1000-year-old grave in Finland might have belonged to a non-binary warrior of high status

Several concepts and terms that we believe to be the inventions of this age and century have surprisingly existed for ages. It is just that they were referred to by a different "name." For instance, a new finding suggests that the non-binary gender has been around for centuries before the term came into existence. As per a study published in the European Journal of Archaeology, the remains found in a 1000-year-old grave in Finland belong to a non-binary warrior of a high status.

The weapon grave with brooches and jewels was discovered at Suontaka Vesitorninmäki, Hattula, Finland, in 1968. Earlier, it was believed that the grave belonged to a powerful woman in that era and was a sign of the respect and power women had. Others believed it was of two people, a man and a woman and thought it a "double burial." These assumptions were debunked as researchers who authored the study went through multiple analyses like understanding the context, a soil sample analysis to find microremains and aDNA analysis. The team concluded that the grave belonged to someone with XXY chromosomes and the person could have been non-binary and was well-respected in society.

The conclusion that the person must have been important was made based on the fact that they had been buried with animal pelts and bedding had feathers, as reported by The Washington Post. However, researchers believe that the person had a male body and the attire they were buried in was a traditional female dress of that time. It opens several pathways to understanding the existence and lives of gender-fluid people in medieval Finland. It also points out that people who don't identify with rigid gender classifications have always been around.

"We've always been here. Being nonbinary isn't an invention of the 21st century. We may have only started using those words, but that's just putting language to an existing gender that's always been around," author Dianna E. Anderson remarked. "This individual most likely looked like a male, but they were dressed in feminine clothes and we don't know how they felt about themselves or how they identified themselves," Ulla Moilanen, an archaeologist at Finland's University of Turku and the study's lead author revealed. "The team had a minuscule amount of data to work with but convincingly show that the individual likely had an XXY karyotype," Pete Heintzman, a professor at the Arctic University of Norway and an expert in ancient DNA analysis, told Live Science.

"The [DNA] results are not great, as the authors note, but the possible interpretation that the individual had Klinefelter's is reasonably well supported based on the patchy data," Lisa Matisoo-Smith, head of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Otago in New Zealand cautioned. In Klinefelter syndrome, a genetically male person has female traits like low testosterone. However, gender identity can't be confirmed based on chromosomes alone, but a person's appearance can change how people see them and how they identify themselves, per The Washington Post. Nonetheless, the finding still opposes the idea that "in the ultramasculine environment of early medieval Scandinavia, men with feminine social roles and men dressing in feminine clothes were disrespected and considered shameful."