Neil Price, one of the 2019 paper’s authors, has argued that the written sources “mention female warriors occasionally” and that Bj 581 represents “the first convincing archaeological evidence” for their existence. The careful phrasing — “convincing archaeological evidence” for their existence, not proof that they were common — reflects the epistemological care that the best scholarship on this question brings.
Freydís Eiríksdóttir, described in the Vinland sagas, reportedly fought Skrælings in North America — though the sagas that describe her do not use the shield-maiden term. Her story is part of a pattern of women in the Norse record who demonstrate martial qualities in specific circumstances, without this being presented as a regular social role.
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## How Birka’s Burial Record Compares
Bj 581 did not exist in isolation. It was one of approximately three thousand graves at a site where the burial record has been extensively studied.
The Birka burial ground includes a wide range of interments — from simple inhumations with minimal goods to elaborate chamber graves like Bj 581. Scholars who have analyzed the full record note that weapon burials were not universal among men — many men buried at Birka did not receive weapon burials — and that some weapon burials had previously been identified as female on osteological grounds before the Bj 581 study.
The 2017 paper made the point that the field should reexamine previous sex identifications of Viking Age warrior burials — that Bj 581 might not be the only case of a weapon-rich burial holding a biologically female individual, but simply the most comprehensively studied one.