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This article argues that the medieval Scandinavian valkyrie and shield-maiden, overlapping categories of warrior, are best understood as a third gender, a hybrid of masculine and feminine attributes. Found in a variety of texts, myths, and legends of heroes, for example, these figures are clad in masculine attire, armor, and weapons, and exercise masculine power as they fight and choose who will die in battle. At the same time, linguistic markers, literary devices, and other of their activities mark them as feminine. The article further argues that the shield-maiden who chooses a male spouse subsequently transitions from the third gender to the feminine gender. As a consequence, she loses many of the powerful abilities of a warrior woman, along with her armor and weapons. Furthermore, her subjectivity is altered so that it is founded and dependent on that of her husband. When he dies, she is leftwith a diminished social network that, given the construction of subjectivity in this medieval context, leaves her personhood diminished as well.
Keywords: medieval Scandinavia / Old Norse mythology / shield-maidens / subjectivity / third gender / valkyries
The valkyrie is a figure familiar to many: from television to opera, armored, weapon-carrying warrior women march through modernity's imaginary worlds. The inspiration for these warrior women comes from diverse sources: stories of the Amazons, Celtic goddesses of war, Joan of Arc, and any number of narratives, myths, and other, often pseudo-historical retellings of the lives of past women. Valkyries have been the inspiration for a diverse range of cultural products, including Richard Wagner's character Brünnhilde in Die Walküre, the valkyries of the Marvel comic-book series The Mighty Thor, and a plethora of others from elite and popular culture. A simple internet search of the term valkyrie brings up an array of texts and images, many of which depict the valkyrie as a scantily clad, buxom woman, lounging suggestively while grasping a weapon. It is easy to see that the modern valkyrie is deeply implicated in discourses of gender.
In the medieval Scandinavian world, the valkyrie and her close relative, the shield-maiden, are also deeply implicated in discourses of gender (Anderson and Swenson 2002; Clover 1986, 1993; Clunies Ross 1981; Jesch [1991] 2010; Jochens 1995, 1996; Larrington 1992a, 1992b; Layher 2007;...