
Mass grave may belong to Viking Great Army - curtis
https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/02/health/viking-graves-repton/index.html
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beefman
Better source

[https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-02/uob-
rdr02011...](https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-02/uob-
rdr020118.php)

with link to the paper

[https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2017.196](https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2017.196)

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mirimir
> "Where sex could be determined, around 20% were women, and this is in
> contrast to previous assumptions that the Viking raiders were solely male.
> Of course, we can't know if these women (or men, for that matter) were
> 'warriors' but it demonstrates that the group was made up of both genders.

Well, from Wikipedia:

> When Leif Erikson's pregnant half-sister Freydís Eiríksdóttir was in
> Vinland, she is reported to have taken up a sword, and, bare-breasted,
> scared away the attacking Skrælings. The fight is recounted in the Greenland
> saga, though Freydís is not explicitly referred to as a shieldmaiden in the
> text.[0]

I love the shieldmaidens in _Mongoliad_ and _D.O.D.O._ by Stephenson et alia.

0) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield-
maiden](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield-maiden)

~~~
danielvf
Germanic and Celtic tribes often took the whole family with them when raiding
or fighting. Quoting wikipedia "Armies also often consisted of more than 50
percent noncombatants."

This could result in worse defeats - the fighting men could get pinned in
between the wagons behind and the enemy in front. As happend a few times when
fighting the Romans.

In fact, in the late middle ages, during the pre-Protestant religious wars, a
German ancestor of mine left his castle with an armored wagon, a cannon, and
his family. They lost the battle and never returned to castle. The family fled
and changed their name.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_wagon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_wagon)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon_fort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagon_fort)

The presence of women and children with a northern European army is not very
conclusive evidence that they were there as warriors

~~~
mirimir
Noncombatants don't typically wield swords bare-breasted, however.

~~~
anecdotallll
A single instance of a remarkable individual highlights how odd that one
person was, however.

~~~
qw
There are other examples, including physical evidence (grave of a female
warrior)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield-
maiden](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shield-maiden)

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harrisjt
I'm interested in how this affects dating for any species with a diet of fish

