Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marcia a Radio Eye and today I
Speaker 1: will be reading National Geographic Magazine dated March twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading service intended
Speaker 1: for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
Speaker 1: make it difficult to read printed material. Please join me
Speaker 1: now for the first article titled The Long Journey of
Speaker 1: Canada's Last Reindeer. A famous herd with a storied past
Speaker 1: confronts a new kind of future in the High North
Speaker 1: by Joshua Hunt. Beneath the glow of the morning sun,
Speaker 1: thousands of reindeer plod across the frozen far reaches of
Speaker 1: northwestern Canada. In the slow moving scrum, the animal's bodies
Speaker 1: almost disappear under a cloud of vapor as warm breath
Speaker 1: collides with cold air. A forest of antlers seems to
Speaker 1: dance in the mist. Glimpsed from afar, the migrating herd
Speaker 1: looks like one long, sinuous streak of brown painted across
Speaker 1: the snow canvavas of an Arctic landscape. In the distance
Speaker 1: are four Inuvialuit herders on snowmobiles, armed with rifles and
Speaker 1: keeping watch. They are alert, attuned to the rhythm of
Speaker 1: hoofs falling on frozen earth and on this crisp morning.
Speaker 1: Their job is to escort the reindeer to their calving grounds,
Speaker 1: but in a grander sense, they are also helping to
Speaker 1: write a new legacy for this storied herd. They're really
Speaker 1: smart animals, said dus Douglas Esagok, whose seven winters working
Speaker 1: with the reindeer mak him among the most experienced of
Speaker 1: the indigenous herders. I'm always talking to them when I'm
Speaker 1: moving them. It kind of calms them down when they
Speaker 1: recognize my voice or the sound of my snow machine.
Speaker 1: As Canada's last free ranging reindeer herd drives forward just
Speaker 1: north of the Arctic Circle, the animals carry with them
Speaker 1: a link to a legendary experiment. It began about one
Speaker 1: hundred years ago after the number of local caribou that
Speaker 1: the Inuvialu wheat long depended on began to decline, and
Speaker 1: a bold plan was hatched to address food scarcity by
Speaker 1: importing reindeer. Caribou and reindeer are the same species, but
Speaker 1: the latter have been domesticated. Something similar has been tried
Speaker 1: at the turn of the century in nearby Alaska, when
Speaker 1: waves of reindeer boarded boats and trains to make improbable
Speaker 1: journeys from Siberia and Norway to North America. In late
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty nine, a chunk of what was then a
Speaker 1: burgeoning Alaska reindeer population, some thirty five hundred reindeer, set
Speaker 1: off for Canada under the care of Sami and Inuit herders.
Speaker 1: The arduous, zigzagging, fifteen hundred mile journey ended up lasting
Speaker 1: more than five years, marking a difficult beginning to what
Speaker 1: came to be known as the Canadian Reindeer Project. Now
Speaker 1: decades on, a group of Nuvialuit stakeholders is taking the
Speaker 1: project further into uncharted territory. The herd, which has been
Speaker 1: cared for with the help of the Inuvialuit but family owned,
Speaker 1: was formerly purchased in twenty twenty one by the Inuvialuit
Speaker 1: Regional Corporation. Under the watchful eyes of Esagoch and his colleagues,
Speaker 1: the herd has more than doubled to nearly six thousand reindeer,
Speaker 1: making possible an ambitious plan to build a sustainable path
Speaker 1: to self reliance for Inuvialuit people living on their ancestral lands.
Speaker 1: The ultimate goal is to have reindeer abundantly available for Inuvialuit.
Speaker 1: That's goal number one, said Brian Reid, director of the
Speaker 1: in Inuvialuit Community Economic Development Organization. There's the food's security
Speaker 1: component to this herd, but there's also job creation and
Speaker 1: the economic component to it. The reindeer's transferred to Inuvialuit
Speaker 1: ownership goes beyond an attempt at establishing stability for the future.
