Free Republic

The remains of a powerful viking — long thought to be a man — was in fact a real-life Xena Warrior Princess, a study released Friday reveals. The lady war boss was buried in the mid-10th century along with deadly weapons and two horses, leading archaeologists and historians to assume she was a man, according to the findings, published in in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. Wrong. “It’s actually a woman, somewhere over the age of 30 and fairly tall, too, measuring around [5’6″] tall ,” archaeologist Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson of Uppsala University, who conducted the study, told The Local.

Viking era tales of fearsome female warriors fighting side-by-side with men have long aroused suspicions that women may, too, have dominated the battlefield. But, with little evidence to prove their presence, the idea has remained controversial, and many have dismissed it as folklore. Now, for the first time, scientists have confirmed the existence of a female Viking warrior, using DNA retrieved from a 10th century skeleton buried in the Swedish Viking town, Birka.

By Adam Taylor March 18, 2015 Follow @mradamtaylor (Statens historiska museum / Christer Ahlin) In the modern-era, Scandinavian countries have become known for their sometimes awkward embrace of migrants from the Arab and Muslim world. But the history behind that relationship goes back far further than you might expect.Consider the case of a ring discovered in a Viking grave in Birka, a historic trading center in what is now Sweden. The woman in the grave died in the 9th century and was discovered around a thousand years later by the famous Swedish archaeologist Hjalmar Stolpe, who spent years excavating...