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Forum Index > Off-topic Talk > Female Vikings Reply to topic
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Mikko Kuusirati




Location: Finland
Joined: 16 Nov 2004
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PostPosted: Mon 15 Sep, 2014 5:44 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Matthew Amt wrote:
And yet, plenty of societies that have not included long marches with backpacks have excluded women from military service!

As well as the reverse. Like the two female sergeants in the Sissikomppania, where we jaegers regularly lugged around up to fifty kilos of personal equipment plus tents, water, long range radio, a machinegun, anti-vehicle mines...

"And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is."
— Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum
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Matthew Amt




Location: Laurel, MD, USA
Joined: 17 Sep 2003

Posts: 1,456

PostPosted: Mon 15 Sep, 2014 7:01 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Lafayette C Curtis wrote:
Matthew Amt wrote:
Spartan women never had to defend their homes, since Sparta was never attacked!


Pyrrhus attacked in 272 BC....

Later on, the Romans under Flaminius attacked in 195 BC...


Sure, but this is long after the whole "Spartan" social system has ceased to be effective.

Quote:
Quote:
There simply aren't any references to Greek or Roman women marching off to war as soldiers,


No easily verifiable historical accounts, perhaps.


Which is what any discussion of *history* needs to have, eh? (Wink wink!)

Quote:
If we're allowed to play more fast and loose by veering into the realm of mythical/legendary history, there were the Bacchae of Thebes (and I don't know whether women driven mad and given superhuman powers by a god really count as "soldiers.")


Ha, if superhuman madwomen are written in as a category in the regular annual levy, sure! And there are lots of vase paintings on the subject, so getting the clothing and kit together is no problem.

Matthew
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Niels Just Rasmussen




Location: Nykøbing Falster, Denmark
Joined: 03 Sep 2014

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PostPosted: Mon 15 Sep, 2014 7:54 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

I think I have not made myself clear.
I have never stated that it was normal to have female warriors, but that it was certainly possible for women to be warriors if they dressed as men in Viking and possibly in Scythian/Sarmatian societies. It was uncommon, but by no means super rare, since people from agricultural communities (Rome, Greece and China) report it again and again when coming into contact with especially nomad raiders. So to dismiss it as a fantasy would be questionable in my opinion as we actually find “warrior graves“ (females with weapon goods) fairly commonly.
[The amazon myth is a legend that Herodotus reports secondhand, that could be retelling of a Scythian myth that explains the origin of female warriors, but not reality of the today of then]

For true Agricultural-Urban societies that fielded standing armies it was very very rare if not non-existent.

My point is that nomadic people (or those still retaining that cultural aspect as the viking did) didn't have standing armies. A King could muster people for campaign and defense. Everyone (excluding thralls/slaves) would probably know basic fighting skills, but they often decided themselves whether they wanted to participate or not.
First with christianity could kings in Denmark slowly force people to do what he wanted, but sometimes they killed the king if he tried to hard to muster (As Canute the Holy tried to invade England in 1086 to take it back from William the Conquerer, but because of delays to assemble the fleet many danish people wanted to leave since they have already waited a long time and used up their supplies which they had to provide for themselves. The king tried to force them to stay by fining people leaving, so they rebelled and killed him in the church over the alter - only reason he became “holy“). In most nomadic societies it were like that - you had to convince people to stay to fight for winning glory and booty, but to long waiting and they would leave.
So if a woman came in man's clothing (shieldmaiden) and wanting to fight (before christianity that is), so she had the freedom to do so if she wasn't under any man that could say no (being so if her father and brothers had died). People were their on their own accord and they received booty after their social standing (and how many men they brought with them).
That was the case with vikings and probably also other nomadic people from the steppes. (pre-muslim turks, mongols etc).

Viking aristocrats were actually constantly on the move while their thralls stayed put taking care of the households [Merovingians Kings did the same and Attila the Hun as well]. Their capital were actually moving along with them. So that is clearly a nomadic origin that was retained until Christianity.

Since also you most of the time can't even tell the difference in many skeletons between scandinavian women and scandinavian men of the viking age (as you can today, where there is a much clearer difference of scandinavian men being more masculine and scandinavian females being more feminine than in the viking age), then one can't use any physical argument whether women would be inferior warriors. They were generally of equal strength as the men.
That in itself is very interesting and could point to almost no gender specialization when it came to physical work needed for surviving for a long period of time. Most people don't know that women did the harvesting in many parts of Scandinavia before the use of the scythe around 1500. Before then it was done by sickle and seems to be a female occupation as was beer-brewing by the way.
So for viking age (before Christianity) Saxo states that it was not uncommon for Danish women to become warriors - in the professional sense of it being a lifestyle! [No home, no husband]. I can't see why that has to be disputed.

