ABSTRACT
The myth of virile women occurs in many cultures and has all kinds of different meanings. However, though such exclusivity clearly has risks and may attract accusations of abuse the present study considers the theme only in terms of the two figures that seem best to encapsulate the issues involved: the Amazons and the Valkyries. In a parallel way, the Germanic texts, and particularly those concerning the heroic cycle of Sigurdr-Siegfried, portray Valkyries accomplishing all the deeds of which the hero himself is capable and even ridiculing him. Following Herodotus, Plutarch regarded the Amazons as distant ancestors of the Sarmatians, while Tacitus knew of a people called the Sitones. According to the Greeks and, later, to Tacitus there once existed on the edges of the known world one or many people of warrior women whose presence went back to the earliest times. There have been few perfectly satisfying mythical solutions to the dream of totality, of unity.
