Did Viking women really fight in battle?

Texts that describe female warriors

The Vikings left few writings of their own: their runic script was used mainly for short inscriptions. Our knowledge of their world therefore comes largely from foreign accounts or from Norse descendants, often written centuries after the events. The most striking is that of the Danish historian and theologian Saxo Grammaticus, in the 12th century, in his "Gesta Danorum". He describes women from Denmark who dressed as men and devoted almost every moment to mastering weapons, preferring combat to kisses and the death of an enemy to weaving.

Another account, the "Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh" ("War of the Irish against the Foreigners"), mentions a woman nicknamed the "Red Lady" leading a Viking fleet during a raid on Belfast in the 10th century. Specialists treat these sources with caution: they often blend legend, moral teaching and literary borrowing. The historian Thomas Kristian Heebøll-Holm, of the University of Southern Denmark, notes that Saxo mentions female warriors only in the part devoted to the country's legendary past, and that some accounts seem inspired by the Amazons, the mythical warrior women of ancient Greece.

Armed graves that are hard to interpret

Archaeologists have identified some thirty Viking Age female graves containing weapons, including three with a sword in Scandinavia. Other burials contain objects that could serve as weapons, such as spears, axes or knives, but which were also used for hunting or farm work. Taken together, these deposits do not on their own prove that women practiced combat.

The main doubt concerns what these deposits meant. Deborah Shepherd, an independent researcher, stresses that one must first verify that the weapons were actually used by the deceased woman and were not simply markers of social status passed down by inheritance. Sometimes poor preservation of the graves further complicates the analysis, as the same specialist points out.

A case of an injury from battle?

One physical clue draws particular attention. At Solør, in Norway, a woman aged 18 or 19 at death, around 900, was buried with weapons and had a head wound consistent with a sword blow. This case remains isolated and cannot by itself be generalized to all women of the period.

Another example, discovered at Birka in Sweden, is a female burial accompanied by a complete set of weapons and riding equipment. Ole Kastholm, curator and senior researcher at the Roskilde Museum in Denmark, notes that if such a grave belonged to a man, researchers would have little doubt about its warrior character. This comparison highlights the interpretive bias that weighs on female burials.

How frequent was combat?

Researchers agree on one point: female combatants seem to have been a very small minority. Neil Price, professor of archaeology at Uppsala University and author of reference works on the Vikings, considers it likely that some women fought, but rarely. He estimates that these warriors formed only a very small minority.

Deborah Shepherd suggests they were probably a few people from the highest families, with likely brief careers. In her view, they would not have fought in the large armies of later centuries, but may have taken part in skirmishes during the pre-Christian period. The gradual Christianization of Scandinavia, between the 9th and 12th centuries, also changed funerary practices and makes the interpretation of graves even more difficult.

Seeing the collections and following the research

To better understand these questions, visitors can explore Scandinavian collections devoted to the Viking Age, notably those of the Roskilde Museum in Denmark, whose teams are working on these burials. Swedish and Norwegian museums also hold major funerary assemblages, such as those from Birka.

Future studies, combining osteological analysis of skeletons with re-examination of older excavations, should help clarify women's real place in conflict. This work remains limited, however, by the condition of the burials and the scarcity of contemporary written sources.