Women warriors of the Viking Age: The truth about Shield Maidens

In Norse literature, shield maidens were women who took up arms and fought alongside male warriors.

The term comes from the Old Norse skjaldmær, meaning "shield maiden" or "female warrior."

They appear in sagas, poetry, and later records as brave women who rejected traditional domestic roles to live and die by the sword.

Unlike ordinary women who managed farms and families, shield maidens are shown to choose battlefields over hearths and wore mail shirts and wielded spears.

These figures often appear in raids, feuds, and military expeditions, especially in the Icelandic sagas and the legendary sagas, which blend history with heroic storytelling.

However, the term skjaldmær itself is rare in the original sources, suggesting it was more of a literary concept than a common social category. 

Shield maidens were not described as camp followers or helpers. Some accounts show them as warriors who led troops, who fought in single combat, or who defended fortresses.

Their inclusion in stories highlights a Norse value that admired bravery and combat skill, regardless of gender.

However, their presence in the literature does not mean they were common in historical Viking armies.

Many of the sagas in which they appear were written centuries after the events they describe, and were influenced by oral tradition and by Christian instruction.

This creates a challenge in separating fact from exaggeration, especially when writers such as Saxo Grammaticus used female fighters as narrative tools to warn against disorder and the disruption of gender rules. 

One of the best-known shield maidens in Norse tradition is Lagertha, who appears in the Gesta Danorum, a Latin record written by Saxo Grammaticus in the late 12th century.

According to Saxo, Lagertha fought with such bravery that she turned the tide of battle in favour of the Danish prince Ragnar Lodbrok, who later married her.

Saxo described her as a maiden "with the bravery of a man," who slew enemies in battle as fiercely as any warrior.

However, Lagertha is not mentioned in any surviving Norse sagas or Eddic poems, and Saxo’s account is perhaps a blend of Roman literary models and Christian ideology.

He often portrayed female fighters as marvels or moral warnings rather than actual historical figures. 

Another well-known example is Brynhildr, a warrior woman from the Volsunga saga who was protected by a ring of fire and bound by fate to the hero Sigurd.

Although her story includes mythical elements, her portrayal as a powerful woman who met men in battle fed into the image of the shield maiden in later popular culture.

Other names, such as Hervor from the Hervarar saga, also helped shape the idea of women warriors.

Hervor dressed as a man, became a Viking, and fought for ownership of her father’s cursed sword, Tyrfing.

The Hervarar saga, composed in the 13th century, casts Hervor as a tragic hero, led by personal honour and doomed fate.

Her bold declaration, "I shall not return until I hold Tyrfing in my hands," strengthened the idea of a fearless woman stepping into the role of the warrior. 

Much of what we know about shield maidens comes from legendary sagas and later chronicles, many of which were not written until the 13th and 14th centuries, long after the Viking Age ended.

These stories often draw on myth and moral symbolism under the influence of Christian commentary.

This weakens their historical reliability. Many famous shield maidens do not appear in sources from the time.

Instead, they exist in writing that combined history with myth, and this makes it difficult to know how much of their story was based on real events or passed down by word of mouth rather than storytelling. 

However, the idea of women fighting was not completely foreign to Norse society.

The Norse world saw strength and honour as values that could, in certain cases, apply to women.

Some women held social and legal power, especially as landowners or when they acted as heads of households in men’s absence.

Women did not often fight in Viking armies. This suggests a cultural flexibility that allowed such figures to appear in saga literature.

Divine warrior figures such as valkyries, who chose the slain and rode over battlefields, may also have inspired the shield maiden motif.

Comparisons have also been made between Norse tales and reports of female fighters in Scythian or Sarmatian cultures, which classical authors described. 

For many years, there was little physical proof to support the existence of Viking women fighters.

Most graves with weapons were assumed to belong to men, and sex was decided based on the presence of swords, axes, and shields.

That began to change with advances in bone analysis and DNA testing. The most discussed case is Grave Bj 581 in Birka, Sweden.

When it was excavated in the late 19th century, people assumed it belonged to a male fighter because of its rich weaponry, two horses, and game pieces for strategy.

In 2017, genetic testing led by Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson and her team confirmed that the skeleton was female. 

The Birka grave has sparked renewed debate about the role of women in Viking warfare.

Archaeologist Neil Price has argued that this finding opens the possibility of some women holding fighting roles, at least in rare cases.

Some scholars suggest that it proves the existence of a real shield maiden, or even that women might have occasionally led armies.

Others, including Judith Jesch, warn that one grave does not prove a widespread occurrence.

The presence of weapons could have had symbolic meaning or reflected elite status rather than fighting activity.

There are other female graves that contain weapons, such as those at Kaupang or Repton, but the situations are often unclear.

The wider archaeological evidence does not suggest many women fighters.