Virtual Author Talk and Q&A with Nancy Marie Brown (The Real Valkyrie)

Bank Square Books and Savoy Bookshop & Café present an author talk and Q&A with Nancy Marie Brown for her new book The Real Valkyrie.

This event is free, but registration is required. Registration details are at the bottom of this page.

About the Book
“A complex, important, and delightful addition to women’s history.” —Pamela D. Toler, author of Women Warriors: An Unexpected History

In 2017, DNA tests revealed to the collective shock of many scholars that a Viking warrior in a high-status grave in Birka, Sweden was actually a woman. The Real Valkyrie weaves together archaeology, history, and literature to imagine her life and times, showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians have imagined.

Brown uses science to link the Birka warrior, whom she names Hervor, to Viking trading towns and to their great trade route east to Byzantium and beyond. She imagines her life intersecting with larger-than-life but real women, including Queen Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings, the Viking leader known as The Red Girl, and Queen Olga of Kyiv. Hervor’s short, dramatic life shows that much of what we have taken as truth about women in the Viking Age is based not on data, but on nineteenth-century Victorian biases. Rather than holding the household keys, Viking women in history, law, saga, poetry, and myth carry weapons. These women brag, “As heroes we were widely known—with keen spears we cut blood from bone.” In this compelling narrative Brown brings the world of those valkyries and shield-maids to vivid life.

About the Author
Nancy Marie Brown is the author of highly praised books of nonfiction, including Song of the Vikings. She is fluent in Icelandic and spends her summers in Iceland. She has deep ties to the Scandinavian cultural institutions in the U.S. Brown lives in East Burke, Vermont.