ELLA: An ancient grave.
Its occupant surrounded by treasure
and deadly weapons.
The most stunning burial ever found of an elite Viking Warrior.
It's always been assumed that Viking warriors were all men.
(shouting)
But new discoveries on this burial are turning that completely on its head.
Because science has revealed that this iconic warrior...
was a woman.
I'm Ella Al-Shamahi,
archaeologist and National Geographic Explorer.
An expert in ancient human remains.
Well, she's female!
Now I'm on a mission...
armed with cutting-edge technology...
That's amazing!
ELLA: ...analyzing brand-new forensic data...
Blood everywhere. Head wounds bleed quite heavily.
ELLA: ...conducting unique scientific experiments.
Oh, my gosh, we've done some damage.
ELLA: And even making my own amazing archaeological discovery.
Is that a cause of death?
To reveal whether Viking women could really have fought alongside men,
and to find out if this one extraordinary burial is unique
or whether there are more Viking warrior women out there.
NEIL: There are so many other burials in the Viking world.
It wouldn't surprise me at all if we find more.
ELLA: What is being revealed right now is transforming
everything we thought we knew about the Vikings.
And how their women might have gone to war.
Northern Europe.
What is now modern-day Scandinavia was once the heart of the Viking world.
Look at this place.
You can still imagine the Vikings setting out
on raids of terror 1000 years ago.
Their exploits were legendary.
And their lands still hold secrets.
ELLA (over radio): The clues are down there.
This is Viking country.
My investigation into Viking warrior women begins here
in Sweden's capital, Stockholm.
I've come to the Swedish History Museum to see the Birka warrior,
the skeleton that's causing such controversy in Viking archaeology.
The fragile remains are not on display to the public,
but I've been given special access.
I've definitely got goose bumps right now.
A burial unearthed over a century ago,
surrounded by a rich stash of weapons.
-Oh, my gosh. (laughs) -CHARLOTTE: Some of the weapons...
ELLA: Wow.
At the time, experts hailed the discovery of an elite Viking warrior.
The assumed remains of a man.
But now that assumption turns out to be wrong.
New analysis by a team including archaeologist
Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson has confirmed that this elite warrior
was female.
Oh, um...
There's a different age associated with each of those fusions,
so for example...
So why haven't archaeologists known this all along?
If this is a jigsaw puzzle, um, most of it's missing...
CHARLOTTE: Yes.
...which makes any determination really, really difficult.
CHARLOTTE: Well, there's lots of information missing
and the quality of the bones, of the preservation is not good.
ELLA: By studying bone growth and tooth wear,
we can tell that this was someone who died in their 30s.
But are there clues to whether they were a man or a woman?
Along with other features, one very important bone is the pelvis.
Now we've only got a teeny, teeny bit of the pelvis...
but we do have the greater sciatic notch and that is actually quite wide,
which is in keeping with a female pelvis.
-Evidence that she's female. -Of course. Of course.
ELLA: But when the grave was excavated,
archaeologists were less interested in these decayed bones
than the buried treasures found alongside them.
These might be the Viking-est of the weapons,
right, the sword.
-I'm so excited. I am sorry-- -(Charlotte chuckles)
I'm not used to wielding swords.
She was a badass.
As well as a sword there was a battle axe and spears.
CHARLOTTE: These are really high-end weapons.
ELLA: Even an entire cache of arrows.
This is all about being a warrior.
ELLA: But while the weapons fascinated archaeologists
a century ago, there was little to learn by studying ancient bones.
Even the skull of the Birka Warrior has been lost since excavation,
leaving only her jaw.
Today, though, science can make incredible discoveries from skeletons.
And DNA analysis has proved what examination of the pelvis suggests,
that these remains are biologically female.
The results have sent shockwaves through the world of archaeology.
So what was the initial reaction?
Everything and anything from "You must have the wrong bones",
to "I have a gut feel that you're wrong, actually".
Right.
Some experts still doubt that Viking women could have fought like men.
And others have started to ask whether this biological female
might have chosen to identify as a man.
The Birka warrior is really challenging what a lot of archaeologists
have always believed.
It is a massive upset.
You've got this grave that everybody has always agreed
was a really significant Viking warrior grave,
now, we know it's female.
And the real question for me is, if archaeology got one grave wrong,
how many more female Viking warrior graves are there out there?
If there are others, I'm determined to find them.
