A 1000 Year Old Grave may contain the remains of a Non Binary, Medieval Individual

In “A Woman with a Sword? — Weapon Grave at Suontaka Vesitorninmäki, Finland”, an academic paper published a month ago by Cambridge University Press, the combination of archaeogenetics, and modern archaeology may have shed a completely new light on the mystery of a grave that was first excavated in 1968 in a place in Finland called Suontaka.

The location of Suontaka, Finland, is marked by a red dot

Originally, the grave was thought to have contained two bodies, that of a man and a woman. Later, it was thought that there was only a woman with a sword. Now, thanks to the role played by archaeogenetics (or the science of the study of ancient DNA) and redefined archaeological procedures it seems certain that it was the body of a man affected by a genetic disease. This disease is called the Klinefelter syndrome, in short the 47, XXY, and this helps us revise our conceptions about the way the ancients populations of Scandinavia view gender and sex a thousand years ago.

Since the discovery of many graves, from the Ukraine to Central Asia, containing the remains of aristocratic, warrior women, the press has reported any find as the confirmation of the existence of a class of female elite warriors among the numerous tribes of hunters riding small horses and carrying hawks or falcons on their shoulders like the Scythians or the Sarmatians.