Transgender vikings ransacked Britain more than 1,000 years ago

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TRANSGENDER Vikings ransacked Britain more than 1,000 years ago, historians believe.

The fearsome Norse warriors were thought to be red-blooded males — but that traditional notion has been thrown into doubt.

A tenth-century burial site in Sweden believed to hold a male fighter turned out to have a female skeleton inside.

Neil Price, archaeology professor at Sweden’s Uppsala University, claimed they may “have been transgender . . . or non-binary, or gender fluid”.

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But Prof Price believes the burial find proves some broke the rules. He added: “The Vikings [are likely to] have had as sophisticated a sense of their identities as we do.”

He was backed by Amy Jefford Franks, who presents the Vikings Are Gay! podcast.

The academic said: “My view is that there were transgender Vikings and there were queer Vikings and that, while it was not widespread, it was on the fringes of acceptable culture.”

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