013)