I'm tired of the Viking pop culture trend erasing warrior women

There is a background character in The Northman. Her brief appearance, however brief, was more exciting than any other thrill in the new Viking epic.

Amleth, who embodies the traditional hypermasculine Viking warrior ideal that dominates today's modern reimaginings of this ancient history, is a part of the spoils of a violent raid on an innocent village. The woman on horseback is wearing armor. She rallies the conquered villagers, waving a flag and calling upon strong warriors of any background to join her fight, before riding off, never to be seen in the movie again.

If only she had been the main character, the movie would have been better.

I love what The Northman does with Alexander Skarsg, as its lead. The most disappointing part of the film is its tired old Revenge-For-My- Daddy-King storyline, which has been shoved down our throats countless times before.

Yet I don't. Because as a dork for this era of prehistory, I am a fan of the recent pop culture trend putting Vikings in major TV shows, films, and video games. There are many great shows on History Channel, as well as the excellent Vikings series and the excellent God of War movie.

I am sick of each one of them sidelining the best part of real-world Viking history: their warrior women.

The fact, fiction, myth, and misogyny behind shieldmaidens  

He is a stickler for historical accuracy in his movies.

The female military leader in The Northman is acknowledging recent archaeological evidence suggesting that Viking warrior women did exist. According to interviews, the movie character is based on a grave of a high-ranking Viking military leader who was assumed to be male until DNA evidence proved she was female.

In The Northman, Amleth's demise is delivered by a tree, which implies that his downfall is the first chapter in his daughter's life. We will count that as a nod to the fact that leadership roles in the Viking Age were more gender-fluid than previously thought.

For the love of all that is Freya, why is all this Viking warrior woman badassery still in the background of The Northman?

The pop culture stories set in the Viking Age are all guilty of the same oversight. Both God of War and Thor include strong female characters that are central to the lore of the Vikings. The Vikings TV show depicts real-world Viking women fighting alongside men. There is only one video game that allows players to play as a Viking female. Getting a story specifically grounded in the perspective of a Viking shieldmaiden is not the same as being able to play as a woman.

We can't blame the sidelining of warlike Viking women exclusively on The Northman. Women's importance in Viking society was not taken seriously until recently.

It isn't as hard of a science as we want it to be. It is colored by the biases of our modern, male-dominated society because it is built on a foundation of facts that rely heavily on the subjective interpretation of artifacts. The impact those biases can have on our understanding of gender dynamics in the Viking Age became very clear in the reaction to the DNA analysis study of the so-calledBirka female Viking warrior.

I love a witchy Anya Taylor-Joy, but this reperesentation is missing a warhammer. Credit: Focus Features

After the skeleton was confirmed to be female, some archeologists jumped to the conclusion that the grave must have never belonged to a military leader. The debate over the Birka female Viking warrior grave deepened a divide within the archeological community over the role of Viking women in the social hierarchy.

The mounting evidence of women being present for the hostile Viking invasions, and the discoveries of even more female warrior graves, along with the historical accounts of Viking women joining in warfare, are still being argued against. The other side of the debate accuses the other side of being biased because of sexism or feminism.

The women written out of the Viking pop culture trend

We don't know how pervasive shieldmaidens were in the Viking Age. Their absence from The Northman tells us a lot about which narratives we're inclined to believe today, even in a film full of magic.

Robert Eggers is obsessed with getting his films in real-world facts as much as possible. Which version of history is he giving more weight to?

History is a story we tell ourselves to make sense of the world. The Viking Age is being used to justify depictions of unfettered hypermasculinity, to exercise the same old male-centered anxieties about patriarchy, in the same story told over and over again.

This is not a feminist call-out. If only for the change of pace, it is a declaration of utter boredom, and a plea for pop culture's Vikings to try on anything other than muddy blood-soaked men. I thought that the director of The Witch would have known that it was important to immerse modern audiences in the perspective of women who were too often written out of their own histories.

Maybe Eggers decided to sideline shieldmaidens in The Northman as a franchise play to hype up The Northwoman. It is most likely the same lack of imagination that turned real Viking women into a myth.