Original subtitles

For nearly 300 years,

the Vikings were one of the most brutal

and feared armies in the history of the world.

Some say their military prowess was a gift from the gods.

Others say it came from their unrivaled skills

on the battlefield.

But new controversial evidence

points to another source altogether.

This has been unprecedented.

Was the fearsome Viking army so powerful...

It's crazy.

...because women were warriors, too?

I'm going on a journey back 1,300 years to Viking times...

It's like a really cool "Game of Thrones" set.

...through historical Norse texts...

It looks like Merlin.

...actual Viking remains...

This is the richest Viking Age grave ever found.

Wow.

...and Scandinavian magic...

...to uncover the truth...

...of Viking women warriors.

And this forces us to rewrite everything

that we thought we knew about all ancient cultures.

All across the world, our ancient ancestors

left behind towering mysteries and enchanting myths.

That looks like a magic wand.

As an actress, I've been lucky enough

to peek behind the curtain at some of these ancient sites.

I've never been in a crypt before.

And it's ignited an insatiable curiosity in me

to know more about these lost worlds...

It's amazing that under our feet,

there's so much history.

...some of which are still buried

deep in our distant past.

That is amazing.

Advertise your product or brand here contact www.OpenSubtitles.org today

This looks really beautiful.

And then there's also all this incredible archeology

in, like, every direction.

Just pick a spot, start digging,

and you'll find something amazing.

I've traveled to the small town of Borre, Norway,

a land of misty fjords and unspoiled beauty.

But over 1,000 years ago, this was a center of power

and influence for the Viking empire.

There's much written about Viking legend and lore,

but in actuality, we know very little about

who they were and how they lived.

Megan. So nice to meet you. Great to meet you.

So I'm at the Midgard vikingsenter

to meet Marianne Moen,

an archeologist who has dedicated her professional life

to deciphering the mysteries of the Viking people.

So, we're here at the reproduction

of what we think a chieftain's hall would have looked like.

So it's not your average house.

This is where the chieftains would have

shown off their wealth and their power.

At this site, archeologists have studied

thousands of Viking artifacts to try to reconstruct

how this mysterious people would have lived.

Like a really cool "Game of Thrones" set.

It really is, actually.

You're quite right.

Everything that you see here

is more or less reconstructed or based on

archeologically found artifacts.

What was the Viking Age like?

So, the Viking Age comes at around about 750,

and it finishes about 1050.

In the Viking heartland, it's a fairly peaceful society.

But then you get the view of the Vikings abroad,

and it's a completely different story.

Well, if you're trying to conquer a land,

I mean, it's hard to do that in a kind, gentle way. Yes!

Yeah, it really is, isn't it?

For 300 years, from 750 to 1050 A.D.,

the Vikings were arguably the most feared

and powerful army in the world.

They began as small Scandinavian tribes

that banded together to raid towns,

but by 793, their power had grown,

conquering the island of Lindisfarne

off the coast of modern-day England.

Their success on the battlefield centered around

their ambush tactics

and the use of thousands of advanced longships.

These boats could sail deep oceans,

as well as rivers as shallow as three feet,

allowing the Vikings to launch surprise amphibious attacks

on wealthy waterfront targets.

At the height of their power,

the Vikings controlled settlements

in over 50 of today's modern countries,

from Newfoundland to Europe to Russia.

In total, the Viking territory stretched more than 5,500 miles.

That's larger than the Roman Empire.

I think when most people think of the Vikings... Mm-hmm.

...myself included,

we picture a very patriarchal society.

- Yeah. - Do you agree with that?

When you talk about the Viking Age,

a lot of people have this idea that women ruled the inside

and that men basically ruled everything else.

Just a few months ago,

a Viking warrior grave in Birka, Sweden,

first discovered in 1889,

underwent state-of-the-art DNA analysis,

and the results have set the archeological world ablaze.

This is the Birka grave? Yeah.

The Birka warrior is fascinating in so many ways.

What is the most interesting thing

is that it contains things that indicates military rank

that are pretty much purely associated with

a male typical burial.

So, you have your sword, and you have your ax.

There are arrows in here. There are shields.

So, this was talked about and written about

as a male grave for well over a century.

People spoke about it being a typical example

of a very high-status warrior at this town,

until last year when the DNA study was published,

and it turns out to have been a woman all along.

For an archeologist, this has been unprecedented.

For centuries, many have believed that Viking women

were merely subservient housewives.

