Meet Erika the Red: Viking women were warriors too, say scientists
"Valhalla - I am coming!"
Read the rest of the article at the link.Researchers re-create the face of a woman buried with an impressive collection of weaponry for a National Geographic documentary
Dalya Alberge
Sat 2 Nov 2019 08.45 EDTLast modified on Sat 2 Nov 2019 13.40 EDT
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Ella Al-Shamahi comes face to face with the Viking woman’s skull. Photograph: Eloisa Noble/National GeographicThink of a Viking warrior and you probably imagine a fearsome, muscular, bearded man. Well, think again. Using cutting-edge facial recognition technology, British scientists have brought to life the battle-hardened face of a fighter who lived more than 1,000 years ago. And she’s a woman.
The life-like reconstruction, which challenges long-held assumptions that Viking warrior heroes such as Erik the Red left their women at home, is based on a skeleton found in a Viking graveyard in Solør, Norway, and now preserved in Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History. The remains had already been identified as female, but her burial site had not been considered a warrior grave “simply because the occupant was a woman”, according to archaelogist Ella Al-Shamahi.