The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

by Neil Price

Some scholars attempt to draw fine distinctions between types of combatant that are often skewed in odd ways as they intersect with identity. After a certain point, these debates become absurd in the context of Viking-Age reality (one pictures a couple of monks peering over the monastery wall at an advancing troupe—“What do you think, are they warriors, or more like militia?”—as the chapel goes up in flames). But we must ensure that the same standards of data, evidence, and logic should apply regardless of sex, with our minds resolutely open to complexity. If scholars are prepared to claim that even a single male-bodied individual buried with numerous weapons can be gendered as a man and interpreted as a warrior (and there are hundreds of such examples across the Viking diaspora that are accepted with little controversy), then they must be prepared to come to the same conclusion if the sex determination is different.