Shield maidens and the heroic genre

[Lalaith]

I read, with interest, the thread on Tolkien and sexism, after links were posted earlier. I respect the reasons the thread was closed and I am not going to open up any cans of worms in this thread!
But a few tangental things did strike me as worth commenting on. Many people during the course of the discussion said that Middle Earth was "mediaeval" in its literary heritage.
Actually I would quibble about this defintion. The writings of Middle Earth, I believe, are more inspired by an earlier literary genre - the heroic. (mostly written pre 1100, in what used to be called 'the Dark Ages'.)
Interestingly women had a far more proactive role in heroic epic than they did in the later mediaeval chivalric tradition - specifically the North European heroic epic that Tolkien himself was so interested in. Female characters were often as not fighters and avengers - indeed, they took blood vengeance even more seriously than the men did.
I would point interested parties to the great lays such as Atlakvida, (where Gudrun fires the hall of her husband Atli - Atilla - in revenge, much as Aerin did to Brodda in the Lay of the children of Hurin. Not only that, Gudrun feeds her husband the flesh of her dead sons)
For heroic prose works, I would point to the Icelandic sagas, again full of very powerful female protagonists.
Tolkien himself was deeply immersed and influenced by this literary tradition.
Eowyn is no anomaly, she springs straight out of this literary tradition - which also gives us the word "shieldmaiden." And, of course, valkyrie.
(And no, for the record, I don't think Tolkien was sexist. I actually think he was less sexist than Peter Jackson is. Whoops - can of worms...)