Several years ago, archaeologists thrilled and delighted their colleagues and armchair historians alike when DNA examination of a Viking warrior revealed her to be a woman. This seemingly raised tons of intriguing questions.

In THE REAL VALKYRIE, Nancy Marie Brown sets herself an admirable goal: to show readers who that Viking warrior woman might have been. She effectively weaves together the possibility of fiction and the records of hard science, but ultimately her argument is not persuasive.

"[Brown's] knowledge of Viking archaeology and discussion of it are thorough and intriguing, which is where the book excels."

Brown begins by examining what was found in the grave --- numbered Bj581 --- in Birka, Sweden. Her knowledge of Viking archaeology and discussion of it are thorough and intriguing, which is where the book excels. But then she posits the general assumption that Viking warriors being mostly male is simply a product of Victorian gender. She is right when saying that “we don’t know the Vikings as well as we thought” --- and that includes how they regarded men and women and warrior status. But she simply name-drops “the Victorian stereotype” without explaining the emergence of that stereotype, what it means and where it comes from, undermining her own argument by not fleshing out the other side.

As a result, Brown relies on readers’ assumptions that the Victorian era automatically equals prudery and traditional gender roles. If she wants to convince readers that the Viking understanding of women was different from what we previously believe, she needs to explain how the Vikings were regarded for the 750 years before the Victorians, why the Victorian era was so influential in understanding the Vikings, and exactly how we define a “Viking.” Moving the focus away from the fictional story of “Hervor,” as she affectionately dubs the Birka woman, and back to the semantics of an academic argument would have made this volume more well-rounded.

As it is, Brown’s study of the sagas and depiction of “Hervor” is interesting. But THE REAL VALKYRIE would have worked better as a novel, with the academic study of the real-life warrior woman as a separate book.