Notes

1.  Judith Jesch, “Viking ‘Warrior Women,’ ” History Extra, March 4, 2019, https://www.historyextra.com/period/viking/birka-warrior-woman-vikings-female-argument-judith-jesch.

2.  Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., “A Female Viking Warrior Confirmed by Genomics,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology 164, no. 4 (2017): 853–860.

3.  Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., “Female Viking Warrior,” 857.

4.  Anna Källén et al., “Archaeogenetics in Popular Media: Contemporary Implications of Ancient DNA,” Current Swedish Archaeology 27, no. 1 (2019): 69–91. Altmetric tracks the online activity around scholarly outputs, for example, tweets, news stories, and mentions on Wikipedia. The scientific article was number 43 on Altmetric’s 2017 top 100 list of the most discussed journal articles that year. See “The Altmetric Top 100,” Altmetric, accessed December 16, 2022, https://www.altmetric.com/top100/2017.

5.  Shieldmaiden is a literary term for women taking part in battles. Shieldmaidens are found in medieval literature such as the Poetic Edda and the writings of Saxo Grammaticus. This literature features Old Norse culture (in the Scandinavian or Icelandic Viking Age, AD 800–1050), and it is debated among scholars to what extent they refer to real-world events and to what extent they are mythological representations of oral history narratives or the authors’ own fantasies.

6.  Real Vikings, season 1, episode 3, “Viking Women,” directed by Rebecca Snow, aired December 14, 2016, on History Channel. Historical consultant to the series was professor of archaeology Neil Price—one of the researchers in the scene and one of the authors of the AJPA article.

7.  Real Vikings; Sarah Banet-Weiser, “Postfeminism and Popular Feminism,” Feminist Media History 4, no. 2 (2018): 152–156.

8.  Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., “Female Viking Warrior,” 854.

9.  Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., “Female Viking Warrior,” 854.

10.  Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., “Female Viking Warrior,” 857.

11.  Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., “Female Viking Warrior,” 858.

12.  See the exhibition “Buried at Birka,” Birka Museum, 2020, https://www.birkavikingastaden.se/en/attraction/new-exhibition-buried-at-birka. For an example of its use in pornography see Källén et al., “Archaeogenetics in Popular Media,” 83. T-shirts are for sale in the Birka Museum shop. Documentaries include The Viking Warrioress (La Guerrière de Birka), directed by Gautier Dubois and Aleksandar Dzerdz, 2019; and Viking Warrior Women, directed by Stuart Strickson, aired December 3, 2019, on National Geographic. In the theater is the play written and directed by Melanie Teichroeb, Shield Maiden, 2018. For a novel based on the article, see Nancy Marie Brown, The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women (New York: St. Martin’s, 2021).

13.  “DNA Spotlight: High Ranking Birka Shield-Maiden,” My True Ancestry, https://mytrueancestry.com/en/spotlights/birka.

14.  Källén et al., “Archaeogenetics in Popular Media,” 76.

15.  Sofia Lotto Persio, “Gender Reveal: Ancient Viking Warrior Was a Woman, DNA Analysis Shows,” Newsweek, September 11, 2017; Michael Greshko, “Famous Viking Warrior Was a Woman, DNA Reveals,” National Geographic, September 12, 2017; Lianna Remigio, “New Science Shows High-Ranked Viking Warrior Was a Fierce Lady,” Bust, September 12, 2017, https://bust.com/feminism/193441-viking-remains-uncovered-to-be-a-fierce-lady-warrior.html.

16.  “Altmetric Attention Score,” Altmetric, https://wiley.altmetric.com/details/24937638.

17.  Howard Williams, “Viking Warrior Women: An Archaeodeath Response, Part 10,” Archaeodeath, August 1, 2019, https://howardwilliamsblog.wordpress.com/2019/08/01/viking-warrior-women-an-archaeodeath-response-part-10/.

18.  Murray Goulden, “Hobbits, Hunters and Hydrology: Images of a ‘Missing Link,’ and Its Scientific Communication,” Public Understanding of Science 22, no. 5 (2013): 575–589.

19.  Michael Price, “DNA Proves Fearsome Viking Warrior Was a Woman,” Science Magazine, September 8, 2017; emphasis added.

20.  “The Atlas. News and Publications” Atlas Project, accessed October 13, 2021, https://web.archive.org/web/20211013183529/http://theatlas.se; emphasis added.

21.  Simon Trafford, “Hyper-Masculinity vs Viking Warrior Women: Pop Culture Vikings and Gender,” Just nu och för hemskt länge sedan, January 11, 2019, https://blogg.mah.se/historiskastudier/2019/01/11/hyper-masculinity-vs-viking-warrior-women-pop-culture-vikings-and-gender.

22.  Paula Cocozza, “Does New DNA Evidence Prove that There Were Female Viking Warlords?” The Guardian, September 12, 2017; Alanna Vagianos, “DNA Test Reveals Powerful Viking Warrior Was Actually a Woman,” Huffington Post, September 11, 2017, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dna-test-reveals-powerful-viking-warrior-was-actually-a-woman_n_59b68b72e4b0b5e531078e5b.

