Oren Falk (Cornell): “The Warrior Woman Who Wasn’t”

The Medieval Renaissance Program at SU presents:

A Lecture by Oren Falk (Cornell): “The Warrior Woman Who Wasn’t”

Friday November 12 at 2pm, 151 Eggers (History Seminar Room) or online

The news in 2017 of the first definitive identification of a viking warrior woman sent ripples of excitement among Nordicists, medievalists, and beyond: a team of archaeologists and scientists announced that genomic analysis had conclusively resexed an elite Viking Age warrior’s remains as those of a biological female. Since then, there has been a flood of publications announcing ever bolder claims regarding this hitherto neglected facet of gender (and perhaps also transgender) history, as well as a more modest trickle of sceptical voices. This paper looks closely at some of the literary and historical evidence for women warriors in the Norse cultural sphere. Textual evidence cited in support of identifying the person buried in Birka grave Bj 581 as a woman (or transgender) warrior turns out to tell a very different story than it has usually been taken to.

Co-sponsored by the Medieval Renaissance Program, the Department of Anthropology, the Department of History, the Department of Languages Literatures and Linguistics, and the Syracuse University Humanities Center.