"Revelations from the Viking Age - Oseberg Ship" Topic

The results of DNA and x-ray studies of the two women buried in the Oseberg ship in the year 834 have revealed startling discoveries.

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Fascinating. Just exercize cauton when reading other articles in that site. Now I'm convinced. Norwegians are crazy.

Looks like we'll need a bearded Viking female figure now…

Yes, and such a lovely woman she would be…

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Damon.

Pigbear wrote: "Just exercize cauton when reading other articles in that site."

What's wrong with Aftenposten? It's a respectable paper as far as I was aware.

I'm sure it is respectable. But the Most Read article links were about fairly shocking topics (bestiality, porn, public sex acts, child murder, etc.). It struck me as the type of trash you see in grocery store tabloids or other low brow fare. But, I followed the link again today and the Most Read are much more tame. What I had taken as an indictment of Scandinavian society was probably just a weird day for the newspaper's website. So I suppose I jumped the gun a bit.

Back to the article itself. It got me wondering about the incidence of metastatic breast cancer in ancient times and whether we have sufficient data to support or refute whether there exists a correlation between modernity and such diseases. It's food for thought and perhaps for study. The most interesting revelation is the fact that previous archeologists got the whole story wrong. Gives the younger generation something to do. Otherwise a degree in archeology would be about as useful as a degree in English lit (and perhaps it is).

Ooh, don't let my supervisor hear you say that. I made the mistake of commenting that Eng. Lit. did not seem particularly useful in the market place and received a real earful. It was largely in the context of me complaining that archaeology as a degree in the UK does not fit a person for working in the field and also about making archaeology a vocational degree, like engineering. I know better than to do that now.

Anyway, in 100 years' time someone will probably come along and disprove the new results of the tests. The problem is that we, as archaeologists, deal with facts, not truth. We can only interpret those facts in the light of the analytical techniques available to us, which means that the interpretations often have to be refined and updated, or even discarded.

I don't honestly know if we have sufficient data to test the idea that breast cancer may be a modern phenomenon or not, but it would certainly be interesting to see if we did.

Bearded women! Wow, as Templar's never cut their beards, some of those "brother" knights could have gotten away with, well you know.

Plenty of women have facial hair – but they do not let it grow very long ! The story is about the contrast between history and archaeology. Facts do not mean anything until they are interpreted. Stories need corroberation. Both can be argued over so nothing is new here. We know an older an younger woman were buried together. The rest is hypothesis. Young archeologists and medics have to make a name for themselves somehow. Look at this idiotic article to see how hypothesising based on a shred of evidence can produce silly results. But it still gets one published and cited.
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Sorry – if you cant read swedish (try babelfish)the point is that this reconstruction is totally at odds with all others and stems from the fact that one historical reference says viking womens dress style was shocking to christians. Same evidence, new 'original' slant.

@plasticviking2: Brilliant! It's like they say, build your ivory tower high and defend it against all comers. Thank you for entertaining me. I had not seen that story before.