Nonfiction

“In 1871, a Swedish ento­mol­o­gist named Hjal­mar Stolpe went to the island of Björkö in the north­ern Baltic Sea to search for bits of amber. Instead, he found what would become one of the great­est arche­o­log­i­cal sites, the Viking town of Bir­ka that includ­ed a bur­ial mound of what appeared to be a high rank­ing war­rior, called Bj 581, dubbed the King of Bir­ka. Giv­en what was known about Viking soci­ety and the lim­its of sci­en­tif­ic inquiry at the time, it was assumed that Bj 581 was male. How­ev­er, with the devel­op­ment of DNA analy­sis and oste­ol­o­gy (the study of bone), mod­ern sci­en­tists, like Dr. Char­lotte Heden­stier­na-Jon­son, have been able to deter­mine that Bj 581 was, in fact, bio­log­i­cal­ly female. Sur­risi begins with an engag­ing syn­op­sis of many
relat­ed aspects includ­ing, but not lim­it­ed to, an intro­duc­tion to Viking soci­ety, arche­o­log­i­cal tech­niques devel­oped by Stolpe him­self, and the his­to­ry of Bir­ka. Much of the sec­ond half of the book dis­cuss­es the many upset reac­tions from the arche­o­log­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty to this dis­cov­ery and the sci­en­tists’ efforts to defend their find­ing. Surrisi’s final chap­ters pro­vide an in-depth, nuanced, and thought pro­vok­ing dis­cus­sion of gen­der roles and iden­ti­ty in Viking soci­ety as well as how bias can affect inter­pre­ta­tion of arti­facts, all of which are equal­ly engross­ing. The work is well doc­u­ment­ed with notes and sources as well as a use­ful glos­sary, dis­cus­sion ques­tions, and resources; final illus­tra­tions not seen. VERDICT: A great rec­om­men­da­tion for his­to­ry lovers, but also an impor­tant addi­tion to society’s cur­rent dis­course on gen­der expres­sion, roles, and iden­ti­ty.” (School Library Jour­nal, Karen T. Bilton)