If you watched the modern TV series "Vikings", then along with the male warriors, you could see female warriors there. It should be noted that the presence of such warlike women in modern films and TV series is just a tribute to "fashion", namely, to the processes of emancipation.
In the modern world, they would appear in cinematography anyway. But what about women in those days - could they grab a weapon and, together with their husbands, go to rob the continental neighbors?
It should be noted that in our time there is a lot of information about the Vikings, but often one information source contradicts another.
What sources of information do we have (I will give a somewhat simplified classification):
1) Non-Scandinavian written sources about the Vikings, made by completely different peoples - the British, Germans, Byzantines, Slavs, etc.
2) Scandinavian sources, mainly mythology, which includes various sagas.
3) Also preserved collections of laws, chronicles, lives, etc., but here's the problem - they were all written since the 13th century, and, as you know, at that time the Vikings began to slowly "disappear" and gradually information about them came to naught … Where and how they disappeared remains a mystery to researchers.
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4) Finds of modern archaeologists.
So, now in order. Sources # 1 can indeed describe quite real events, but their authors could be biased and deliberately distort real information.
Why all this was done is quite clear - for personal gain. But sources # 2 and # 3, although they may be unbiased, were written much later than the events taking place - starting from the 13th century.
There are also some jokes here - for example, the sagas about the adventures of the Vikings in the 9th century were written only in the 13th century. What do you think, can information be distorted in 400 years? Of course it can.
As for source No. 4, the finds, as you know, cannot lie, although they have a very big problem - you first try to interpret them correctly. For example, a case is known when a strange stone with incomprehensible hieroglyphs and holes was discovered on the territory of Ancient Egypt.
The trick of this stone was that it looked very much like some kind of control panel of a modern technical device, and therefore there were many supporters of the "alternative history" who argued that this artifact could somehow be connected with aliens.
But in the end, this stone was deciphered and it turned out to be … the most ordinary "board" (stone) for making cosmetics. Something tells me that the same problem can be with the interpretation of artifacts from the Viking times.
So what about the female Viking warriors? As usual, there are pros and cons, let's look at them separately.
Arguments for":
1) If you read Old Scandinavian literature, you can find a very interesting word there - "skjaldmær". It translates into Russian as "maiden of the shield" or "shield-bearer". This word can be found in such sagas as "Saga of Herver", "Saga of Welsungs", "Saga of Bosi".
2) There is also a description of the Scandinavian warriors in the writings of such historians as Saxon Grammaticus (12th century), Adam of Bremen (11th century), John Skilitsa (11th century).
3) Remember the famous character of the Scandinavian sagas - the Valkyrie.
4) As for archeology, during excavations, archaeologists periodically discovered arrowheads, spears, and axes in female burials. Similar finds were made not only in Norway, but also in Denmark and Sweden.
Now the arguments "AGAINST":
1) If we assume that the Vikings really discovered and colonized Iceland, then you can open the Icelandic collection of laws "Gray Goose". So, there are direct prohibitions on the fact that women cannot wear men's clothes, the same haircut and have personal weapons.
2) Some researchers believe that some of the authors of that time, describing women warriors, could lie intentionally only because they themselves could be Christians - it was such an act of protest against paganism. Like, look - they put women under arms too!
So were there women among the Vikings or not? We will never know for sure, but we can think logically. Who are the Vikings? Pagans. And in paganism, women had much greater rights, and could well take up arms.
But it is not a fact that they were warriors on a permanent basis - after all, women are much physically weaker, and even in our time, in the age of anabolic steroids, they cannot achieve the physical results that men can easily achieve.
Yes, and they carried a look at our modern armies, then female military personnel are extremely rare. Any administrative positions - yes, but when it comes to picking up a machine gun, running several tens of kilometers and joining a battle, then women are very much losing to the stronger sex.