But is it possible that the ferocious Viking army

had women warriors in its ranks?

It is now a fact that this person is a woman.

What you do with that and where you go with the interpretation...

That's what the open question is.

It brought out such strong feelings in people

who so much wanted this to be a female warrior,

and then it brought out such strong feelings

in those who really didn't want her to be a female warrior.

These new findings have sparked a massive debate

among archeologists,

with some insisting that just because

this woman was buried with weapons,

it doesn't mean that she actually used them

on the battlefield.

What is the likelihood of these weapons were gifts

from a husband or things that she had inherited?

Personally, I don't think so

because there is nothing else here,

so that would be that her entire identify

is made up of her husband's.

- Her husband. - Yeah.

So I think a very interesting placement of that body

in sort of communication with the rest of the grave.

Well, yeah, the sword is on either side of her hands... Yeah. Yeah.

...where she would put them up if she was gonna use them.

Exactly, exactly.

Why do you think it's so controversial?

One of the main objections is that, you know,

she wouldn't have been able to use her weaponry.

We have women in the military now that carry those guns...

Oh, yes... that are about 50 to 80 pounds.

Exactly. Just because you're small

doesn't mean you can't be strong.

- Do you have a husband? - Yeah.

Have you ever been mad enough at him

that you could swing a sword?

- Every day. - Right?

I know. I'm a small person.

Brian's a lucky man we don't have those

laying around the house.

If there were female warriors,

then centuries of well-established history

that says the Vikings were an archaic culture

with rudimentary gender roles would be shattered.

And that would force us to rewrite everything

we thought we knew about the Viking culture

and possibly about all ancient cultures.

But solving this 1,300-year-old puzzle won't be easy.

It's about finding the bread crumbs

and connecting them.

So I'm heading to a small island 50 miles off the coast of Sweden

where an active archeological dig is currently unfolding.

Dan?

Hi. Megan. How are you?

Dan Carlsson is the site's lead archeologist.

His recent discovery of Viking graves on the island

could be the key

to putting these centuries-old pieces together.

How many graves do you think are here?

Mm-hmm.

Of the dozens of graves in the area,

Dan is excavating nine of them,

and he's determined that all of them hold the remains of women.

Yeah, yeah, please.

Hundreds of artifacts were discovered

in these female graves,

which provide an unprecedented look

into the lives of Viking women.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

This is?

Wow.

It's cool to get to hold it.

What is this?

It looks like magic.

Yeah. That's amazing.

So, this comes from where?

Mm. So that's evidence of trade, obviously. Yeah.

The Vikings were not only brilliant on the battlefield,

they were also shrewd businessmen,

setting of sophisticated trade routes

stretching through Europe, Asia, and the Middle East...

Trade route riches and resources to build the ships and weapons

necessary to keep their war machine running,

Dan and his team have also uncovered

hundreds of thousands of silver coins on this island

from as far away as the Middle East,

suggesting that Gotland would have been an extremely wealthy

Viking trading center,

connecting goods from the east and Viking money from the west.

Yeah.

No.

It feels like a bullet, almost.

Oh, it's a weight?

For a scale.

Yeah.

Yeah. So she was maybe a merchant.

Yeah.

Viking women were supposed to be at home

tending to their families.

But now, here's evidence that they could have been

traveling the world as financial power players,

keeping the Viking coffers filled

for more pillaging and conquest.

Was being a merchant and a trader...

Was that typically thought of

as a male occupation or thing to do?

You have to sort of guess or assume

to a certain point to connect the dots in archeology,

so why do you think the theory that there could have been

a Viking female warrior is so outrageous?

Because it doesn't require any more guesswork

than any of this other stuff does.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

If Viking women were traveling the world as traders,

they weren't just homemakers.

They served a central and critical role

in financing one of the most revered fighting forces

in Europe.

So, Viking women worked to support the war efforts.

But could they actually have fought in those wars?

We're actually getting special access today. Wow.

This is the richest Viking Age grave ever found.

Wow. That is amazing.

The recent discovery

that a Viking warrior grave in Birka, Sweden,

actually contains a woman

has generated an archeological firestorm.

For centuries, Viking women were believed to be

not much more than subservient housewives.

But is possible that 1,300 years ago,

the ferocious Viking army had female warriors in its ranks?

Hi. Hi.

- How are you? - I'm good. How are you?

Good.

