Talk:Shield-maiden

 READ THIS:

'''The medical normal upper height for Norwegian girls at the age of 12 is 170 centimeters tall.

The average height of all Norwegians are 179,9 centimeters.

The average height of Norwegian men are 181 centimeters.

For those with a limited grasp of mathematics this means that only difference between the average height of all Norwegian Women and Men combined and the average height of Norwegian Men only is exactly ...1.1 centimeters.

The normal difference in wheight between a Norwegian woman and a Norwegian man is 15 kilos.

For those of you with zero exerience of streetfighting I can positively 100 % guarantee you that a height difference of 1.1 centimeters means absolutely positively NOTHING in hand-to-hand combat.

Being 15 kilos lighter than the oponent on the other hand, means that the lighter can move faster.

'''The average thickness of a human skull is only 7 millimeters.

It takes as little as 16 pounds (73 newtons) which equals only 7.25 kilograms of force to cause a simple fracture of your sculls''' without an axe.

For those of you who doubt that an average Norwegian woman can split your skull in a second with an axe:

'''Please: By all means:

I hereby invite you to Norway to end all debate:

I challenge you to find a single Norwegian girl above the age of 12 who cannot spilt your 7 millimeter thick sculls in a second with one strike with her axe.''' Here is a scientfic experiment showing just how little it takes to split a scull. This little dude is 165 cm tall and 27 years old.

That is 5 centimeters smaller than our 12 year old daughters. So if this dude can do it, so can every Norwegian woman & child I have ever met. https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0305440323000171-mmc2.mp4 But before you fly head over heals here to Norway to have your heads split by our daughters kindly answer this:

Norwegian Vikings usually killed their first victims as soon as the oppertunity presented itself.

To illustrate our temper it such suffice to mention that at the age of 5 Eigil Skallagrimson split the scull of his best friend because he lost a game of dice.

His biography states "''..his father thought it was a tad harsh, but his MOTHER ment he would become a good Viking.." '' I, like any other decent, moral and upstanding person, would have done the exact same thing at that age, if it were not for the fact Norwegian parents tend to keep axes and other sharp objects hidden away from children.

King Olav on the other hand was so exceptionally kind and gentle so actually managed to control our inherited natural drive to KILL THEM ALL AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT until he was 12 years old.

Such exeptional benevolence and overbearance was so rare that he was made a Saint and made Eternal King of Norway for that, bless his soul. So here is my question I would like your answers to:

Consider that we used to kill friends, family-members, random strangers ang masse and rape Nuns by the dozens from we were between 5 - 12 years old and until we died:

Keeping in mind that the only occupation, hobby, passion and fun we knew was to kill.. ...everyone we could.

SO ANSWER THIS: What EXACTLY do you think we teached our daughters and especially if we had no sons?

Ballet? Broidery? Art History? OR Origami perhaps?

Or do you find it plausible that we naturally taught our daughters the positively, absolutely only thing we knew how to do:

Butching people by the hundreds ?

Keep in mind that our beautiful female slaves (which we of course stole from the Brittish Isle each year) naturally did all the housework in their brakes (between each time we raped our slave-girls) THUS, considering there was no need to teach daughters housework or cooking, cleaning or anything at all other than the honourable Art of Massmurdering and that mundane, unbecoming slave-tasks such as cooking, cleaning, sowing etc was beneath their dignity anyway..

SO: Kindly answer. What EXACTLY do you think Viking Fathers and Viking Mothers in Viking Norway taught their sweet and adoring litle Pscycho-Killer Viking-Kids?

French Avant-Garde Cubist Art, maybe?

On behalf of the entiire population of the Kingdom of Norway thank ever so much up-front for your answers.. wE TRULY appreciate your input

...before our daughters split your skulls with joy and tears of laughter..