But first, I need to know what to look for,
so I'm heading to where our warrior was discovered.
Twenty miles west of Stockholm is the ancient Viking settlement of Birka.
Today it's uninhabited, but 1200 years ago,
this was a thriving hub of the Viking world.
And its landscape is shaped by its Viking past.
There are burial mounds everywhere.
Archaeologist Neil Price has been fascinated by the secrets
of this vast Viking graveyard for 25 years.
This is amazing. Every single one of these mounds,
these tiny little hills is a grave.
Yeah, um, on the island as a whole
you've got about 3,000 visible burial mounds like this.
It's the landscape of the dead surrounding the town of the living.
ELLA: Our Viking warrior was buried on the very furthest edge of the island.
And so would this have been a significant location for a Viking?
Absolutely. I-I don't think it's an accident that--that she's buried
on the most prominent position on the island.
Everything about this, even if we hadn't excavated it,
I-I think it really emphasizes the importance of this person.
ELLA: For the first time, by using the original excavation data,
combined with cutting-edge computer graphics,
we can recreate the grave as never seen before.
Our warrior was buried in a chamber grave,
an entire underground room reserved only
for the most important Vikings.
It was large enough to contain her body,
a lavish array of grave goods,
and even at her feet, a pair of horses.
There's a mare and a stallion, they're packed very close together.
Then you got the weapons grouped around the body.
ELLA: Precisely placed. A sword by her left hand...
and an axe next to her right.
Two shields, one at the head, one at the foot of the grave.
ELLA: Nearby, a number of arrows.
That's a lot of grave goods.
Particularly a lot of weapons.
ELLA: Alongside the weapons, something intriguing,
small fragments of whalebone...
identified as counters in a Viking game of strategy.
The grave's position, all its rich contents,
and these counters have led to an extraordinary suggestion...
that this warrior, as well as being female,
could have been a military commander.
Everything about this woman, this grave, this location,
indicates that she was someone really, really significant.
The discovery that our woman could have been a military leader
is remarkable.
Asking some big, new questions of sex and gender
in the Viking world.
But if archaeology has got one grave so wrong for over a century,
could there be more?
Is she alone, was she really the only one?
If we look, say, at warrior burials all over the Viking world,
most of them aren't sexed at all,
some of those are going to turn out to be female.
There are so many other burials in the Viking world.
so many more questions left to ask,
it wouldn't surprise me at all if we find more.
ELLA: How many Viking warrior women could be out there?
And how could this change what we know about the Viking world?
Leaving my female warrior behind in Sweden,
I'm heading south to Denmark
in search of what could be another.
Following a lead, I'm linking up with Polish archaeologist,
Leszek Gardela.
ELLA: Do you think it would have been common for women to be warriors?
LESZEK: I don't this was very common.
I think they certainly existed,
but there were much fewer female warriors than male warriors.
ELLA: Leszek's brought me to a rural Danish island called Langeland.
All these wheat fields grow over an ancient Viking cemetery,
where 49 graves were excavated in the 1980s.
I've come to investigate one in particular.
Using original excavation data combined with computer graphics,
we can recreate the grave,
allowing us to explore it in a completely new way.
Unlike the Birka warrior,
this Danish burial has always been identified as female
but never as a warrior.
Leszek, though, thinks that that could be wrong.
It was one of the few chamber graves in--in the cemetery,
and chamber graves are something that immediately suggest high status.
ELLA: Nail fragments are evidence that there was once a wooden coffin.
LESZEK: The deceased person was buried within the coffin...
Hmm.
...with several objects.
ELLA: Within the grave, mysterious treasures that make it unique.
On her chest, a knife.
At her hip, an ornate metal fire striker.
And, also, a silver coin.
An Arabic dirham, dated to the year 945,
so this gives us a very nice date for the entire burial.
Wow, OK.
But there's no array of weapons like the Birka burial.
Just one very special discovery
that Leszek believes makes this woman a crucial clue in my hunt
for another Viking warrior woman.
There's one other thing that's really interesting.
Um, there was also an axe,
and this axe was buried to the right knee of this person.
ELLA: Axes are rarely found in female Viking graves.
When they are, they're usually regarded as domestic tools.
But Leszek thinks this one is different.
Ever since its discovery,
the ancient axe head has been carefully preserved,
deep within the stores of Langeland's Museum.
-It should be here... one-one-two-eight. -One-one-two-eight.
