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Graphic representation of the tomb
Photo: Veronika Paschenko
The original find was made by construction workers.
When a new aqueduct was to be built in the southern Finnish municipality of Hattula in autumn 1968, the men came across an impressive object: a sword with a bronze handle, engraved with the characters "+ NMIN +" and "+ NIOIN +".
The experts called in uncovered the remains of a grave site in the partly frozen ground.
It seemed that a mighty female warrior had been buried in it.
At least that's how archaeologists interpreted, among other things, the discovery of corresponding pieces of jewelry and fragments of clothing.
The remains of another sword were also found.
The bones of the buried person were largely decomposed, only fragments of two thigh bones could be recovered.
They were around 1000 years old.
At the Max Planck Institute for the History of Man in Jena, these have been re-examined using modern methods.
A team of researchers from Germany and Finland are now reporting on the spectacular results in the European Journal of Archeology.
Additional chromosome in the genome
Accordingly, the person buried could have been a person with so-called Klinefelter syndrome.
This means that he had an extra chromosome in all or part of his body cells.
Instead of the usual male combination XY or the female XX, XXY is used.
People with Klinefelter syndrome have an underactive testicle.
This means that their bodies tend to make less testosterone than men with the XY chromosome.
Nevertheless, in most cases, those affected identify themselves as men, but this is not mandatory.
This is also what makes the new analysis of the find from Finland so exciting.
The researchers involved present the interpretation that it could have been a person of non-binary gender.
The difficulty is that the analysis can only rely on a very small amount of data because very little genetic material could be found in the samples.
Sword was later placed in the grave
"If the characteristics of Klinefelter syndrome were evident in the person, they may not have been seen as either a woman or a man in the early medieval community," says the study's lead author, Ulla Moilanen, an archaeologist at Turku University.
"The extensive collection of objects that were buried in the grave is evidence that the person was not only accepted, but also valued and respected." .
In the last few years there has been an increasing discussion of gender identities in public.
Since 2018 there has been the gender entry »diverse« in Germany.
This means that the people in question are not assigned to either the male or the female gender.
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