23.  “DNA Confirms There Were Kick Ass Female Viking Warriors,” Vocativ, September 12, 2017, Youtube video, 1:33, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOp-7Sc5NNg.

24.  Katherine J. Lewis, “ ‘What Does a Man Do?’ Representing and Performing Masculinity,” in Vikings and the Vikings: Essays on Television’s History Channel Series, ed. Paul Hardwick and Kate Lister (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2019), 59.

25.  Louise Nordström, “Viking Warrior Found in Sweden Was a Woman, Researchers Confirm,” The Local, September 8, 2017, https://www.thelocal.se/20170908/confirmed-viking-warrior-was-a-woman/.

26.  The article was published on September 8, 2017, and what was to become known as the MeToo movement was initiated by actress Alyssa Milano on October 15.

27.  Melfroh, “Feminism, Activism, Vikings, #MeToo,” Shield Maiden, July 29, 2019, https://shieldmaidenplay.com/feminism-activism-vikings-metoo/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feminism-activism-vikings-metoo.

28.  Ruth Kinane, “Vikings Channels the Time’s Up Movement in New Promo,” Entertainment Weekly, January 10, 2018, https://ew.com/tv/2018/01/10/vikings-times-up-promo/.

29.  Källén et al., “Archaeogenetics in Popular Media,” 82.

30.  Källén et al., “Archaeogenetics in Popular Media,” 82.

31.  Källén et al., “Archaeogenetics in Popular Media,” 83.

32.  Helen Watanabe-O’Kelly, Beauty or Beast? The Woman Warrior in the German Imagination (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Patrick Geary, Women at the Beginning: Origin Myths from the Amazons to the Virgin Mary (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).

33.  Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age (New York: Boydell, 1991), 180.

34.  Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson and Anna Kjellström, “The Urban Woman: On the Role and Identity of Women in Birka,” in Kvinner i vikingtid/Vikingatidens kvinnor, ed. Nancy Coleman and Nanna Løkka (Oslo: Scandinavian Academic Press, 2014), 189; Anna Kjellström, “People in Transition: Life in the Mälaren Valley from an Osteological Perspective,” in Shetland and the Viking World: Papers from the Proceedings of the 17th Viking Congress 2013, ed. Val Turner, Olwyn Owen, and Doreen Waugh (Lerwick: Shetland Heritage, 2016), 198.

35.  “Secrets of the Vikings,” History Channel, May 27, 2015, YouTube video, 21:56, https://youtu.be/Vb19dYpoJDI.

36.  “Secrets of the Vikings.” In the video, the reconstruction drawing by Þorhallur Þrainsson included in the 2017 article is interspersed with these claims about the identity of the individual.

37.  Michael Starr, “History’s ‘Vikings’ Lets Women Get in on the Action,” New York Post, September 19, 2017.

38.  Lewis, “What Does a Man Do?,” 67.

39.  David Reich, “How Genetics is Changing Our Understanding of ‘Race,’ ” New York Times, March 23, 2018.

40.  Kristian Kristiansen, “Towards a New Paradigm? The Third Science Revolution and its Possible Consequences in Archaeology,” Current Swedish Archaeology 22, no. 1 (2014): 27.

41.  Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee, The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004); Alondra Nelson, The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations and Reconciliation after the Genome (Boston, MA: Beacon, 2016).

42.  Marianne Sommer, “DNA and Cultures of Remembrance: Anthropological Genetics, Biohistories and Biosocialities,” BioSocieties 5, no. 3 (2010): 372.

43.  Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., “Female Viking Warrior,” 853.

44.  Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., “Female Viking Warrior,” 858. The quote is from the poem “Atlamál” in the Poetic Edda, believed to have been written in the twelfth century.

45.  See also James W. McAllister, “Scientists’ Reuse of Old Empirical Data: Epistemological Aspects,” Philosophy of Science 85, no. 5 (2018): 755–766.

46.  Nelkin and Lindee, DNA Mystique, xxii.

47.  See, for example, Mike Parker Pearson, The Archaeology of Death and Burial (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000); Pamela Geller, “Brave Old World: Ancient DNA Testing and Sex Determination,” in Exploring Sex and Gender in Bioarchaeology, ed. Sabrina Agarwal and Julie Wesp (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2017), 70–98.

48.  Jesch, Women in the Viking Age, 180.

49.  John McGowan-Hartmann, “Shadow of the Dragon: The Convergence of Myth and Science in Nineteenth Century Paleontological Imagery,” Journal of Social History 47, no. 1 (2013): 56. McGowan-Hartmann’s summary reads: “If there is such a thing as a dragon, it is here. And it is real. Not fantasy, science; not unknown, known; ancient, but revealed by modern knowledge; an important field of study, and a little scary, in an entertaining sort of way.”