Speaker 1: It also represents a chance for the Inuvialuite people to
Speaker 1: take control of a herd imported to their homelands by
Speaker 1: a colonial government in the nineteen thirties. When the reindeer
Speaker 1: came to the Northwest Territories, the role they were meant
Speaker 1: to play in the lives of Uvialuit people was mostly
Speaker 1: to replace their ancestral food gathering customs. The Canadian government
Speaker 1: had been establishing administrative stations and allowing the creation of
Speaker 1: trading outposts throughout the region following its acquisition of the
Speaker 1: Northwest Territories in the late eighteen hundreds. The indigenous population
Speaker 1: had for centuries subsisted primarily on hunting and fishing, but
Speaker 1: with cariboo and decline, reindeer were imported to address food shortages.
Speaker 1: This also changed the relationship the Inuvialuite had with the land.
Speaker 1: As reindeer could be raised as livestock, reindeer are classified
Speaker 1: as domesticated animals, the same as a cow or a
Speaker 1: chicken or a pig, said Wade felgrays all day and
Speaker 1: just keep moving slowly and slowly and slowly, finding greener pastures.
Speaker 1: In the years before the IRC took control of the herd,
Speaker 1: the reindeer were owned by in an in new Viluite family,
Speaker 1: the Binders, whose associations with the reindeer stretched back to
Speaker 1: their arrival in the Mackenzie Delta. The Binders had grazed
Speaker 1: the animals and sold reindeer meat, but had increasingly struggled
Speaker 1: with too few herders to stave off predators and keep
Speaker 1: the herd from splintering. As the number of reindeer dipped,
Speaker 1: the Inuvialuite leaders at the IRC were in the process
Speaker 1: of recognizing the powerful role that a bolstered reindeer population
Speaker 1: could play in the community. Plenty of Enuviluite continue to
Speaker 1: hunt for their food, but it can be a costly
Speaker 1: and time intensive effort, and, as any hunter will attest,
Speaker 1: some seasons are better than others. Over recent decades, many
Speaker 1: families have moved away from the traditional subsistence model, depending
Speaker 1: instead on food markets and grocery stores stocked by Southern
Speaker 1: food food supply chains. But in twenty twenty, at the
Speaker 1: outset of the global pandemic, many of those supply chains
Speaker 1: broke the RC, which began to envision a roll for
Speaker 1: the herd in addressing food shortages. Could see clearly that
Speaker 1: the thread was not hypothetical but immediate. We've been able
Speaker 1: to really capitalize on the country food that's abundant in
Speaker 1: our region, but also tie in the reindeer herd so
Speaker 1: we could alleviate the pressure on the local caribou herd
Speaker 1: and save the sustainable protein source, said Wade. The purchase
Speaker 1: of the herd, he added, was part of a two
Speaker 1: pronged plan toward food sovereignty. The other initiative was the
Speaker 1: opening of the Country Food Processing Plant in the town
Speaker 1: of Inuvik, where reindeer, among other food sources, could be
Speaker 1: prepared and then sent off for distribution to families in need.
Speaker 1: Before any reindeer could be harvested, though, the herd needed
Speaker 1: to be nurtured back to full strength, the RC brought
Speaker 1: on Esagoch and fellow in to Valawite herder Steve Cockney Junior,
Speaker 1: who then spent months reuniting the dispersed reindeer herd. One
Speaker 1: of the main challenges was rounding up all the stray
Speaker 1: animals that were spread out over a huge area, said Essegok.
Speaker 1: Some groups had strayed as far afield as eighty miles,
Speaker 1: which meant days of travel for Esagok and his partner.
Speaker 1: These smaller groups of reindeer were vulnerable to wolves and
Speaker 1: other predators, and while many animals had been lost and
Speaker 1: others roamed beyond the two herder's reach, Esagox said, we
Speaker 1: brought all of them together, the ones that we were
Speaker 1: able to locate anyway. Since then, the ir C has
Speaker 1: hired four additional herders, with the crew pulling two week
Speaker 1: long shifts of four men on and two men off
Speaker 1: at any given time. As a result of their efforts,
Speaker 1: the herd's numbers have swelled up to six thousand, enough
Speaker 1: for Country Food Processing to start its work with the reindeer.
Speaker 1: Last spring, the plant, now staffed by five full time employees,
Speaker 1: led its first official harvest, preparing one hundred seventy six
Speaker 1: reindeer from the herd as roasts, round meat, and ribs,
Speaker 1: among other items that were then distributed to Inuvialuit community members.
