29. Serres and Latour, Conversations on Science, 58.
30. On the folding of time in objects and how that helps to produce race, see M’charek, “Race, Time and Folded Objects.”
31. On the legacy and problems of race in physical and forensic anthropology, see Elizabeth A. DiGangi and Jonathan D. Bethard, “Uncloaking a Lost Cause: Decolonizing Ancestry Estimation in the United States,” American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 175, no. 2 (2021): 422–436. On how this legacy plays out in genetic practice, see Roos Hopman and Amade M’charek, “Facing the Unknown Suspect: Forensic DNA Phenotyping and the Oscillation Between the Individual and the Collective,” BioSocieties 15, no. 3 (2020): 1–25.
32. See Katerina Harvati and Terry Harrison, eds., Neanderthals Revisited: New Approaches and Perspectives (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006).
33. For an overview of this research, see the insightful Deutsche Welle documentary Who Were the Neanderthals? from 2021, produced by Rob Hope and Pascal Cruissot, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8p8tFcIQ8K4.
34. Nicolas Brown, dir., Europe First Peoples, PBS Nova, February 13, 2017, YouTube video, 54:42, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1587lxOA6sI.
35. On how the Neanderthal changed from initially more similar to a modern human to humanity’s apish other in the early twentieth century, see Sommer, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall.”
36. My argument is akin to and inspired by Donna Haraway’s important essay “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908–1936,” in Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (London: Verso, 1989), 26–59. In this intriguing and powerful essay, Haraway analyzes how “nature,” and the way it is displayed in the so-called African Hall at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, does not so much represent nature, as it can be found in Africa—“an immediate vision,” as Carl Akeley would have it (in Haraway, “Teddy Bear Patriarchy,” 36)—but rather reflects and reifies dominant ideas of class, race, and gender in the United States of the 1930s. To be sure, in contrast to my reading of the postcard, Haraway presents a thorough analysis of the museum, exhibitions, and key figures (such as Carl Akeley), as well as the method of collecting and preserving (such as photography or taxidermy). Yet, both our analyses deal with the issue of time. “The African Hall was meant to be a time machine,” Haraway suggests, but a linear one. By contrast, in my analysis of the postcard in the Neanderthal Museum in Mettmann, I zoom in on the multiplicity of time; not simply linearity, but also the folding and crumpling of time, in which distant moments in history and the present are superimposed in the “now.”
37. M’charek, “Race, Time and Folded Objects.”
38. The Turkana boy is the name given to an early hominid, a young boy of probably twelve years old, who lived some 1.6 million years ago. The finding of this skeleton in 1984 was a sensation, not only because it appeared to stem from such an archaic hominid, but also because his skeleton was complete. See Frank Brown et al., “Early Homo Erectus Skeleton from West Lake Turkana, Kenya,” Nature 316, no. 6031 (1985): 788–792.
39. Susan Leigh Star, “Introduction: The Sociology of Science and Technology,” Social Problems 35, no. 3 (1988): 197–205.
40. Paul Gilroy, “Race Ends Here,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 21, no. 5 (1998): 838.
41. This theme is widely analyzed in critical race studies and cultural studies. See, for instance, Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove, 1952); Stuart Hall, ed., Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage, 1997).
42. See also Deleuze and Guattari’s argument on race and sameness, and how it leads to the bestialization of the nonsame. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987).
43. Amade M’charek, Victor Toom, and Lisette Jong, “The Trouble with Race in Forensic Identification,” Science, Technology, & Human Values 45, no. 5 (2020): 804–828.
44. Joyce C. Havstad, “Sensational Science, Archaic Hominin Genetics, and Amplified Inductive Risk,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 52, no. 3 (2022): 295. See also Elizabeth Jones’s discussion of a field that is data-driven, but also celebrity-driven, with problematic consequences for how the field of aDNA has acquired its shape; Elizabeth D. Jones, “Ancient Genetics to Ancient Genomics: Celebrity and Credibility in Data-Driven Practice,” Biology and Philosophy 34, no. 2 (2019): 1–35.
45. On the relation between affect and race, see Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2004).
46. Anna Källén et al., “Introduction: Transcending the aDNA Revolution,” Journal of Social Archaeology 21, no. 2 (2021): 151.
47. Hawks, “Accurate Depiction of Uncertainty”; Lu Chen et al., “Identifying and Interpreting Apparent Neanderthal Ancestry in African Individuals,” Cell, 180, no. 4 (2020): 677–687.
48. This happens to the point where white supremacists use the contribution of Neanderthal DNA in their DNA profiles as a marker for Europeanness and their belonging to the stronger “race.” See Michael Cook, “I’m Glad I’m Part Neanderthal,” BioEdge, October 22, 2016, https://bioedge.org/uncategorized/im-glad-im-part-neanderthal; Amy Harmon, “Why White Supremacists Are Chugging Milk (and Why Geneticists Are Alarmed),” New York Times, October 17, 2018.