With Christianity and the idea of professional standing armies receiving pay that can be given orders, then it seems to change to male exclusivity in Scandinavia.
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Michael Harley




Location: Melbourne, Australia
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PostPosted: Mon 15 Sep, 2014 6:11 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Quote:
The problem is in archaeology is that it's not really possible to see the difference between male and female viking women as they look more the same that male and female scandinavians do today, so weapon-graves have just been automatically assigned to men and graves with “female“ components to women. More and more archaeologist think that might be wrong in many instances. I think the same very well apply to Scythian and Sarmatian graves (Iranian speaking people).
Quote: “It’s actually more difficult to determine the gender of a skeleton from the Viking era,” says Harvig. “The men’s skulls were a little more feminine and the women’s skulls a little more masculine than what we’re seeing today. Of course, this doesn’t apply to all skeletons from the Viking period, but generally it’s quite difficult to determine the gender of a Viking Age skeleton.” Source: http://sciencenordic.com/what-vikings-really-looked


Quote:
Since also you most of the time can't even tell the difference in many skeletons between scandinavian women and scandinavian men of the viking age (as you can today, where there is a much clearer difference of scandinavian men being more masculine and scandinavian females being more feminine than in the viking age), then one can't use any physical argument whether women would be inferior warriors. They were generally of equal strength as the men.


Niels, I have a problem with this repeated statement as it smacks of Lamarckian 'transmission of acquired characteristics' (see: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_09 ), which we know is not the way evolution works. It would be more parsimonious to merely state that the assigning of gender to Homo sapien skeletal remains is fraught with difficulty at the best of times.

Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not wisdom, Wisdom is not truth - Frank Zappa
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Niels Just Rasmussen




Location: Nykøbing Falster, Denmark
Joined: 03 Sep 2014

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PostPosted: Tue 16 Sep, 2014 3:57 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Michael Harley wrote:
Quote:
The problem is in archaeology is that it's not really possible to see the difference between male and female viking women as they look more the same that male and female scandinavians do today, so weapon-graves have just been automatically assigned to men and graves with “female“ components to women. More and more archaeologist think that might be wrong in many instances. I think the same very well apply to Scythian and Sarmatian graves (Iranian speaking people).
Quote: “It’s actually more difficult to determine the gender of a skeleton from the Viking era,” says Harvig. “The men’s skulls were a little more feminine and the women’s skulls a little more masculine than what we’re seeing today. Of course, this doesn’t apply to all skeletons from the Viking period, but generally it’s quite difficult to determine the gender of a Viking Age skeleton.” Source: http://sciencenordic.com/what-vikings-really-looked


Quote:
Since also you most of the time can't even tell the difference in many skeletons between scandinavian women and scandinavian men of the viking age (as you can today, where there is a much clearer difference of scandinavian men being more masculine and scandinavian females being more feminine than in the viking age), then one can't use any physical argument whether women would be inferior warriors. They were generally of equal strength as the men.


Niels, I have a problem with this repeated statement as it smacks of Lamarckian 'transmission of acquired characteristics' (see: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/history_09 ), which we know is not the way evolution works. It would be more parsimonious to merely state that the assigning of gender to Homo sapien skeletal remains is fraught with difficulty at the best of times.


Oh well that was not the intention to make it sound Larmarckian, actually it was the opposite. It was not because they needed changes that they received them, but those that acquired them had greater chances of surviving longer to produce more and healthier offspring that could transfer these changes on.
If you have gender specialization then over time you would likely see a change between the sexes as those who best do their survival-dependent-tasks get more offspring. If you don't observe any skeletal differences between the sexes that means that both sexes are more likely to be under the same kind of selective pressure for survival and producing more offspring. Greater chances that men and females are performing the same tasks needed for survival.
The result is just that physically the difference between men and women in the viking age are less than it is today between men and women in Scandinavia.
Off course sexual selection is also a big factor here and it could only be a result of that.

But since our ancestors in overwhelming degree had fairly pronounced sexual dimorphy [interestingly it's not that great for Neanderthals either, which could mean that women participated in hunting occasionally because it was needed for the survival of the family group?], then you have to explain some kind of reason why sexual dimorphy is very small in viking scandinavia.

My point was simply questioning the common argument that women can't be warriors because they are physically inferior.
But it doesn't mean women WERE warriors, but that they likely had needed their strength for survival through the centuries; it just makes many women more physical apt to become one as a shieldmaiden. [which I state again probably were uncommon but not very rare according to Saxo at least].
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Lafayette C Curtis




Location: Indonesia
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PostPosted: Thu 02 Oct, 2014 10:33 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Isn't all that missing the original point of this discussion, though? Somebody brought up a link to a popular article about a paper that purportedly said Viking warrior women were common, but it turns out that the popular coverage badly misrepresented what the paper really said -- which was simply that women migrated along in near0equal numbers with men in the first wave of Scandinavian exploration/colonisation rather than coming only in later waves after an initial wave dominated by men. It didn't say that the women were warriors -- indeed, it didn't say how many people in the graves, men or women -- were warriors to begin with. Sure, it didn't say that the women weren't warriors either, but that's the whole point -- all the fuss about the women being warriors (or not) isn't even mentioned by the data or the conclusions in the paper and popular media has pretty much created the controversy out of thin air.
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