Speaker 1: The meals provide a crucial source of country food grown
Speaker 1: and sourced in the region, allowing Inuvialuite households that may
Speaker 1: not be able to hunt for themselves a chance to
Speaker 1: stay connected to the land and to this chapter in
Speaker 1: the Inuvialuit story. For Esigoch, the opportunity to play such
Speaker 1: a critical role in this new form of food stability
Speaker 1: and cultural revitalization has been a crash course in learning
Speaker 1: by doing. In just seven years, he Cockney and their
Speaker 1: team became the heirs to an indigenous tradition imported from
Speaker 1: the other side of the Arctic, where the Sami had
Speaker 1: long mastered the practice. His responsibility to pass this knowledge
Speaker 1: on to younger herders was made lest daunting, he said,
Speaker 1: by the fact that the region's indigenous hunters already have
Speaker 1: most of the skills to do the job, given their
Speaker 1: familiarity with the landscape. It's not that heart of a
Speaker 1: job if you grow up hunting, he said. We try
Speaker 1: to talk to the younger guys and explain things the
Speaker 1: best we can, but a lot of it is hands on.
Speaker 1: You learn by doing it and by watching and observing
Speaker 1: the animals. The reindeer teach them too, he said. Often
Speaker 1: it feels as if they are the ones leading the way.
Speaker 1: How reindeer got to America. In the eighteen nineties, the
Speaker 1: idea of raising domesticated reindeer took root in Alaska, leading
Speaker 1: to a herd being imported to replace dwindling numbers of
Speaker 1: free range in Cariboo as a regional food source. Next,
Speaker 1: where space and time merge, the glow we see from
Speaker 1: distant galaxies is as old as Earth's ancient rocks. A
Speaker 1: dazzling project puts the age of starlight in perspective. Periods
Speaker 1: of time lasting thousands, millions, or even billions of years
Speaker 1: might seem unfathomable. So Mark Chan, a photographer and teacher
Speaker 1: in Houston, decided to visualize this very mysterious idea of
Speaker 1: deep time in more relatable terms, the stars over our
Speaker 1: heads and the rocks under foot. Since twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: he's been hiking into wild places, including national parks, at
Speaker 1: night and deploying a custom made projector to layer Nassau
Speaker 1: images of star symp systems onto iconic natural formations in
Speaker 1: split second verse. Each resulting photograph features an earthly setting
Speaker 1: roughly as old in years as the stars distance from
Speaker 1: Earth in light years. This blend of geological and galactic perspectives,
Speaker 1: capturing how our planet has coexisted with the universe, is
Speaker 1: now part of an ongoing series he called Pilgrimage of Light.
Speaker 1: By comparison, we humans have been here for only a
Speaker 1: flash by Hicks Wilgan. Twenty million years ago, subterranean pressure
Speaker 1: raised the gigantic limestone formations the house to day's Carlsbad caverns,
Speaker 1: juxtaposed here with a spiral arm of the Pinwooll galaxy
Speaker 1: twenty two point three million light years away Scorpius. This
Speaker 1: star cluster, some twenty eight thousand light years from Earth,
Speaker 1: appears on trees at the base of Half Dome, an
Speaker 1: impressive cliff carved by glaciers moving through Yosemite Valley during
Speaker 1: multiple ice ages, the last of which was thirty thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. Constellation Virgo sediments within the dry lake bed
Speaker 1: that forms Bryce Canyon first appeared thirty million years ago,
Speaker 1: about the time when M one four, also known as
Speaker 1: the Sombrero galaxy emitted the light scene in the Hubble
Speaker 1: telescope constellation Carina with snow falling Photographer Mark chen cast
Speaker 1: an image of star cluster n GC thirty three twenty
Speaker 1: four beneath the lights of the South Rims Grand Canyon Village.
Speaker 1: The cluster's proximity to Earth ninety nine two hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty light years loosely corus responds to how long Age
Speaker 1: humans started living in settlements. Next, the warrior women of
Speaker 1: the Viking Age. For centuries, historical accounts of the Great
Speaker 1: Norse fighters focused on men and their remarkable feats in battle.
