For decades, a roughly 1,000-year-old grave in southern Finland has been thought to have held a powerful woman who might have been a warrior. But an individual who was biologically male may have actually have been interred there, researchers now say. And there are signs that this person was perhaps a respected individual with a nontraditional gender identity.
Discovered in 1968 at a site known as Suontaka, the Finnish grave held a largely decomposed human skeleton. Only two leg-bone fragments were successfully excavated. The grave also included jewelry traditionally associated with women and two swords, including one with a bronze hilt, typically attributed to men. Items in the Suontaka
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