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Template:Did you know nominations/Birka female Viking warrior

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The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Cwmhiraeth (talk) 05:32, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

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Birka female Viking warrior

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Created by Grand'mere Eugene (talk) and BD2412 (talk). Nominated by Grand'mere Eugene (talk) at 20:13, 17 September 2017 (UTC).

Birka female Viking warrior
Birka female Viking warrior
  • Grand'mere Eugene & BD2412 Very cool topic. New, in time, long enough, sourced, inline hook citation checks out, no apparent copyvios, QPQ done. I suggest using the image, which is PD. Some comments about the article:
  • Most of Hjalmar Stolpe's works are in the public domain, and at least some are available on Hathitrust. You could probably get the full resolution image that way.
  • On that note, any chance or incorporating the original sources into the article (being in Swedish doesn't help, admittedly)?
  • Did the grave, or the person within, have a name before this year (e.g., was it simply the Birka Viking warrior)?
  • The structure of the article could be better. "Archaeological records" overlaps considerably with "Discussion"; comparing her to a Game of Thrones character is surely not the former. I would suggest subsections covering the initial discovery, grave goods, and publication, and then the 2014–17 reanalysis. Also, why are the gaming pieces only discussed after the reanalysis, when surely they were known to have been in the grave when it was excavated? Did the discovery that the person was female change the interpretation of the person being a strategist, or did the interpretation just shift from a male strategist to a female strategist? --Usernameunique (talk) 21:22, 17 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Usernameunique, thanks for your review and comments. I'll try to respond to each.
  • Thanks for including the PD image in the DYK nomination form. I had thought it not of high enough resolution to be reduced faithfully for an interesting image on the front page. I have looked briefly at the Hathitrust site, but I was unable to find the sketch of the gravesite Bj581 in my first effort. I downloaded the larger picture as you suggested, but the current one posted on Wikimedia has a notice under File History, "You cannot overwrite this file." Is it kosher to upload the larger file instead of overwriting the existing image? and have replaced the file.
  • I would like to see Stolpe's original diary on the gravesite, and I'm hoping another editor fluent in Swedish can incorporate some of his notes into the article. I did read the more recent work by Anna Kjellström and the report of Hedenstierna-Jonson's team, and incorporated some text from each of those primary sources.
  • I found no reference to a previous name associated with the grave, just the designation Stolpe gave it, "Bj581".
  • Thanks especially for your suggestions on the structure of the article. I've added some subheadings, and did some minor rearranging to improve the flow of ideas. With further development, the headings and subheadings will no doubt change as the article is expanded.
  • Stolpe probably noted the game pieces when he assumed the bones were male, as implied by the CNN reference, but the key point raised by Hedenstierna-Jonson, et al., is that the presence of the game pieces in the grave of a woman meant she had status not just as a warrior, but as a military officer. Kjellström is quoted in the CNN article saying that only a few warriors were buried with game pieces, and they "signaled" strategic thinking. So your question, "Did the discovery that the person was female change the interpretation of the person being a strategist, or did the interpretation just shift from a male strategist to a female strategist?" gets to the heart of the disagreement among archaeologists in interpretation of artifacts, "regardless of the biological sex of the interred individual". When the grave contained a warrior's goods, there was an assumption the interred bones were male, and if the bones turned out to be female, the assumption was that the bones of the male warrior must have gone missing! There was not an easy shift in interpretation from a male strategist to a female strategist, so I think this DNA verification of the "shield-maiden" warrior may be a controversial sea change in Viking archaeology.
  • Thanks again for your review and comments. Cheers! — Grand'mere Eugene (talk) 09:43, 18 September 2017 (UTC)
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