TRANSGENDER VIKINGS

ot with standing their reputation for bravery on the battlefield and macho behaviour off it, some Vikings, historians are now arguing, may have been transgender men. Three years ago, a burial site assumed to belong to a high-status male warrior). Neil Price, professor of archæology at the University of Uppsala, Sweden, writes in his new book that the female-bodiedViking may “have been transgender… or non-binary, or gender fluid.”The grave, in which swords, spears and two slaughtered horses were found alongside an expensively dressed skeleton, was first excavated in Birka, Sweden, in 1878. An osteological study in 2011 suggested the skeleton was female, but it was confirmed to carry XX chromosomes only six years later after DNA analysis. The extravagance of the grave suggests that the woman was of high status, or indicates that Norse women fought in battle alongside men. A third possibility, that it belonged to a warrior with a different gender identity, is given prominence by Prof Price in his book, .