LESZEK: Five, six, seven...
ELLA: And Leszek has never seen it for real.
One-one-two five, six, seven...
one-one-two-eight, here we go!
OK, that's the one. Exciting moment.
OK.
OK, so it's the moment of truth.
The moment of truth, let's have a look inside.
You haven't seen this before, right?
No, no. It's my first time.
Could be a crucial part of the puzzle.
Absolutely. OK, are you ready?
-Let's do this. -Let's do this.
LESZEK: So this is the axe.
ELLA: My hunt to uncover evidence of a second Viking warrior woman
has led me into the storeroom of a Danish museum.
LESZEK: It's nicely wrapped.
-This is real archaeology. -It is real archaeology.
Everything just--
And a mysterious ancient axe head.
-Wow. -Uh-huh.
Uh, it's a fine piece of Viking age craftsmanship.
I'll try and lift it.
What do you think?
LESZEK: Yeah, it's a beautiful axe.
Um, you can see the blade is asymmetrical
and it has a very narrow neck as well.
What's your impression of this?
This axe is unlike any axe,
uh, that we commonly find in Viking age Denmark.
ELLA: Right.
There's something that-- that makes this axe
-a foreign object on Danish soil. -Right.
ELLA: Crafted hundreds of miles to the East,
the blade of this axe isn't the right weight or shape
for household use.
So it is lighter.
LESZEK: It is very light. It is very light.
Now wh-what does that mean, the lightness?
It's not a working tool.
You need a heavy axe to chop wood.
This particular example is definitely a weapon,
it's a battle axe.
Its particular design makes it a perfect killing device essentially.
So this is quite similar to the case from Birka.
Yeah.
The discovery of a battle axe in this female burial
makes me think that we've found a second warrior woman.
From Sweden to Denmark,
two graves.
And now, perhaps two Viking warrior women.
But this woman's axe is so unusual,
I want to take a closer look to see what it might have looked like when new...
and how it might have been used.
Forging is like sculpting in clay, you sculpt with hammer.
ELLA: I've commissioned expert weapon-maker, Tord Bergelin,
to make an exact replica.
It's only the edge that is really polished.
The smoother it is the better it cuts.
If it doesn't shave, it's not sharp enough.
Actually, this is how I try all my blades.
If I've been working a lot, I have to go look for hair on my arms
because it's almost shaved clean.
ELLA: Armed with this razor-sharp weapon,
I arrive at Denmark's Trelleborg fortress.
A thousand years ago, this Viking fort was a major military settlement.
An ideal place to test my new axe in the hands of a local female fighter.
Sandra Bohr is a Viking combat specialist.
With her, archaeologist and weapons expert, Rolf Warming.
And, essential to our test...
a pig carcass.
So why are we using a pig as target practice?
ROLF: Well, uh, it resembles human flesh.
It's quite standard for--for practicing with different sharp weapons.
ELLA: Before Sandra tries it out, I'm keen to have a go myself.
And then it's like that.
-SANDRA: Yes. -ELLA: There we go.
With an axe sharp enough to shave the hairs of a blacksmith's arm,
any slip could be dangerous.
-I'm nervous. -Yeah?
Um, yeah, I'm nervous.
But do you feel safe with the axe and ready for it?
-ELLA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. -SANDRA: So you're ready?
I'm just going to step out.
You made a big cut.
That's quite a bit of damage.
ELLA: Even in the hands of a first-time warrior,
the blade slices into flesh like butter.
But in the hands of Sandra, this light axe is a fast,
one-handed killing machine.
I think a lot of guys, they underestimate me
because I'm a--a woman,
and I'm short and I don't look that fierce.
And my fighting style is very masculine
which also, uh, surprises them.
ELLA: If Sandra can be deadly with this battle axe today...
then so could a Viking woman a thousand years ago.
And all this begs another huge question.
If we are finding women warrior burials,
then might women have taken part in front-line combat?
To explore that means leaving Scandinavia for Britain.
I'm heading to the heart of England
and a rural village in Derbyshire.
Repton was a base for an entire Viking army
that set out from Denmark to conquer England
in a campaign that was waged for more than 13 years.
Archaeologist Cat Jarman is unearthing its remains.
CAT: This is our current ongoing trench.
We've found Viking artifacts, weapon fragments, ship nails,
real evidence that the Vikings were definitely here.