6 The Lagertha Complex: Archaeogenomics and the Viking Stage
Andreas Nyblom
Once you have seen Lagertha, it is hard to unsee her.
—Judith Jesch, 20191
On September 8, 2017, an article with the conspicuous title “A Female Viking Warrior Confirmed by Genomics” was published in the “Brief Communication” section of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (AJPA).2 It presented the results of a genetic sex determination of an individual buried with weapons in a chamber grave at the Viking Age site Birka in present-day Sweden. The article concluded that the individual, who had previously been assumed to have been male, was not only biologically female but the “first confirmed female high-ranking Viking warrior.”3 The article went viral almost within hours and remains one of the most talked about research papers ever according to alternative metrics.4 The article was published in close proximity to the airing of the fifth season of the popular History Channel series Vikings, and the individual, soon to be known worldwide as the “female Viking warrior,” came to be widely conflated with the lead female character of the show: the shieldmaiden Lagertha.5
Nine months earlier, on December 14, 2016, an episode of the docudrama Real Vikings had been released. It featured a meeting at the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm between Katheryn Winnick, the actor starring as Lagertha in Vikings, and three researchers in archaeology and osteology who were also authors of the scientific article later to be published in the AJPA. In front of the camera, Winnick and the researchers study the human remains and weaponry originally found in the chamber grave at Birka in 1878, subsequently stored at the museum. The production soon turns attention to the gender of the buried individual, and it is explained that it has previously been assumed to be male, owing to the traditional warrior equipment found in the grave. With the bones laid out on a table, the researchers explain confidently, while pointing to the remains of the pelvis, that they have evidence for it being female and that the person buried in the grave was “definitely a female warrior—someone who made her living on the battlefield.” In excitement, Winnick bursts out: “So, this chick was a badass!” Leaning over the original artifacts from the grave, she grasps the hilt of a corroded sword and exclaims: “This is my sword. Oh, yeah! This is Lagertha’s favorite weapon!” The scene ends with a sonorous voiceover which declares: “Finally, physical evidence verifies the legend of the shieldmaiden.”6
The scene in Real Vikings was no doubt orchestrated to establish an intriguing analogy between the fictional character Lagertha and the real life and identity of the individual buried at Birka some thousand years before. Epitomizing the pop-feminist ambitions of the Vikings series—to challenge the stereotype of the Viking male by providing space for “women who wield weapons and women who wield power”7—it served simultaneously to authenticate the depiction of female warriors in Vikings and to visualize and dramatize knowledge claims in the academic field of archaeology. In what seemed like a win-win collaboration between entertainment and research, where the expertise and authority provided by the archaeologists was grafted onto the visually compelling imagery of Lagertha, fearlessly wielding her sword and shield on the battlefield, the ancient bones at the museum were brought to life as the remains of a true action heroine, a genuine shieldmaiden—a real Lagertha.
While science and entertainment are frequently assumed to be poles apart, here they were openly intertwined. The blockbuster article and the docudrama episode featured the same human remains from Birka, involved the same people, and made the same kind of claims and arguments, not only about the identity of the buried individual but more generally about the existence and characteristics of female Viking warriors as a social category. In an argument based on, first, an osteological assessment, and second, a genetic determination of the individual’s biological sex, medieval legends about shieldmaidens and contemporary action heroines were somehow also confirmed as authentic representations of real-life individuals. In a most remarkable incarnation, the individual once buried in the Birka chamber grave came to converge with the figure of Lagertha, whose lineage extends from the twelfth-century imaginings of the Danish author Saxo Grammaticus to the popular Vikings series.
How are we to make sense of this complex taking shape around the figure of Lagertha, with its intimate intertwinement of science and entertainment, legend and genomics? What role did the researchers play in the realization of the “female Viking warrior” as a real Lagertha, and what role did the media play in the production of scientific knowledge? How, and to what effects, was aDNA brought into operation?
A Female Viking Warrior “Confirmed” by Genomics
As a scientific study, the article “A Female Viking Warrior Confirmed by Genomics” presents the results from aDNA and strontium isotope analyses of the human remains from grave Bj 581 at the Viking Age site Birka, located on an island in Lake Mälaren in central Sweden. An important Viking Age site for trade and commerce, Birka has been investigated by archaeologists since the nineteenth century. Originally excavated in 1878, the grave featured in the study includes not only the human skeleton but also assorted weapons and the remains of two horses. In the article, the authors identify this set of grave goods as “the complete equipment of a professional warrior,” and hence describe Bj 581 as the epitome of a warrior grave.8 The location of the grave in a prominent place near the garrison is taken as indicative of the social standing of the buried person. Furthermore, a full set of gaming pieces is understood as a sign of “knowledge of tactics and strategy, stressing the individual’s role as a high-ranking officer.”9 Once the identity of the individual as a warrior—or even a high-ranking officer—has been put forward with traditional archaeological arguments, the actual scientific analysis, and the bulk of the scientific paper, revolve around the DNA and isotope analyses.