KINDLY ANSWER AND GIVE US YOUR LAST WORDS BENEATH; PLEASE: THANX !!! ''' — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.15.25.54 (talk) 00:19, 21 May 2023 (UTC)


 * BTW:
 * These are ordinary Norwegian girls.
 * Take a look:
 * '''Does it look like our daughters lack the precision required to hit a person in
 * the head with an axe from 50 centimeters distance?
 * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cmxrANclMA
 * NO IT DOESN`T DOES IT?
 * As anyone can see:
 * '''Our girls can hit a dude smack in head with a kick from 50 meters distance.
 * So imlying that the daughters of Norway somehow should "lack the precision" to manage something as simple as hitting a dude bang in the scull from 50 centimeters distance is simply ...insane.'''
 * So: I edited out the bulls*it by Judith Whatsherface and assume no-one whish to prove that our girls cannot split their sculls with the flick of their wrist if they whish.
 * Ok? Yeah? Really? Sure? 
 * '''That`s what I thought.
 * End of debate.''' 46.15.83.7 (talk) 02:31, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
 * End of debate.''' 46.15.83.7 (talk) 02:31, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Untitled
The shieldmaidens were not the inspiration for the valkyries, the valkyries co-existed in the norse mythology.--unsigned


 * Then why do you not change it? Also I believe shield-maiden should be hyphenated.--Dchmelik (talk) 01:23, 13 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, it would not be hyphenated. The Norse tendency was to combine two word elements into one, and in this case it would have been skjaldmœr, or "shieldmaiden". -- Myrddin_Wyllt 10/24/08
 * That's a really helpful explanation about how old Norse works, but the original poster was referring to the spelling in English. I don't know if it should be hyphenated, but the compound word is not in any dictionary I can find.--~TPW 00:51, 22 July 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree. Why are there references to Valkyries in this article? They are 2 totally different things. 120.29.109.137 (talk) 03:56, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Tolkien
Is there any reference for this?: and they were J.R.R. Tolkien's inspiration for Éowyn. As it is, Tolkien could have also been inspired by the medieval myths known as "virgo bellatrix", see for instance and 87.222.26.6 (talk) 21:04, 21 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Don't have a reference immediately at hand, but it's fairly widely accepted that the Rohirrim were patterned fairly closely after ancient Germanic peoples... AnonMoos (talk) 21:58, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Tolkien calls her a shieldmaiden in the book. "I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying." (after she decides to marry Faramir) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.71.104.222 (talk) 21:45, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Vikings
On the new TV show Vikings, one of the characters is a shieldmaiden, so perhaps this should be added under cultural refferences.178.249.123.209 (talk) 04:02, 6 March 2013 (UTC)

The woman on the show is a mother of two children. Her brother in law says she was a famous shieldmaiden, but she and her husband say that she still is. In contrast, the Spanish, French, and Italian entries for Shieldmaiden say they are virgins. The mother of two is not likely a virgin. Any references as to whether shieldmaidens were required/expected/generally virgins? 173.66.166.129 (talk) 02:15, 7 March 2013 (UTC)


 * There are actually several other unnamed female fighters in this series too, who just appear in the the battle scenes and often get killed in the same way as the other extras. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:14BA:3F2:C600:6020:AEAA:3818:AA7 (talk) 10:09, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes, you see in Norway being a whore was not a respected passtime amongst Warrior Women in a Warrior Society were Honour was THE MEANING OF LIFE.
 * So: In a Society were you went to Hell unless you died on the Battlefield HONOUR was ALL.
 * To illustrate the extent of it consider this:
 * In Norwegian Viking Society it was considered impossible to determine wether a person was good or bad until he died.
 * The way a person died was the only way to determine if the person was good or bad.
 * SO:
 * After battles the survivors surveyed their fallen to see if they had died facing forward in the direction of the enemy - which meant they died whilst attacking and would thus be honoured as good- or if they lay dead facing backward - which meant they had died fleeing the enemy - And if so were pure junk.
 * We captured women from the Brittish Isles to use as Whores:
 * But NEVER our own women.
 * And if you think our Forefathers were devoted to Honour they were NOTHING compared to our Foremothers.
 * As an example the only reason Norway is 1 kingdom today, instead a multitude were each county was a Kingdom like it used to,
 * the reason is that Harald Hårfagre who was king Vestfold County fell in love with a girl called Gyrid and asked to marry her.
 * Gyrid was a woman of Honour and would consequently not be caught dead with something low as a mere king of a county.
 * So Gyrid explained to Harald that "she did keep company with loosers" so unless he was man enough to conquer all other petty kings of which there was PLENTY, so she would become Queen of all of Norway, he could go f himself. So: She told him to f off and never come back unless he conquered ALL of Norway so she could maintain her Honour.
 * So: Harald never gave a f about "uniting Norway to 1 kingdom" and never planned to so. He was happy as Larry being king of Vestfold. But Gyrid was not as lax as Harald with matters of Honour so she forced him to kill half the Nation and conquer it all so she could be Queen of it all, as she considered the absolute minimum-standard she could accept as Honourable enough for her.
 * '''So the absolutely, positively ONLY reason Norway is 1 kingdom today, instead of the multitude of petty tiny county kingdoms it used to
 * is my Foremother Gyrids dedcation to her own Honour.'''
 * So: '''Does that sound like society in which women of Honour gave away their Virginity at random?
 * No.
 * However: Norway today has fallen into moral decay, and these days you can get laid without even conquering something as easy as Sweden or Denmark or Europe, but in our better days women held their Honour higher than life and saved themselves for marriage.
 * Trust me: I know, because people like me enforced that culture.
 * And I personally would much, much, much rather have my own daughter run over by a train than bare the shame of her being f***d before marriage, just like my Forefathers and Foremothers before me.
 * Something I let her know perfectly well. She, being a girl of Honour naturally understood that becoming a whore was not an option, so to avoid even the hypothetical posibility of dishonour she cut off her breast female parts and became a Man.
 * So: You tell me:
 * Does it sound like we take matters of Honour lightly? 46.15.83.7 (talk) 03:47, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Does it sound like we take matters of Honour lightly? 46.15.83.7 (talk) 03:47, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Lede vs article
Hi,

