THE REAL VALKYRIE

A stirring reexamination of Viking history through the story of “one warrior woman” of the time.

According to this passionate and well-researched account, Viking men who murdered, looted, burned, and ravaged across Europe were often accompanied by equally murderous women who have been written out of history. Brown, who spends her summers in Iceland, begins with a Viking-age grave in Sweden that was opened in 1878. Aside from the skeleton, it also contained weapons and “the bones of two horses, a stallion and a mare.” Archaeologists labeled it a male warrior’s grave until 2017, when DNA tests proved that the bones were female. Was this an outlier? Scholars had long divided Viking culture along gender lines: Men fought and traded; women cooked, cleaned, and raised the children. A primary symbol for the woman was the key, carried in her belt, while the sword symbolized the man. Brown points out that no evidence supports these beliefs. Keys rarely turn up in female Viking graves. Histories describing the iconic Viking housewife first appeared in the 1860s, representing values from the Victorian age when upper-class women stayed home. Viking-age sagas, on the other hand, teem with warriors of both sexes. Scholars who claim that male heroes were inspired by actual events and dismiss females as fantasy get no support from their sources. With this background, Brown names her Viking Hervor and depicts her upbringing and life as a female warrior, with digressions to describe other warriors as well as female rulers, chieftains, and traders for whom historical evidence exists. The author also offers a heavy dose of Viking mythology and its pugnacious gods. While some readers may squirm at the steady stream of battles, murder, treachery, bloodshed, dragons, and magic, the Norse people loved to hear the tales, and they are undoubtedly entertaining. Giving archaeology and history equal time with folklore, Brown makes a convincing case that Viking women played a prominent public role.

A fine lesson in Old Norse culture and history.