Becky Bookworm Book Review: The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women by Nancy Marie Brown
In the tradition of Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra, Brown lays to rest the hoary myth that Viking society was ruled by men and celebrates the dramatic lives of female Viking warriors.
In 2017, DNA tests revealed to the collective shock of many scholars that a Viking warrior in a high-status grave in Birka, Sweden was actually a woman. The Real Valkyrie weaves together archaeology, history, and literature to imagine her life and times, showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians have imagined.
Brown uses science to link the Birka warrior, whom she names Hervor, to Viking trading towns and to their great trade route east to Byzantium and beyond. She imagines her life intersecting with larger-than-life but real women, including Queen Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings, the Viking leader known as The Red Girl, and Queen Olga of Kyiv. Hervor’s short, dramatic life shows that much of what we have taken as truth about women in the Viking Age is based not on data, but on nineteenth-century Victorian biases. Rather than holding the household keys, Viking women in history, law, saga, poetry, and myth carry weapons. These women brag, “As heroes we were widely known—with keen spears we cut blood from bone.” In this compelling narrative Brown brings the world of those valkyries and shield-maids to vivid life.
In 2017, DNA tests revealed to the collective shock of many scholars that a Viking warrior in a high-status grave in Birka, Sweden was actually a woman. The Real Valkyrie weaves together archaeology, history, and literature to imagine her life and times, showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians have imagined.
Brown uses science to link the Birka warrior, whom she names Hervor, to Viking trading towns and to their great trade route east to Byzantium and beyond. She imagines her life intersecting with larger-than-life but real women, including Queen Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings, the Viking leader known as The Red Girl, and Queen Olga of Kyiv. Hervor’s short, dramatic life shows that much of what we have taken as truth about women in the Viking Age is based not on data, but on nineteenth-century Victorian biases. Rather than holding the household keys, Viking women in history, law, saga, poetry, and myth carry weapons. These women brag, “As heroes we were widely known—with keen spears we cut blood from bone.” In this compelling narrative Brown brings the world of those valkyries and shield-maids to vivid life.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This book is a wonderful marriage of the magic mirror of historical fiction to explore 'What If's' and 'Maybes', that really immerses the everyday reader into the context for the archeology and sagas. This is then reflected in details research that is clearly and concisely discussed and explored around the themes, people, places and objects that feature in the narrative.
There are some superb arguments, insights, and questions raised in this book about perceptions of the Viking Age and the roles men and women may or may have not taken. It is a refreshing and enlightening critique of the research and analysis that founded a lot of modern theories and understandings, not just in relation to the historical period and the lives lived, but also the mythology and now starkly obvious lack of details and stories of the Goddesses and other female spirits, when compared with the quantity and quality of records we have about the male members of the pantheon and giants.
This book is more than a historical time travel with a unique female protagonist and her dramatised encounters with other remarkable women of time, it is a deep dive into the variety of roles and the range of impact that women genuinely had and which still remains stubbornly overlooked and underappreciated.
It certainly leaves a strong and now undeniable impression, behind every strong Norse-man, was an equally strong Norse woman.
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