Editing Matriarchy (section)

==== Iron Age to Middle Ages ====
Arising in the period ranging from the [[Iron Age]] to the [[Middle Ages]], several [[northwestern Europe]]an mythologies from the [[Irish mythology|Irish]] (e.g. [[Macha]] and [[Scáthach]]), the [[Brittonic languages|Brittonic]] (e.g. [[Rhiannon]]), and the Germanic (e.g. [[Grendel's mother]] and [[Nerthus]]) contain ambiguous episodes of primal female power which have been interpreted as folk evidence of matriarchal attitudes in [[Iron Age|pre-Christian]] European Iron Age societies. Often transcribed from a retrospective, patriarchal, Romanised, and [[Catholic]] perspective, they hint at a possible earlier era when female power predominated. The first-century historical British figure of [[Boudicca]] indicates that Brittonnic society permitted explicit female autocracy or a form of gender equality which contrasted strongly with the patriarchal Mediterranean civilisation that later overthrew it.{{Citation needed|date=December 2013}}