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Female Viking Warriors?
It’s beginning to look like Viking shield-maidens may have existed in numbers greater than previously thought, if the excavations at sites in eastern England are any indication:
[Archeologist Shane] McLeod notes that recently, burials of female Norse immigrants have started to turn up in Eastern England. “An increase in the number of finds of Norse-style jewellery in the last two decades has led some scholars to suggest a larger number of female settlers. Indeed, it has been noted that there are more Norse female dress items than those worn by men,” says the study.
So, the study looked at 14 Viking burials from the era, definable by the Norse grave goods found with them and isotopes found in their bones that reveal their birthplace. The bones were sorted for telltale osteological signs of which gender they belonged to, rather than assuming that burial with a sword or knife denoted a male burial.
Overall, McLeod reports that six of the 14 burials were of women, seven were men, and one was indeterminable. Warlike grave goods may have misled earlier researchers about the gender of Viking invaders, the study suggests. At a mass burial site called Repton Woods, “(d)espite the remains of three swords being recovered from the site, all three burials that could be sexed osteologically were thought to be female, including one with a sword and shield,” says the study.
Personally, I’d like to see a better sampling than fourteen interments before asserting that Viking warriors had something approaching gender parity. Still, this is an interesting discovery. I look forward to seeing where it leads.
What to Name Your Amazon
Adrienne Mayor a number of names of Amazons from the classical world in a post at Wonders and Marvels, and points to many more available in an appendix to her new book, The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World.
Spriggan Sighting
Flossie Benton Rogers is featuring spriggans, those irascible Cornish faeries, in today’s “Mythic Monday” feature.
If spriggans are your thing, you might want to read my last year’s post about the beasties.
Sunday Inspiration: Doing
I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough…willing is not enough; we must do.
—Leonardo da Vinci
Beneath Stonehenge
[Archeologist Vince] Gaffney’s latest research effort, the Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project, is a four-year collaboration between a British team and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology in Austria that has produced the first detailed underground survey of the area surrounding Stonehenge, totaling more than four square miles. The results are astonishing. The researchers have found buried evidence of more than 15 previously unknown or poorly understood late Neolithic monuments: henges, barrows, segmented ditches, pits. To Gaffney, these findings suggest a scale of activity around Stonehenge far beyond what was previously suspected.
Creepy Medieval Sea Monsters
Via io9: “These drawings of sea monsters, taken from books written in Europe centuries ago, prove that you don’t need CGI to create a seriously incredible creature.”
Yeah, but those things with two tails are just wrong.
Write What You Know
Selah Janel reminds writers everywhere that we may know more than we think we do, and can apply that knowledge even to writing about fantastic settings and situations.
Here’s what people forget when faced with the “write what you know” comment. When you walk down the street, everything around you is what you know. The scent of food from the nearby café is what you know. The people you pass on the street are who you know. Everything that you see and how it makes you feel is what you know. The internal monologue that passes through your mind throughout the day is what you know. Every little thing that makes up your life is what you know. Your family experience, the quirks you were born with, how make your coffee, your friends, the things you do in your spare time, the way you earn your living—those are all important things that you can draw on and morph to fit a fantasy setting. You may not need all of that, but they’re there for you to draw on. They’re all tools in the belt, waiting to be used.
Those (and all that come before) are good words, especially the section on knowing people who can help you. As Selah writes, we may not have had the same occupations or life experiences as our characters, but it’s likely we know someone who has.
Having recently conversed with an accommodating family therapist of my acquaintance about the possible real-world repercussions of some of the events described in my second novel, The Devil’s Due, I feel much more confident heading into part three (tentatively titled Oak, Ash, and Thorn). And I would be remiss not to mention the amazing crash-course in all things equestrian my friend Jennifer Becton provided while putting The Devil’s Due together. (I’m gratified to have been able to return the favor with a new series she is working on.)
The key, I think, is to take a fearless inventory of what we don’t know—and then work on knowing it at least a little bit better.
Sunday Inspiration: Books
A book is a dream that you hold in your hands.
—Neil Gaiman
Darrell J. Pursiful 