I'm meeting Leszek Gardela,

a leading expert on Viking burials.

Today we'll get to see a lot of exciting Viking stuff.

We're actually getting special access today.

I was wondering why we were coming in through the back way.

Look to your right.

- To my right? - Yep.

Wow.

- So... - That is amazing.

Although first excavated in 1904,

this Viking burial discovered 65 miles away

in Oseberg, Norway,

is still helping archeologists answer questions

about the Vikings.

This is the richest Viking Age grave ever found. Wow.

This was in a grave?

This is a grave.

The entire ship was under the ground?

The entire ship was underground,

buried under a burial mound,

and containing numerous, numerous objects.

Amazing.

Viking burials like this,

where the dead were sent to the afterlife inside their ships,

were reserved for the most important members of society,

like kings, nobles, and highly decorated warriors.

Commoners were either cremated

or buried with their belongings under a mound of earth.

The ship is definitely a symbol of power and prominence.

It is something that commands respect.

Someone who was given a burial like this

must have been someone really, very, very important.

- Mm-hmm. - But guess what?

What?

This is also a female grave.

A female was buried with this massive ship?

Actually, two women were found on board.

The two women buried in this ship died in 834 A.D.,

one at 80 years old and the other at about 50.

These are from the grave? From the grave.

- She wore those shoes? - Yep.

That's amazing. I don't know why that...

I guess 'cause it's so human all of a sudden.

You see someone had their feet in those shoes. Yeah.

It's really amazing.

What is the theory of why there were two women inside?

Various theories.

The original theory was that one of them

was someone really powerful

and that the younger woman was perhaps her servant.

And today a lot of people are thinking that perhaps

both women were of equal status, of equal importance.

But we don't know exactly how and why they died.

The key to understanding who these women were

and why they were so important

lies not only in how they were buried,

but what they were buried with.

- Please, after you. - Thank you.

Leszek takes me to the rare-artifacts section,

where belongings from the burial are kept under lock and key.

Do you know what we're about to see?

- I do. - Oh, okay.

- Do you? - No, I have no idea.

- You'll find out in a second. - Is it a snake?

Wow. Yes.

That looks like a magic wand.

It's like Professor Snape's wand from "Harry Potter."

Mm, of course. Or like Gandalf's staff if you...

Or like Gandalf's staff, yeah.

How old is this?

This is 1,000 years old.

- It's made out of iron? - Yes.

You can see there are different details

that are still preserved.

Magical staffs are all over pop culture today.

But there are references that go back as far as 2,000 B.C.,

with the tales of priests in ancient Persia

using bunches of sticks to connect to the spiritual realm.

2,500 years later,

the Vikings were also no strangers to conjuring magic.

They were rumored to use pieces of wood called runes

to predict the future and to heal the sick.

Don't you wonder who the first person was to decide

that there was something magical about a staff and why? Hmm.

And maybe there was something magical about that first staff,

because they believed it for centuries and centuries. Yeah.

Even in the story of Moses, he cast down his staff,

it turns into a snake, and it eats the other snake. Absolutely.

Of course, it is definitely something

that was an emblem of great power.

This magical staff was clearly very important

to the Viking women buried with it.

But exactly what kind of powerful rituals

could they carry out with it?

There seems to be this idea

that these ritual practitioners

were involved in warfare in one way or another,

either perhaps providing some form of supernatural protection.

That's cool. Of course, know about the barsark, or the berserkers.

What were the berserkers?

The berserkers... They are described as warriors,

fearless warriors, who could not be hurt.

Berserkers were champion Viking warriors

who fought in a trace-like fury.

This is where the English word "berserk" comes from.

To enter this war-frenzy state,

they would take these special substances.

So there definitely are very strong aspects of magic

used for warfare.

So it's possible that these two women were buried like kings

because they had mastered a type of magic

that gave them unrivaled power on the battlefield.

And, of course, archeology is extremely dynamic... Yeah.

...so people keep finding new things all the time. Right.

So, were these two Viking women,

in fact, champion warriors?

And is there a bigger story

that their bones and scepters are telling us?

Did the ferocious and powerful Viking army

have female warriors in its ranks?

Or were women rarely more than subservient housewives,

like the history books tell us?

I'm turning to Norse oral traditions

to try and let Viking women speak for themselves.

The mythology of people...

They reflect on their attitudes, their ideals,

and to some extent also the world in which they lived.

Did the myths actually reflect reality? Yeah.