The genomic analysis is featured prominently, already in the title of the article, where its literal function is to confirm the “female Viking warrior.” On closer inspection, however, it plays only a marginal role in the actual scientific analysis. Biological sex can be determined with a basic genetic analysis—by establishing the absence of a Y-chromosome—and does not require a full genome analysis. A genome-wide analysis, on the other hand, covers the entire nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of an organism. In aDNA studies of prehistoric individuals, such analyses are used to estimate ethnic or family relations and to find out if the individual had any genetically defined characteristics or rare medical conditions.
A genome-wide analysis was indeed performed on two samples from the human remains in Bj 581. First and foremost, it showed that the sampled bones belonged to the same individual. This is a significant result, since the grave had been excavated in 1878 and the human remains (which are now incomplete and lack the skull) were stored among other human remains at an institution that has since been reorganized and relocated. The genomic analysis, moreover, indicated a population affinity with present-day inhabitants of northern Europe. Within Sweden, it showed a stronger affinity with modern inhabitants of the southern and south-central parts than with those of the northern parts of the country. The strontium isotope analysis, which can indicate mobility between geographical regions throughout an individual’s lifetime, was not conclusive but suggested that the individual buried in Bj 581 was born elsewhere and had moved to Birka.
However, none of these findings gained traction in the communication of the results that followed the publication of the article. And the article itself makes clear where the significance of the study lies. After accounting for the complicated scientific methodology and broader results of the DNA and strontium analyses, the authors conclude: “Hence the individual in grave Bj 581 is the first confirmed female high-ranking Viking warrior.”10 Moreover, this is said to “suggest that women, indeed, were able to be full members of male dominated spheres.”11
Two curious claims are made in these statements. First, they set forth that the study could “confirm” that the buried individual had an in-life identity as a high-ranking warrior, although the genomic study established only biological sex and affinity to present-day populations. Second, they suggest that the study—although it included only a single individual—could say something in general about the position of women in Viking Age society.
Of course, neither of these claims is valid. More importantly, however, they point back to what seems to be the core objective of the study, which has little, if anything, to do with genomics and the analysis of aDNA. Rather, it seems that both the objective and principal results of this study had taken shape long before the publication of the scientific article, and long before the human remains were even sampled for aDNA. As indicated already in the Real Vikings scene, aired almost a year before the article was published, the objective was to demonstrate the real existence of a social and professional category of female warriors in the Viking Age, with recourse to legendary shieldmaidens. The analysis of aDNA brought nothing qualitative to this argument, since previous osteological assessments had already established the biological sex. Genetics acted solely as an agent of absolute confirmation—not only of the biological sex of the human remains but of the existence of professional female warriors in the Viking Age and of the high-ranking status of the individual buried in Bj 581. Like a magic wand, the word “genomics” seemed to have brought legendary shieldmaidens to real life.
A Spectacular Media Career
The publication of the article in the AJPA in September 2017 marked the beginning of a spectacular media career, which would turn the buried individual in Bj 581 into a global celebrity showcased in exhibitions, exploited in pornography, printed on t-shirts, and dramatized in documentaries, theater plays, and novels.12 Presented as the “Viking High Ranking Birka Shield-Maiden,” the individual—or rather the individual’s genetic markers in combination with the mediatized celebrity image—was also used as a beacon for genetic ancestry tests on the website My True Ancestry. Highlighted as a “DNA Spotlight,” the individual was promoted as an ancient ancestor with whom root-seeking consumers could connect and match their DNA.13
Only hours after its publication, the academic article had attracted massive media interest across the world.14 The initial news headlines commonly combined the element of DNA as proof with the feminist implications of a female Viking warrior: “Gender Reveal: Ancient Viking Warrior Was a Woman, DNA Analysis Shows,” “Famous Viking Warrior Was a Woman, DNA Reveals,” and “New Science Shows High-Ranked Viking Warrior Was a Fierce Lady.”15
According to the Altmetric attention score, which measures public spread and visibility of academic research, some 149 news outlets have to date reported on the AJPA article. It has been mentioned on a great number of blogs, Wikipedia and Facebook pages, and in thousands of tweets.16 Of course, the overall popular appreciation of Vikings, fueled by books, films, and television series provided a fertile soil for the “female Viking warrior” to capture the public imagination. The results from a Google search of the title of the article abound with images of beautiful young women in various historical costumes. Many illustrations include helmets and armor, and words like “fierce” and “fearsome” are recurring. Frequent references are also made to Hollywood sheroes such as Xena Warrior Princess, Wonder Woman, and Daenerys Targaryen (from Game of Thrones).
