Minorities are erased from history regularly. This is true across the board. Part of this is because history is written by and for the gaze of the “victors”. This is especially true of American history. We don’t know about Black suffragettes because the white ones were racist and hedged them out of the movement. We never learned about the Tulsa massacre because it was easier to believe the narrative that Black people were too lazy to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” than to face the fact that every time Black people made progress, white people tore it down. We never learned about the near slave conditions of Asian railway workers. We never really focused on where all the Native American people went when our white ancestors got here. We get vague notions of “over there are all the bad things in history but America is a special melting pot and we don’t have to answer for those because exceptionalism.” Women are conveniently overlooked by history, even though they were typically a tool used to create alliances. We don’t learn that after surviving the horrors of the concentration camps, the pink triangle-bearing queer folk were carted straight off to prison, because homosexuality was still illegal. I also was “”yesterday years old” when I found out that Da Vinci was tried for sodomy.
All of the above is true. Stating one is true does not take away from any of the others being true. This isn’t a game of “who faces the most erasure or oppression?” The same is true when we look at archaeological findings. Things that were interpreted one way when they were discovered can be reinterpreted as new information arises. And those new interpretations can also evolve or have things added to them as we become more mindful of interpreting history through a lens of inclusivity.
One of the things that always makes me chuckle is the amount of times scholars seem to be shocked by how advanced and complex humanity was in ancient times. Our current species has been around for a couple hundred thousand years. We were always advanced and complex, it just took time to get from basic survival to what we would recognize as a civilization today. One of the things that annoys me to no end is “ancient alien” theories (you do notice that most of those theories focus on the ancient civilizations of people who happened to be brown, right? No one says the Acropolis was built by aliens, but the pyramids of Egypt and South America had to be) because it erases human accomplishment.
So what is this all about? It’s time to get into the specifics of one archaeological find.
In 1878, archaeologists found the tenth century tomb of a warrior while excavating in Birka, Sweden. It was filled with weapons, a sword, shield, spear, two horses, and a game board. Out of the 1,100 tombs investigated, only one other grave included the full set of weaponry. Interpreting the goods and not the skeleton, the original archaeologists listed the person as “male” without hesitation. Because it was 1878 and the idea of women being anything but the housekeepers and child rearers was beyond their ken.
Fast forward to 2017 and through comprehensive genomic sequencing, archaeologists revealed that the person buried in one of the full warrior’s graves was female. Cue the vindicated shield-maidens from all over modern Heathenry. There had always been tales of warrior women in Norse mythology. This felt like the proof they needed to combat the “traditional wife” image that is oft touted by certain strains of misogynistic Heathenry. Which is great.
In 2019, it was also postulated that the person in the grave could have been a trans man. This apparently makes the people who celebrated the “warrior woman” uncomfortable. Some to the point where they see this alternative interpretation as “erasing women of power from history.”
The operative word in the 2019 interpretation is “could”. That’s archaeologist-speak for “there is more than one way to interpret these grave goods.” Basically, we know from written lore that the idea of one gender “living as” the other gender was known to Pre-Christian Scandinavians. We also know that women warriors were known. Based on the lore, either interpretation of female remains found with weapons could be valid.
Having another possibility does not erase the other. The same misogyny that guided the 1878 interpretation of the remains affects queer folks as much as it does straight cis women. No one “would rather” have the remains be a “trans man” to “erase powerful women”. That’s some JK Rowling logic right there. The point is to keep both possibilities in mind, which leads to better, more inclusive interpretations for archaeological findings down the road.
Because humanity has always been complex and gender and sexual complexity isn’t some new fad coming to take away your Lagertha (because, let’s face it, people wanted their Lagertha).
Resources:
Lokasenna
Other sagas I know of but can’t for the life of me recall the names of because I suck
thearcaneasylum 