There is information in the lede wich is not in the article, and vice versa.

So, the lede is not really a summary of the article.

T 85.166.162.8 (talk) 19:47, 11 August 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 22 July 2017

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Page moved. --  Dane talk  20:49, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Shieldmaiden → Shield-maiden – Wiktionary is the only source I can find for the spelling "shieldmaiden," while the top scholar on the subject, Jenny Jochens, spells it "shield-maiden" in Old Norse Images of Women (google books link: https://books.google.com/books?id=YyxcAAAAMAAJ&q=Shield-maiden&dq=Shield-maiden&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMpdit3JvVAhVs4IMKHQXODVg4HhDoAQgcMAA ) ~TPW 13:34, 22 July 2017 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Controversy?
The main article keeps saying there is "debate" as to the existence of women warriors but the only source for that seems to be a single person named Judith Jesch? And just that she said so? It lists a bunch of artifacts and physical evidence of these women warriors but seems to give disproportionate weight to some  teacher who just says "Not enough evidence". Is there anything supporting the position that women were strictly not allowed? If not then I think the best you could say in terms of "debate" is how many there were, not if there were any that existed as this article implies. MLysippe (talk) 22:35, 1 March 2020 (UTC)


 * BINGO:
 * I can promise you that Judith Jesch has NEVER gotten into a fight with a Norwegian woman or girl.
 * I taught my daughter to fight when she was 9 years old and told her to hit me in the head as hard she possibly could.
 * She did and nearly knocked me out and gave me a concussion and I only remember being in an extremely dizzy haze
 * and only remember about 30 minutes or so after that of the rest of that day.
 * I remember being in car feeling extremely fatigued and dizzy and nausia but have absolutely have no idea or memory of what happened after that.
 * So: Judith is more than welcome to try the same and see if she has any doubts to what our daughters are capable of,
 * provided she survives at all, of course, which is far from given.. 46.15.25.54 (talk) 00:33, 21 May 2023 (UTC)
 * That is a misunderstanding of Professor Jesch´s position. She believes that women warriors are possible, and that they probably existed. However, as an expert in Old Norse texts, she believes that Valkyries, Shieldmaidens and warrior women are different things. Tinynanorobots (talk) 18:50, 20 November 2023 (UTC)

I had the same thoughts as you, so I updated a small section, but I didn't read whole article... --Pythagimedes (talk) 21:00, 7 February 2021 (UTC)