Maria Kvilhaug is one of Norway's leading experts

on Norse mythology.

She has a near-supernatural grasp on the "Poetic Eddas,"

a collection of Viking myths

orally passed down from generation to generation

and finally written down in the 13th century.

What god was actually the most important varied,

so each tribe had slightly different gods

that they paid more attention to than the others.

Viking myths, like the story of Thor,

the god of thunder who slayed giants,

or Odin, the god of war who sacrificed his right right eye

to drink from the Well of Knowledge,

are still powerful legends today.

But in the hundreds of pages of the "Eddas"

that mention dozens of gods, kings, and legendary warriors,

there is one striking trend that sets Viking mythology apart.

Most of the myths that we know from the Viking Age,

female are just as powerful in Norse myths as the male. Mm-hmm.

Women... they could take leading roles,

and we see that in the mythology.

These warrior women... Those women who

do pick up arms and they do fight...

They're sometimes called shield-maidens.

The shield-maidens of Norse mythology

are as ferocious and powerful as their male counterparts,

from Hervor, who avenged her father's death

by leading Viking raids on a haunted island,

to Lagertha,

who fought alongside Viking kings in Sweden and Norway.

And the legends of powerful Viking women

go all the way to the top.

Ahh.

The Volva is one of the most important figures

in Norse mythology.

She used powerful magic to see the future,

and even Odin turned to her for critical advice.

Not only is the Volva on the Mount Rushmore of Viking gods,

but she also spawned a real-life class of Viking women.

I'll follow you. You lead the way.

I'm visiting a group of Viking historians

who live like this class of ancient women

as a way to try to understand them.

That was awesome.

Thank you.

This class of women, also known as seeresses,

were rumored to channel the power of their ancestors

to predict the future and to conjure magic.

They were in such high demand that they would be lavished

with gifts in exchange for their powers.

So much for women just being subservient housewives.

Our ancestors in the past were in a lot of ways

more progressive than we are right now.

Deep in the forest of Tomter, Norway,

the Volva women have arranged for me

to take part in one of their ancient rituals.

There's no, like, dark spirits or anything

we're calling in?

Maria Jacobsen is a modern-day seeress

that practices the traditions of Viking magic.

Maria will guide me in a ritual called utiseta,

which means "sitting out."

It's the Viking version of a vision quest.

The seeresses would sit out in the forest

overnight in solitude,

and by entering a trace-like state,

they could channel the spirits of nature

and their ancestral magic.

Some say magic is just science that we don't understand yet.

For me, like, I believe in magic.

I have a need to believe in magic.

It gets into my bones.

Okay.

One of them is my grandmother,

so I know she's here right now.

I'll wait for the sun to go down

and then find a spot in the forest,

and in that quiet, try to connect

to the power of my ancestors

and the nature spirits around me.

It's gonna alter my consciousness

because, like, I sleep with a light on in my hotel room... Yeah.

...'cause I'm scared... Yeah.

...'cause I'm really sensitive

to energies and spirits and things like that.

And so I would never go out into the forest alone.

No.

It's getting dark.

I'm scared of the dark. I'm scared of forests.

I'm scared of being alone.

I'm scared of a lot of things.

I mean, on a scale of 1 to 10 of on a terror scale,

I'm at about a 7, creeping towards an 8.

Okay.

And as soon as you guys start to trickle away,

it's gonna go up to a hard 10,

and then I don't know.

Nanny, are you with me?

All of my spirit guides, stay close to me, be with me.

Oh, man.

All of my spirit guides, stay close to me, be with me.

I'm on a Viking vision quest

deep in the Norwegian forest.

It's an ancient practice carried out by powerful female sorcerers

who were rumored to channel the power of their ancestors

to predict the future and to conjure magic.

After hours of complete isolation in pure darkness,

my quest is complete.

- So, you did it. - I did do it.

I wasn't as scared as I thought I was gonna be.

It made me very present to my own emotions

and I think put me in touch with people

that had been there maybe thousands of years ago,

but I felt like I was feeling and receiving

a lot of different energy.

It wasn't necessarily all my own.

I don't know about being able to see the future,

but I definitely felt some power in these woods.

But when it comes to determining whether women

could actually have been full-on warriors,

the Vikings didn't make finding the truth easy.

They left behind literally no written records.

But other cultures may have.

So I'm heading to the National Library of Norway in Oslo.

It houses some of the rarest books in the world.