ELLA: As well as a camp, Repton was also a burial site...
where archaeologists discovered a mass deposit of bones.
There was an axe, there were fighting knives.
It was presumed that this was the burial of the Viking war dead.
ELLA: Along with the weapons, the jumbled remains of over 250 bodies...
some carrying the marks of violent injury.
But close examination revealed something extraordinary.
Not all these skeletons were male.
ELLA: In an English village, I could have hit the motherlode
in my search for Viking warrior women.
A burial pit of suspected war dead.
CAT: About 80% of those buried there were men,
but 20% were women.
If this really was the war cemetery of the great army,
the assumption was that that would only have men in it.
So who were these women?
ELLA: Even though the Viking army was on campaign for years,
it's previously been thought that Viking women were left at home.
The assumption was that women had no roles in these armies.
They stayed at home as nice housewives when their men went--went abroad.
One of the early suggestions was that perhaps these were Viking men
with local Anglo-Saxon wives who'd come along.
So they "married locally."
CAT: Yeah.
ELLA: The dead women were assumed to be locals picked up by the army.
But using cutting edge science, Cat is revealing something unexpected.
One of the things I've been looking at is
Strontium isotope analysis, which is a way of looking at tooth enamel.
It's a-- Enamel preserves chemical signatures.
So the idea being that your teeth tell you where you grew up.
Yeah. Essentially they lock in a chemical signal
that relates to geography.
And so these people, were they from Repton
based on this isotope analysis?
The ones I've been looking and analyzing,
they're certainly not local.
But they are from all sorts of places
which could be completely consistent with parts of Scandinavia.
ELLA: The new evidence suggests
that these women might have been part of the Viking invasion force.
So far, no one is claiming that any of them fought
and died in battle.
But I'm wondering if it must be a possibility?
There is now enough evidence to show that at least women were part of this.
They were in some way part of moving out of Scandinavia,
they weren't just sitting at home, looking after the farm.
So we need to start questioning those roles.
ELLA: But could our women have really fought alongside men,
in battle?
On average, men are bigger and stronger than women.
So, in hand-to-hand combat, my two potential warrior women
would have risked being over-powered.
But there was another Viking weapon that was deadly, at a distance.
The bow and arrow.
And buried with the Birka warrior in Sweden
was that cache of arrow-heads.
So I want to take a closer look at my first Viking warrior woman again
to search for forensic evidence of whether she might have fought in battle.
We're using cutting-edge technology to scan the remains of the Birka warrior.
Thousands of individual images are used to build up a detailed 3-D model.
Detecting critical details that might tell us more
about our warrior woman and her life.
Forensic archaeologist, Carolyn Rando,
is examining this new data from the Birka warrior
for the very first time.
Beginning with her arms.
CAROLYN: So this is her left humerus, this from the back side.
The left side is slightly bigger and slightly more robust as well.
So it's being pulled or possibly even ripped in this area.
ELLA: On the ball of the shoulder joint, Carolyn detects something unusual.
CAROLYN: This could be from repetitive stress,
so overuse of the joint again and again and again,
using one arm much more than the other.
ELLA: It's a conclusion that could be explained
by her using a weapon in her left hand.
But can our new scans provide any other clues
to what sort of weapon it may have been?
Archaeologists have previously identified something unusual about her spine.
But no one has ever carried out a detailed examination before.
What I noticed the most was how diseased her spine looked.
The joint surface is hugely enlarged.
She probably has some sort of oesteo-arthritis developing in her spine
already in her 30s.
It kinda switches right, left, right, left, all the way down,
suggesting that this bone growth is trying to compensate
for some sort of behaviors of the individual.
ELLA: Forensic data reveals specific damage
to the Birka Warrior's spine,
indicating years of twisting.
The evidence is stacking up.
In her grave, two horses...
and all those arrows...
all pointing to one form of combat on the battlefield,
where women might have been an equal match for men.
ELLA: Studying the Birka Warrior's grave in forensic detail
is leading to a remarkable conclusion.
There is some suggestion that some similar types of pathological changes to the spine
could be found in horseback riders.
Mounted archer could have been a good match for her.
ELLA: Staying clear of slashing blades,
the new evidence suggests that she could've been a long-distance killer.
Firing deadly arrows from horse-back.
So, just how effective were the archery weapons
found in the Birka warrior's grave?
I've recruited top archer, Kate Dunnighan,
in a unique experiment to test...
these.