Speaker 1: Now new evidence shows that some Viking women excelled as
Speaker 1: warriors too, and wielded power far beyond the battlefield. By
Speaker 1: Heather Krinkle, it was on a sleepy Sunday morning in
Speaker 1: Stockholm's Central train station when I felt once again a
Speaker 1: familiar thrill, the jolt of being hauled out of the
Speaker 1: moment and transported to another older world. I was in Scandinavia,
Speaker 1: researching a story and having a coffee with an Uppsala
Speaker 1: University archaeologist, Charlotte headin Steyrna Johnson. She had offered to
Speaker 1: show me Birka the site of an early Viking town
Speaker 1: on an island west of Stockholm. As we passed the
Speaker 1: time before our faery departed from a nearby k head
Speaker 1: in Styrnay Johnson reached into her pack and pulled up
Speaker 1: a large copy of an engraving that had appeared in
Speaker 1: a nineteenth century Sweetest newspaper. Unfolding it carefully, she placed
Speaker 1: it on a table and smoothed out the wrinkles. As
Speaker 1: I gazed down at the paper, I felt the solid
Speaker 1: walls of the train station slip away, and the Viking
Speaker 1: age suddenly reach out to me. The engraving, rendered in
Speaker 1: almost photographic detail, portrayed a large underground Viking burial chamber
Speaker 1: containing skeletal remains and an arsenal of Viking weapons. In
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy seven, Head and steer Na Johnson explained a
Speaker 1: Swedish archaeologist named how Mehr Stolpa had discovered the grave
Speaker 1: now known as VJ five eighty one, near a Viking
Speaker 1: military garrison in Birka. I stared at the depiction of
Speaker 1: the grave at the far end of the chamber. On
Speaker 1: a ledge, Stolpa and his team found not just one,
Speaker 1: but two horse skeletons lying side by side in the center,
Speaker 1: a human skeleton rested on its side, hinged forward at
Speaker 1: the hips, as if the body had once been seated
Speaker 1: on something. Two iron stirrups lay near by, as well
Speaker 1: as surviving bits of costly clothing and an ancient board
Speaker 1: gang arranged around the skeleton. Stolpa found in arsenal fragments
Speaker 1: of a sheathed sword of broad axe, a battle knife
Speaker 1: for hand to hand fighting, two spears, two shields, and
Speaker 1: more than two dozen arrows. Notably absent were items of
Speaker 1: jewelry that researchers had long associated with Viking women, including brooches.
Speaker 1: Based on the contents of this spectacular grave, it was
Speaker 1: Stolpe's conclusion that the occupant was a man, an important
Speaker 1: male warrior. This finding was widely accepted by other Scandinavian researchers,
Speaker 1: and as news of Stolpe's discovery spread, Sweden's Nielistrude tigning
Speaker 1: New Illustrated magazine published a remarkable engraving of the Birka
Speaker 1: warrior's burial, inspired by the archaeologist's technical drawing. So detailed
Speaker 1: and compelling was this illustration that it was published and
Speaker 1: re published for decades in books on the Vikings. The
Speaker 1: burial was unusually rich in grave goods, even by today's standards,
Speaker 1: had in Styrna, Johnson says, and it got a lot
Speaker 1: of attention. For nearly one hundred forty years. Stolpa's interpretation
Speaker 1: of the burial went unquestioned by archaeologists. Generations of Scandinavian
Speaker 1: researchers accepted the view that warfare was the exclusive business
Speaker 1: of men during the Viking Age, a period that began
Speaker 1: around the mid eighth century a d and gradually wound
Speaker 1: down in the mid eleventh century. Medieval Scandinavian poets, after all,
Speaker 1: and vividly evoked the surreal horrors of Viking combat in
Speaker 1: their nightmarish versus. A sword was slaughter, fire or corpse gleam.
Speaker 1: Spears were blood snakes or the fires of odin the
Speaker 1: battle itself was weapon, thunder, spear storm, and army reddening.
Speaker 1: In all, Scandinavia's early poets coined around three hundred, three thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred figures of speech to describe warfare and weaponry,
Speaker 1: a terrifying richness of language clearly agreed scholars. The brutal
Speaker 1: realm of Viking combat was no place for a Woman,
Speaker 1: the Birko warriors, male identity stuck Birka, and the entire
Speaker 1: Viking world were arguably getting even more attention to day.