Hi.

- How are you, Megan? - How are you?

- Hi. I'm Kim. - Nice to meet you.

Awesome.

Kim Hjardar is one of the world's

most prolific historians on Viking warfare.

He's gotten me unprecedented access to a selection of texts

that could help piece together the past.

By 1090, the Vikings had expanded their empire

into parts of modern-day Italy,

leading to clashes with the Eastern Roman Empire,

known as the Byzantines.

This is a chronicle of a Viking loss.

Mm-hmm.

Of course. Of course.

Yeah.

All those scholars are still debating

the meaning of this account.

There is another rare text written about 100 years later

that may be the key to unlocking the secrets of Viking women.

But this book is very old.

It's very fragile.

It's not every day you see a book

with the same security as the Hope Diamond...

...but this book is priceless.

This book, written around 1,200 A.D.,

is a detailed chronicle of the history of the Danes

called "Gesta Danorum"

by the first-ever Danish historian, Saxo Grammaticus.

300 years later, this work would inspire William Shakespeare

to write "Hamlet."

Wow.

This is one of the rarest books in the world.

It's crazy because it looks like

when you think of, like, Merlin,

and it's right there, and I can't touch it,

but I'm very close to touching it.

I just have to take a picture. It's crazy.

That is really cool.

"There were once women in Denmark"

who dressed themselves to look like men

and spent almost every minute cultivating soldier skills.

They courted military expertise so earnestly

that anyone would have guessed

"that they had un-sexed themselves." Yeah.

"Those especially who had forceful personalities"...

Moi... "or were tall and elegant,

"tended to embark on this way of life." Right.

"They put toughness before allure,"

aimed at conflicts instead of kisses,

and desired not the couch but the kill,

and those they could have appeased with looks

"they attacked with lances."

- Yeah. - That lights a fire in me.

No, she's not... That's just a woman.

You think so? Yeah. Okay.

This is a man that's afraid of a woman.

They all died

because they didn't sit on the couch

waiting for those kisses.

Right.

It's frustrating for me because,

well, where is the truth, then?

What do we know about history for sure?

Well, what if we have the source and now

we're recovering bodies in tombs

that seem to be the tombs of warriors,

and they're female bodies?

Mm-hmm.

Viking graves, Norse mythology,

and now these texts are challenging everything

we thought we knew about Viking women.

But what's buried deep in the British countryside

could be the final piece of the puzzle.

Some of skeletons from that mass grave... Okay.

...were actually women.

Then there's a very good chance

that they were actually actively involved in battle.

I've discovered Viking society

was not the male-dominated patriarchy

our history books had led us to believe.

But did women fight alongside men

as warriors in the most feared military force of its time?

The answers could be at

an active archeological dig site in Repton, England.

I love walking through a graveyard.

That's one of my favorite things to do. It is... yeah.

I used to always do this when I was a child, as well.

I'm being so sarcastic. It's not...

I'm so scared of energy and spirts and all of that.

Okay. Fantastic.

Archeologist Cat Jarman is using state-of-the-art science

to examine the largest Viking mass grave

ever discovered in England,

located in the shadow of this church.

All these excavations took place in the 1980s,

and it's also where I've been working

for the last three years.

Although the mass grave was first discovered

more than 35 years ago,

no one has been able to say for sure

who these Vikings were or why they died.

But Cat might be the one to finally change that.

We have some new methods and new techniques,

and now with those new methods we can find out stuff

we couldn't find out 30 years ago. Yeah.

So, if you look at the plan here,

here's the mass grave.

The mound is found over here.

So this is a photograph from the excavations.

So these are all femurs or thigh bones.

How many bodies?

The minimum number of individuals was 264...

At least 264 people all in the same space.

All right here.

Yeah, right where we're standing now.

And no possessions, no swords or...

There were artifacts there.

Yeah, so there were some artifacts,

including an ax... A Viking ax...

And several other weapons that were clearly Viking...

Various knives and things.

Oh, I love that. That's exciting.

Viking axes were a common weapon of choice

because they could be both thrown from far distances

or be swung during hand-to-hand combat.

Are you confident that the burial site

was related to a battle?

So, we've been looking at things like how these people died.

Many of them do have injuries.

They have evidence of trauma.

These were war dead. These were battle dead.

If they're buried with weapons,

if they have all these injuries,

then there's a very good chance

that they were actually actively involved in battle.

