A study of burials of Norse migrants was trumpeted by the popular press as showing that half of all Viking warriors were women.
1 This is not the case as Tracy V. Wilson
explained on her blog. The study focused on a small sample of Norse migrants and showed only that grave goods could not be relied upon to demonstrate the sex of the deceased.
1. MCLEOD, S. (2011),
Warriors and women: the sex ratio of Norse migrants to eastern England up to 900 ad. Early Medieval Europe, 19: 332–353. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0254.2011.00323.x