Speaker 1: With a host of new excavations across the North and
Speaker 1: the advent of advanced investigative techniques such as ancient DNA
Speaker 1: sequencing and isotopic analysis, archaeologists have been uncovering an increasingly
Speaker 1: complex picture of Viking life. Evidence now shows, for example,
Speaker 1: that the Viking Age began decades earlier than previously suspected,
Speaker 1: when heavily armed Viking warriors sailed to what is now
Speaker 1: Estonia around seven fifty and met violent deaths at the
Speaker 1: hands of their enemies. And over the next three centuries,
Speaker 1: Viking expeditions crossed at least eight seas, journeyed to some
Speaker 1: three dozen countries, and encountered more than fifty two cultures,
Speaker 1: from Canada's east coast to the steep mountain passes of Afghanistan.
Speaker 1: No other Europeans of the day were so daring, so
Speaker 1: driven by curiosity and wanderlust. In Eastern Europe, Viking trading
Speaker 1: expeditions journeyed along the dangerous rivers of modern day Russia,
Speaker 1: Belarus and Ukraine, fending off attacks from mounted warriors on
Speaker 1: the Eurasian steps to reach two of the richest cities
Speaker 1: in the world at the time Constantinople now Istanbul and Baghdad,
Speaker 1: and by at least the early eleventh century, intrepid parties
Speaker 1: of these Scandinavian ski seafarers landed on the coast of
Speaker 1: North America. On the northernmost tip of Newfoundland, researchers have
Speaker 1: discovered the remains of a Viking base camp inhabited in
Speaker 1: ten twenty one, exactly four hundred seventy one years before
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus laid eyes on the Americas. Clearly, the Vikings
Speaker 1: had a remarkable talent for making history, But for decades
Speaker 1: many scholars focused on the men of the North, assuming
Speaker 1: they were the only seafarers, pillagers, and traders. But what
Speaker 1: about the North women? What were they doing during that time?
Speaker 1: Archaeologists seldom paid as much attention to them, assuming that
Speaker 1: Viking women were primarily homebodies. When you go into a museum,
Speaker 1: says Marianne Mohen, an archaeologist at the University of Oslo,
Speaker 1: chances are you will find the women doing one of
Speaker 1: two things, holding babies or cooking. Was it really that
Speaker 1: simple and straightforward. Until recently, there were few clear answers.
Speaker 1: But as more Scandinavian women gravitated toward the field of
Speaker 1: archaeology in the late twentieth century, some began examining the
Speaker 1: lives of the North women from fresh perspectives. Today, their
Speaker 1: analyzes of new excavations and old museum collections are revealing
Speaker 1: many surprises and a larger female presence. Some Viking women
Speaker 1: wielded great influence in the North as powerful queens, regents, cirruses, sorceresses, landowners,
Speaker 1: leaders of sacred cults, alliance builders, traders, and travelers. Beneath
Speaker 1: a huge earth and burial mound at Osburg in Norway,
Speaker 1: for example, researchers in nineteen o three discovered a sleek
Speaker 1: Viking longship adorned with fine carvings. It is the most
Speaker 1: lavish Viking grave known to archaeologists. The ship rimmed with
Speaker 1: tapestries and other artworks, and contained the remains of two
Speaker 1: high status women, one of whom was likely a respected
Speaker 1: ritualist and powerful sorceress, judging from her grave goods. In
Speaker 1: the Viking world, sorceresses were said to possess many magical powers,
Speaker 1: from predicting the future and controlling the weather to performing
Speaker 1: battle magic dark rituals to turn the tide of war.
Speaker 1: In Viking warfare, says Neil Price, an archaeologist at Uppsala University,
Speaker 1: magic was as important to fighting as sharpening your sword.