 * A very good point, indeed. A make a long story short, material related to Old Norse legends contain a great deal of fiction and mythology, and you have to add to this that some scholars have a generous and romantic attitude to these sources, while others are very critical and dry. So you are bound to have the whole spectrum ranging from those who see shieldmaidens in the past to those who outright deny their existence. We have to add the simple fact that wielding a sword, shield and axe took a lot of strength and you were bound to face big and muscular male warriors. There is both literary and archaeological evidence, but even such sources are open to interpretation and discussion, and "debunking".--Berig (talk) 08:34, 8 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I don't think we have to talk about the biology involved. Women can wield swords, even if men have certain advantage. This article just not about that. It is about shieldmaidens, which are primarily a literary phenomenon. 2A02:3036:26D:2A84:67A5:A8C4:D71C:7562 (talk) 07:35, 21 November 2023 (UTC)
 * ...Dude..
 * Did you just write "We have to add the simple fact that wielding a sword, shield and axe took a lot of strength and you were bound to face big and muscular male warriors...???
 * A human scull is only 7 millimeters thick and fracturing a scull even without an axe only requires 7,25 kilograms
 * of pressure so although your women may be unable to lift a 1 kilogram axe and let gravity do the rest, I can promise you
 * any average Norwegian woman unless she is lame, can split a scull with an axe as easily as your women (hopefully) can wipe their a**sses.
 * Here is a scientific test of how easy it is to split a scull. The dude is barely 1.65 tall and 27 years old and wheighs 86 kilos. A Norwegian Viking Woman was of course far stronger and fitter than this lard-a**ss.
 * A besides: Vikings usually only raided churches in the Brittish Isles because that was were the gold items were kept and
 * so the hardest resitance Vikings usually met was when they raped nuns.
 * The priests and munchs who resided in churches were not armed and the Brittish were tiny and weak compared to Norwegians
 * so no: All Norwegian women can split a scull unless they have some sort of medical condition..
 * Trust me.
 * Or see for yourself how little it takes.If this fat lard--a**s can do it, so can all of our girls above the age of 7:
 * Or see for yourself how little it takes.If this fat lard--a**s can do it, so can all of our girls above the age of 7:

https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0305440323000171-mmc2.mp4

Hugs & Violence from the Kingdom of Norway.



46.15.25.54 (talk) 00:52, 21 May 2023 (UTC)


 * This discussion could be a bit more civil... and mature. 2A02:3036:26D:2A84:67A5:A8C4:D71C:7562 (talk) 08:14, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Female Warriors?
I am not sure if English wikipedia is confused by Hollywood, but Shield-Maidens were not female warriors, they were Shield-Maidens! Ha ha. 120.29.109.137 (talk) 03:52, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

Historical vs. Literary Shieldmaidens
I find the article a bit misleading and not reflecting the actual scholarship. It both exaggerates the positions of Jesch and Price, but also does not reflect the understanding of shieldmaidens as first and foremost a literary archetype. That is, Shieldmaidens occur in post Viking Age literature set during or before the Viking Age. The question, then, is what relation do these literary figures have to the historical facts of the Viking Age. Jesch, an expert in Runes and in Old Norse texts, believes that the word skjaldmær, originates after the Viking Age, and was inspired in part by the Amazons. She similarly believes that Saxo was inspired by Amazons when he wrote about women warriors (Saxo wrote in Latin, so probably didn’t call them shieldmaidens). She also believes that Valkyries inspired shieldmaidens and not the other way around. For example, in Saxo, Lagertha is described as flying. However, Valkyries were not originally described as warriors, although they were sometimes equipped like them. They are hostesses in Valhalla and as psychopomps, it is only after the people stopped believing in them that they became warriors (all the Sagas exist in forms written down by Christians, even if based on earlier works). As far as the lack of evidence Neil Price is also on record as saying there was no evidence (Naturally before he learned about Bj 581 being female).

It is also important to realize that Jesch is not just basing her interpretations on the lack of evidence. There is an association between the idea of Shieldmaiden and women being equal, or at least more free, in the Viking Age. This idea dates to the 19th century, and is based off the problematic textual sources, where the pagan women of an earlier time are depicted as behaving different from contemporary Christian women. Jesch believes that writers such as Saxo were being misogynistic in their depictions of women fighters, and points out that the Sagas that are considered more realistic and reliable tend to have more submissive women. Women also didn’t have the same legal rights as men, and there is no mention of women in Valhalla. Then again, not everything is known about the religion of the vikings.

Finally, there is a question of what being a warrior meant. It is thought that every free adult male owned a sword and would have been expected to help defend the homestead or the province. Some martial training was part of every free man’s upbringing. Does this make every man a warrior? On the other hand, women certainly used violence, sometimes even on the battlefield. The cultural norms are clearly that men fight and women spin. A women warrior would have gone against this norm. That said, the viking age covers a lot of time and a lot of people, it is mathematically probable that this norm was broken. There may however be no connection to actual warrior women in the viking age and the shieldmaiden of literature. As far as I know, no academic believes that it was physically impossible for women to fight, but also most academics believe that most combatants were men. Like 99.9% of warriors were probably men. Tinynanorobots (talk) 10:47, 21 November 2023 (UTC)