Exact replicas of the arrows found with the Birka Warrior
I'm so excited to show you these.
And, you can see, they've even got the grooves.
KATE: Mm-hmm.
But what do you think the purpose of them is?
I feel like, if anything, it might do more damage
when it actually hits that target.
The weight of this, it's all based at the front
to carry it basically to your target.
ELLA: Kate will shoot them from a replica Viking bow,
designed to be fired from horseback.
Her target, a ballistics torso, clad in chainmail armor,
just like the Vikings would've been used to.
Our experiment will be monitored by ballistics expert, Paul Everington.
His specialist equipment will determine the arrow's velocity.
While a high-speed camera will capture the moment of impact.
So what we would measure is the velocity,
and from that we calculate the energy
and we see the total effect on the human body.
All right this has never been done before.
We are scientifically testing if her arrow is deadly.
ELLA: Oh, my God.
Oh, my gosh, we've done some damage.
-It's so perfect. -KATE: Yeah, it is very straight.
I am surprised at how straight it went in.
ELLA: Traveling at more than 70 miles an hour...
Kate's arrow easily pierces the chainmail.
-Congratulations, you're a murderer. -Thank you! (laughs)
Uh, this has proved that the-the arrowhead that's in her grave
is completely capable of being fatal.
Yeah, absolutely.
What kind of damage are we looking at?
That was the extent of the damage.
That amount of the arrow went through the mail and into the body.
If it hit a vital organ, they would be dead by now.
ELLA: With a deadly range of up to 700 feet,
launched from horseback, these arrows would have been devastating.
To me, its proof these weapons
could have given the Birka Warrior a killer role on the battlefield...
even against the strongest of men.
So far on my quest,
I've discovered a potential axe-wielding woman warrior in Denmark,
and revealed that the occupant of an iconic warrior grave
could have been a female mounted archer.
But there's one more Viking burial I want to explore.
This time, in Norway.
I've been told that there's one grave north of Oslo,
that bears similarities to the Birka burial.
Traveling with me is Norwegian archaeologist, Marianne Moen.
MARIANNE: This is Norway and all of Norway is sparsely populated.
It's a very large country with not a lot of people in it.
ELLA: Are there a lot of excavations in the area?
No, all the Viking graves that we have in Norway number about 8000.
You get scattered graves more than anything else.
ELLA: I'm looking for the grave of a Viking
who was always thought to be a woman.
But never a warrior,
despite the astonishing contents of her grave...
that's utterly packed with weapons.
ELLA: An ordinary Norwegian hillside
and a very special Viking burial.
Norwegian archaeologist Marianne Moen has never been here before.
So this is your first time visiting the grave?
It is.
-ELLA: Are you excited? -MARIANNE: Very.
It's so important to see where things are placed really
to understand the landscape around them.
ELLA: OK, so it's right on a cliff edge?
MARIANNE: Yeah, it really is.
ELLA: It immediately reminds me of the Birka warrior site.
It's overlooking water in a prominent position in the landscape.
They're showing off power and status.
They're showing that this person is important,
they're so important in death we're making them visible.
ELLA: Using new technology, we can recreate her grave.
MARIANNE: That's amazing!
ELLA: Placed all around our Viking woman,
an entire arsenal of weapons.
What can you tell us about the positioning of them?
MARIANNE: What's interesting is that the grave goods
are quite clearly, sort of, connected to the body as you can see.
ELLA: There are arrows, a sword...
a spear and an axe.
And her head rests on a shield.
MARIANNE: You know the--the sword, at the left-hand side,
you've got the spear alongside on the right-hand side.
And then you've got most probably her head resting on the shield.
ELLA: To me, it looks remarkably similar to the burial of the Birka warrior.
And yet this site has never been categorized as a warrior grave,
simply because the occupant was a woman.
Could you tell me what's written?
MARIANNE: It says "Where in August 1900
was found a female skeleton
with male equipment from the '900s."
ELLA: To me, all the evidence suggests
this is the grave of a third female fighter.
And just like the Birka warrior,
she was also someone who was very important.
This is quite clearly
a very high-status grave for somebody special definitely.
So in your mind, who is she?
This is a person of the ruling class,
of warrior status
who had the power to rule, and who had the ability to rule,
and who did rule, and that's why she was buried as she was.
ELLA: Not everyone agrees.
So, there's a theory that she was a slave and she was a sacrifice.
