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
By Bruce Bower
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 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 grave date to the latter part of Finland’s early medieval period, between 1050 and 1300.
Now, an analysis of a tiny amount of nuclear DNA extracted from a leg-bone fragment suggests that the grave held an individual born with an extra X chromosome, say archaeologist Ulla Moilanen of the University of Turku in Finland and colleagues. Symptoms of this condition in present-day males, known as Klinefelter syndrome, include low testosterone, lack of facial and body hair, enlarged breasts and learning and language-related problems. Effects of this rare condition on growth and appearance range from mild to noticeable.
That genetic evidence, combined with the unusual mix of male- and female-related items in the grave, suggests that the grave held an individual who was nonbinary, Moilanen’s group says. Gender identity refers to a person’s concept of self as male, female, a blend of both or neither. It often, but not always, coincides with a person’s biological sex. Nonbinary individuals have gender identities that are not strictly male or female.