Does seem really likely that it is Viking Great Army. Yeah.

These warriors likely died here around 873 A.D.

in an attempt by the Vikings

to take land from the Mercian dynasty,

which controlled modern-day England from 600 to 900 A.D.

And with nearly 300 Viking bodies found so far,

this must have been one serious battle.

But that's not even the coolest part.

Some of the skeletons and some of the skulls

from that mass grave were actually women.

Wow. That's amazing.

We can look at sex from the skulls.

So we look at things like the brow,

which is if they're really defined.

Archeologists often use the size of a skull's brow

to determine sex.

Women have a smaller and less pronounced brow line.

The brow ridge to me...

Much smaller than the other. Smaller, yeah.

- Yeah. - Okay.

So, this is a female skull.

Cool.

That's a female skull. It has to be.

Yeah, this isn't very pronounced. It's just more delicate.

You can see a pretty big difference in the skulls. Yeah.

- Yeah. - Exactly.

Where we could determine what sex an individual was,

20% were actually women.

Yeah.

If this is a burial site from a battle

and they were all injured or killed in war,

and 20% of them are female,

the implications would be the warriors were female.

- Yeah. - That's very exciting.

And that's blowing a story wide open. Yeah.

This is incredible.

We aren't talking about a single instance

of a powerful woman or a lone female warrior's grave.

Now we have hundreds of Viking warriors,

and many among them are women.

This changes everything.

If this a burial site from a battle,

and 20% of them are female,

the warriors were female.

Yeah, then there's a very good chance

that they were actually actively involved in battle.

That's very exciting.

Human remains in a Viking mass grave in Repton, England,

have provided archeologist Cat Jarman

with shocking evidence.

1,100 years ago,

a squadron of Viking soldiers fought and died here,

and many of them were women.

That's blowing a story wide open. Yeah.

But what was this squad's mission?

Were women an integral part of the Viking war machine?

Or would they have been sent to the slaughter

because they weren't actually respected warriors at all?

The answer could lie in the bowels of St. Wystan's Church,

located just feet from the Viking mass grave.

So, this church is quite special.

So, there is actually a part of this church

that dates right back when the Vikings were here.

Although this church was rebuilt 400 years

after the Vikings would have fought here,

two stories below are remnants

of what these Viking warriors might have been after.

This is really the only original part,

which was what would have been there

when the Vikings were here. Okay.

And this dates back to about 700 or 800 A.D.

So it's quite dark down there, so a torch for you.

You take that one. Should I be nervous?

- No, no, absolutely not. - Okay.

Quite steep steps, so just take care, and we'll go down.

So this is the crypt.

Okay.

This is a really important place.

This was where a lot of the kings were buried.

It was very wealthy.

Ancient crypts guarded the remains and possessions

of the most important people of their day.

This crypt contained the grave goods

of powerful Mercian kings who controlled

what is now modern-day England

when the Vikings attacked this church.

These pillars date back about 1,300 years.

A lot of this is exactly the way it was

when the Vikings attacked.

I've never been in a crypt before.

Do you like it?

I don't hate it.

But I wouldn't want to stay here for very long, though,

and I wouldn't want this torch to die out.

This crypt would have likely housed priceless riches

with a value that we can only guess.

They assumed that there would be

treasure of sorts here, as well... Yeah, definitely.

...gold and so forth?

Yeah, all sorts of treasure.

And we know that because the archeological excavations

have found some items of treasure...

Really precious bits of jewelry,

really nice glass.

We know this was really wealthy,

so that's exactly the sort of thing

that the Vikings were looking for.

So taking over this is a really powerful thing.

We've all seen "Braveheart."

What I picture in my mind is just, like, a ruthless,

bloody pillaging of everything and everyone that was here,

and then we're standing right here

where that took place.

And the idea that they were female

and they were female warriors...

That opens up a lot of new things.

This crypt likely would have been

an extremely high-value target for the Vikings,

and capturing it would have required

exceptionally skilled soldiers,

like a Viking SEAL Team 6.

And some of these highly skilled warriors

appear to have been women.

They were here,

standing in the footsteps of a lot of history.

History books have said that Viking women

only adhered to conventional gender stereotypes.

But that is dead wrong.

Human history is not written in stone.

Just like our understanding of the Vikings,

it's always evolving.

With just one profound discovery,

mankind's entire story could change.

So, if we're ever going to unlock the secrets of the past,

we need to be open to change with it.

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