I don't think it's likely.
There's quite a strong link between the body and the grave goods.
Like her head resting on a shield for example,
the sword by her side.
One of the other theories that-- that's been put forward is that
there was actually a man here somewhere and that the man has disappeared.
(chuckles) Disappeared.
MARIANNE: Very unlikely.
Because again, the grave goods show quite clearly
that they are associated with her.
I think it doesn't hold up.
And I find it problematic that there is a need to explain this grave
that we don't have for similar graves.
ELLA: For me, I'm convinced that this grave
should be accepted as a third female Viking warrior.
I want to see if I can discover more about her.
I'm heading to Oslo's Museum of Cultural History,
where this Viking woman's remains have been carefully preserved.
I'm really excited.
It's really humbling to be-- to be face-to-face with her.
But as someone used to studying ancient bones,
there's something I find striking about this skull,
that, incredibly, no one has ever explored before.
I'm quite excited about this as well,
because there's a dent on her forehead.
Evidence of an injury,
serious enough to have damaged the bone.
Now the question is, when did that dent happen?
Is that a cause of death?
It might just be possible that I've discovered the very first evidence
ever found, of a Viking woman with a battle injury.
ELLA: More than 1000 years old,
the skull of a Viking woman is set to be analyzed
by 21st century technology
to examine a previously unexplored injury.
Using a state-of-the art CT-Scanner,
X-rays from all angles produce a detailed 3D image.
Could this data help me solve the mystery
of my latest potential warrior woman and her strange head wound?
Back in London, forensic archaeologist Carolyn Rando
examines the new data for evidence.
CAROLYN: Looking through the CT scan of the skull,
we're able to notice there's this little dip,
kind of right here in the forehead.
Could it maybe have been something like a sword or something like that?
Possibly.
Kind of like shaving off a little bit of bone.
It would have had a really massive scalp laceration,
blood everywhere.
Head wounds bleed quite heavily
because there's a lot of blood vessels up there.
ELLA: This was trauma on a massive scale.
And we can explore what might have happened.
Using the very latest in criminal forensics,
we can reconstruct the effect a blow like this might have had
on our Viking woman's face.
First, we need to rebuild her appearance before the injury.
Using our detailed scan,
ligaments and muscles are placed over the bone.
Before skin, detailed facial features, and hair can be added.
I'm so excited because this,
this is a face that hasn't been seen in a thousand years!
The forensic reconstruction reveals our suspected Viking warrior.
Oh, my gosh!
We've put a face to her and she's suddenly become really real.
Just to think that her and women like her,
have just been ignored by us for so long,
we've come up with every single excuse under the sun
to explain away what they were buried with.
But what about that terrible blow to her head?
From Carolyn's evidence, we can recreate
what she might have looked like when it was inflicted.
It is a brutal injury...
and I wonder if she survived it?
But our CT scan highlights a second remarkable secret.
Carolyn spots an unexpected detail in the skull,
signs of healing.
CAROLYN: It actually just has puckering around this area,
where it's all kind of joining back together.
Internally everything is perfectly healed.
ELLA: Incredibly, our woman survived her injury.
She definitely lived through it and lived quite a long time after it.
She probably would have had quite a nice scar.
I-I keep looking at this thinking...
nobody commented on this injury until,
well, basically until I did.
How--How do you look at all that evidence, and not think,
"Yeah, female Viking warrior is probably our best and most educated guess."
My investigation has taken me right across Viking Scandinavia and beyond,
examining ancient graves with the latest technology...
and making new discoveries.
That's gorgeous, isn't it?
Scientific evidence from an elite warrior grave.
CAROLYN: It kinda switches right, left, right, left.
ELLA: A Danish woman buried with a battle axe,
and finally, the remains of a woman who'd suffered a terrible head injury.
She probably would have had quite a nice scar
ELLA: This has been incredible,
and we've also made new discoveries that I really hope
will challenge what some people still refuse to believe,
that there's evidence out there,
that not only did elite female Viking warriors exist,
but that they had the skills and the weapons
to fight on the battlefields alongside men.
Right now, we're writing a whole new chapter in Viking archaeology,
in which traditional ideas about men and women's roles,
are being explored with fresh eyes.
And it feels as if I've only just scratched the surface.
There are hundreds of Viking warrior burials,
how many more will turn out to be women?
And what secrets are buried within their graves?
Captioned by Visual Data Media Services