Speaker 1: Many most of this magic was conducted by women. Other
Speaker 1: women were skilled old artisans who played a critical role
Speaker 1: in outfitting the famous Viking raiding and war fleets. They
Speaker 1: produced a high quality wool cloth for the sales on
Speaker 1: Viking longships, who was an enormous task. Experimental archaeology conducted
Speaker 1: at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark, for example,
Speaker 1: as revealed that producing just one sale for a large
Speaker 1: warship would have required at least ten thousand, two hundred
Speaker 1: sixty nine hours of labor, the equivalent of some three
Speaker 1: point five years using a standard of eight hour work
Speaker 1: days without any weekends off. In addition, women made all
Speaker 1: the high quality wooden woolen clothing worn by the crew
Speaker 1: of such a warship, and Danish textile expert Lee's Vandr
Speaker 1: Jorgensen has calculated that as much as seventeen point five
Speaker 1: years of labor by a team of women was needed
Speaker 1: to clothe a crew of seventy. Clearly skilled female artisans
Speaker 1: were integral to the success of the Viking raids and
Speaker 1: other military campaigns abroad, but the involvement of women in
Speaker 1: Viking warfare did not end there. Remarkable evidence now suggests
Speaker 1: that at least a few of the North women were
Speaker 1: trained in combat as warriors. The revelations began just over
Speaker 1: a decade ago in twenty fourteen, when Anna Schelstrom, a
Speaker 1: biological and medical anthropologist at Stockholm University with a reputation
Speaker 1: for thorough research, started examining the remains of the famous
Speaker 1: Buca warrior as part of an ongoing study on the
Speaker 1: health of the Vikings. During her scientific assessment of the
Speaker 1: individual in BJ five eighty one, Cheldschum determined that the
Speaker 1: warrior would have been roughly five feet seven inches tall,
Speaker 1: just slightly shorter than the average Viking mail, and probably
Speaker 1: died between the ages of thirty and forty years. But
Speaker 1: as the anthropologist began evaluating the sex of the skeleton,
Speaker 1: she discovered something intriguing. Several key anatomical indicators didn't fit
Speaker 1: the profile of a male. The width of the greater
Speaker 1: sciatic notch on the warrior's pelvis, for example, was considerably
Speaker 1: broader than the mean value for males. It resembled that
Speaker 1: of female's whereover, the warrior's pelvis possessed a wide groove
Speaker 1: known as the preuricular sulcus, usually a female characteristic, and
Speaker 1: the warrior's chin was small and pointed, another female traite. Indeed,
Speaker 1: several features of the skeleton, Schelstrom explained to me later
Speaker 1: via e Maale, were feminine. Puzzled, she asked two other
Speaker 1: anthropologists to evaluate the sects of the skeleton independently. Both
Speaker 1: came to the same conclusion. The famous warrior, Viking warrior
Speaker 1: at Birka, seemed to be a woman. The old Norse
Speaker 1: sagas contained intriguing stories of warrior women. Danish scholar Saxo
Speaker 1: Grammaticus included several of these legendary female figures in his
Speaker 1: book Gesta Deorum Story of the Danes, completed in the
Speaker 1: early twelve hundreds. One of the most famous was lud Gerda,
Speaker 1: who married a Viking warlord. According to Saxo Grammaticus, she
Speaker 1: was an accomplished warrior who refused to dress as a
Speaker 1: man in battle. Indeed, she fought with her hair unbound
Speaker 1: and streaming down her back, But most twentieth century archaeologists
Speaker 1: dismiss such stories out of hand as the inventions of
Speaker 1: medieval story tellers. They believed Viking women spent their days
Speaker 1: as traditional homemakers, preparing food, cooking, making clothes, and caring
Speaker 1: for children. Hence Styrna Johnson wasn't so sure. She had
Speaker 1: conducted extensive research at Birka and knew that the garrison
Speaker 1: hall there had once bristled with iron weapons, and that
Speaker 1: it rested upon offerings of iron spearheads. It was a
Speaker 1: profoundly martial place, one dedicated to the spear lord himself Odin.
