About this article by the Guardian, quoting Tristan
The actual scientific report mentioned by the article heavily implies that the person is probably of Finnic or Sami origin and that such mixed gender role burials are not as unheard on among those people.
This is supported by their jewelry being of prominent local origin and style and nothing in the burial being supportive of a real nordic origin beyond minute cultural syncretism.
I’d also mention that the conditions of the burial are not actually consistent with a high status norse religious burial, due to lack of accompanying sacrifices like animals or slaves. This is at best some kind of middle class burial they scrapped together.
Secondarily, they were not buried with a sword, the sword was buried later between their grave and then covered up (Which seems emblematic of trying to seal the grave tbh, as if people thought it might rise as a draugr – Supportive of them having a bad reputation or as a safety precaution for a deliberate humiliation of the burial conditions.) and then buried with an unhilted sword on their person (meaning unknown with speculation it may have been deliberate as an insult due to their condition).
If we assume that this is a Norse XXY Burial with good reputation, it seems likely to me that this person was probably one of those sorts who displayed severe anatomical resemblances to women and that they were presumed and raised to be such. Its possible that this was kept as a family secret until death, leading to a post-mortem awareness of the condition and subsequent steps taken to “seal” the grave afterwards.
There is literally no chance that a “Non-Binary” individual would have been openly accepted in the Norse world. There is a term for this, its Nith, and constitutes the highest of religious crimes.
Secondarily, There is not such thing as a Germanic Shaman. Let me repeat, There is not such thing as a Germanic Shaman. The Germanic people did not practice Animistic beliefs and shamanism was not a religious custom. This is a form of denigratory primitivism by assuming that “primitive and pagan” cultures all behave the same way and hold roughly the same beliefs.
padmavajra 