November 2011
32 posts
Clarification to my previous post re: Viking Women
Recent finds have, in fact, shown female graves containing weapons. This could suggest the possibility of female warriors. However, it is not particularly conclusive, and it is known that women were trained in swordsmanship in order to protect their homes when men were away.
There are records of women dressing as men in order to go to war. But this is distinct from the idea of a female “valkyrie” warrior, and closer to a possible transgender role - something which existed in many ancient cultures. Some noble women were known to take control of armies after their husbands’ deaths and lead them into battle.
Women and children were known to accompany the Danish army in the 9th century, and the majority of Scandinavian invaders were “marriage-minded” and may have brought their families with them.
Would you mind giving your source for the Black Death post? I'm just curious because I was under the impression that the Black Death never reached what is now Finland. I know there was the other plague in 1710 that did but I've read that the Black Plague didn't. I think one of the places I read it was on the Turku museum's website which has a painting or sculpture (I forget exactly what) depicting the Black Plague but then they noted that it actually didn't spread to Finland
There’s actually some contention about this, which I probably should have noted in my post. I usually check several sources and then go with whatever most of them agree on.
There is some evidence of plague in Finland, according to what I read, but it was not hit nearly as badly as other parts of Europe. The plague took a long time to spread to Sweden, Finland and Russia, relative to how quickly it spread everywhere else, probably because of limited sea trade to these areas (for some reason it didn’t hop the Baltic Sea, and actually got into Sweden from Norway).
Half of my sources said it didn’t touch Iceland, and the others said it did. So obviously there’s still argument about this, and I’m by no means an expert in the plague.
