A 1,000-year-old grave may have held a powerful nonbinary person

The remains were previously thought to be a respected woman who might have been a warrior

An early medieval grave in Finland may have contained the remains of a respected individual (illustrated) who didn’t fit social expectations at the time about how to be either strictly masculine or feminine, researchers say.

U. Moilanen et al/European Journal of Archaeology 2021

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.