The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women

In the tradition of Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life, Nancy Marie Brown lays to rest the long-held notion that Viking society was solely male-dominated, and instead celebrates the dramatic lives of female Viking warriors.

In 2017, DNA analysis revealed that a high-status Viking warrior burial at Birka, Sweden, previously assumed to be male, was in fact female. Brown weaves together archaeology, Norse literature, and saga to imagine the life of the warrior (whom she names Hervör) and places her among other formidable historical women, including Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings and Queen Olga of Kyiv. In doing so, Brown challenges Victorian and modern assumptions about gender and power in the Viking Age, showing that women in Norse sagas, law, and myth often carried weapons and held authority alongside men.

The book invites readers to reconsider familiar narratives and asks: whose stories have been omitted, and what happens when we retell the past with new evidence in hand.