Speaker 1: The decision to bury an individual so close to the
Speaker 1: Viking garrison and its sacred ground was in itself a
Speaker 1: mark of high esteem, one likely awarded to a distinguished
Speaker 1: military figure. Could a woman warrior have been buried in
Speaker 1: that prestigious grave, as luck would have it headed. Styrna
Speaker 1: Johnson and Chelstrom had received generous funding to conduct a
Speaker 1: large DNA study of prehistoric human remains in Sweden. The
Speaker 1: well preserved Buka warrior skeleton was a prime candidate for
Speaker 1: the project, so in twenty fifteen, scientists at Stockholm University
Speaker 1: proceeded to take two tiny samples, one from the individual's
Speaker 1: canine tooth, the other from an upper arm bone, and
Speaker 1: successfully extracted ancient DNA from both. With this, geneticists generated
Speaker 1: genome wide data to identify both the sex and the
Speaker 1: ancestry of the fighter on a molecular level. Heaven Styrna
Speaker 1: Johnson had received the results from these tests not long
Speaker 1: before we met at the train station in Stockholm. The
Speaker 1: individual in the famous warrior grave, she told me, had
Speaker 1: genetic affinities to the modern inhabitants of southern Sweden. But
Speaker 1: the most fascinating result came from the DNA analysis of
Speaker 1: the warrior's biological sex. The individual in BJ five eighty
Speaker 1: one Hedden, Steerna Johnson announced is a woman. This line
Speaker 1: of scientific research soon got more complicated, however. In twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: Steerne Johnson and nine of her colleagues published their DNA
Speaker 1: study on the Burka woman in the American Journal of
Speaker 1: Physical Anthropology. To their surprise, the eight page report, which
Speaker 1: was peppered with phrases like epiphysial union and nucleotide positions,
Speaker 1: set off a firestorm. While some Viking specialists were impressed
Speaker 1: by the research, others took strong issue with it. Some
Speaker 1: critics suggested, for example, that the Birka great may have
Speaker 1: originally contained both a male warrior and a female companion,
Speaker 1: and that the skeleton of the male was removed at
Speaker 1: some point, but there was no evidence at all to
Speaker 1: show that a second body was ever interred in the grave.
Speaker 1: Other researchers raised a more theoretical objection. The dead, they noted,
Speaker 1: did not bury themselves. Mourners, they suggested, could well have
Speaker 1: placed a trove of costly weapons belonging to the dead
Speaker 1: woman's father or husband in the grave as symbols of
Speaker 1: the woman's high status. But other evidence clearly indicated that
Speaker 1: the weapons were hers. Some old Scandinavian poems, for example,
Speaker 1: explicitly described the practice of Mourner's bearying dead warriors with
Speaker 1: their weapons. Besides, no one had suggested that all the
Speaker 1: weapons in the Birka Grave were merely family heirlooms when
Speaker 1: the skeleton was thought to be male, so why bring
Speaker 1: up that data. Now Stunned by the reaction, Hadden, STEERNA. Johnson,
Speaker 1: and several other researchers decided to expand their investigation of
Speaker 1: the famous grave. Some team members pored over historical records
Speaker 1: for even brief mentions of Viking warrior women. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: most intriguing reference came from the twelfth century text bodach
Speaker 1: gerre Bar the War of the Irish with the Foreigners.
Speaker 1: In it, an Irish writer recorded the names of sixteen
Speaker 1: Viking commanders who led attacks on the region of Munster
Speaker 1: in the mid nine hundreds. Among these military leaders was
Speaker 1: a Viking woman, ingen Riad, whose name means red girl
Speaker 1: or red daughter. The name may have come from the
Speaker 1: color of her hair. She was clearly an important figure.
Speaker 1: She is a Viking, she is a captain of a ship,
Speaker 1: and she's the commander of a fleet. Uppsala University archaeologist
Speaker 1: Neil Price, a member of the team, told me Headensteerna
Speaker 1: Janssen and her colleagues took a closer look at the
Speaker 1: goods in the famous buick A burial. What was particularly
Speaker 1: striking was the equestrian character of the grave. Although the
Speaker 1: Vikings are best known for their seafaring abilities, prosperous families
Speaker 1: in the North bred horses for riding and for work
Speaker 1: on their farms. The Burka woman likely came from just
Speaker 1: such a privileged background. And several clues pointed to her
Speaker 1: equestrian abilities. This concludes readings from National Geograph magazine for today.
Speaker 1: Your reader has been Marcia. If you've enjoyed hearing this content,
Speaker 1: please give us a call at eight five nine four
Speaker 1: two two six three nine zero. Thank you for listening,
Speaker 1: and have a great day.