The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women

 Welcome to my review for  The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women

Title :The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women

Genre: Nonfiction history

NetGalley ARC 2021

Comes Out : Aug 21, 2021

Friend Pick by :Taylor Meyer

Rating: 4

My thoughts 

Would I recommend it ? Yes , in fact some of my friends have already added it to their TBR's to read

Would I read more by this author? Maybe

First off I  want to say a  huge  thank you to the publisher  St. Martin's Press , the author Nancy Marie Brown ,  and to NetGalley for letting me read and review it. While this looks like just a book the history of the Valkyrie as well as the vikings its also a mixture of their mythology which means you get the best of both worlds, and because of that its perfect for those who love history as well as mythology. The author has done an amazing job of bring both to life,so much so that  she weaves the history and the mythology together that you actual just want to keep reading it page after page . 

In the tradition of Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra, Brown lays to rest the hoary myth that Viking society was ruled by men and celebrates the dramatic lives of female Viking warriors.

In 2017, DNA tests revealed to the collective shock of many scholars that a Viking warrior in a high-status grave in Birka, Sweden was actually a woman. The Real Valkyrie weaves together archaeology, history, and literature to imagine her life and times, showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians have imagined.

Brown uses science to link the Birka warrior, whom she names Hervor, to Viking trading towns and to their great trade route east to Byzantium and beyond. She imagines her life intersecting with larger-than-life but real women, including Queen Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings, the Viking leader known as The Red Girl, and Queen Olga of Kyiv. Hervor’s short, dramatic life shows that much of what we have taken as truth about women in the Viking Age is based not on data, but on nineteenth-century Victorian biases. Rather than holding the household keys, Viking women in history, law, saga, poetry, and myth carry weapons. These women brag, “As heroes we were widely known—with keen spears we cut blood from bone.” In this compelling narrative Brown brings the world of those valkyries and shield-maids to vivid life