February
20
/ 2019
“Then the high-born lady saw them play the wounding game, she resolved on a hard course and flung off her cloak;she took a naked sword and fought for her kinsmen's lives, she was handy at fighting, wherever she aimed her blows.”- ‘The Greenlandic Poem of Atli’ (st. 49) ( Larrington, 1996) Arguably the most iconic example of a warrior burial in Viking Age Sweden is a mid-10th century grave in Birka. This grave has been the example of what a Viking warrior burial should look like for over a century. Everyone assumed that a man was the one laid to rest in the grave – but research has shown assumptions should not be taken as fact. The grave contains female
