to ensure the survival of one’s children in hard times, of which there were
many. There is some evidence of slaves being forced unwillingly to
accompany masters into the grave from Humberside, Kent and Surrey–
skeletons are found twisted or unnaturally crammed as if they had been forced
down into the grave alongside a body laid out more formally.^6
This is something that is more usually associated with the Vikings, rather
than the Saxons. There is a famous account by an Arab traveller in the tenth
century, who witnessed a Rus (Russian Viking) funeral of a chieftain. A slave
girl‘volunteered’to join the chieftain in the afterlife. There were ten days of
feasting, during which she was given a great amount of alcoholic drink. The
chief’s longship was prepared, and the chief laid out in new clothes in the ship
with his weapons, grave goods, and the meat from two horses. The slave girl
was brought to the tents of the men of the band, each of whom had sex with
her. She seems to have been in some sort of alcohol or druginduced trance,
and had visions. She was put aboard the funeral ship where she was given
more drink and used by six more men, and then placed on the bed of the chief.
There they held her down and an old woman stabbed her to death. The ship
was then set ablaze. A similar ritual may have taken place during the funeral
of the woman buried in the Oseberg ship–the body of a second woman was
also found in the grave.
A more recent excavation has found further evidence of the killing of slaves
at the funeral of their masters. On a Norwegian island, seven skeletons laid in
three graves were found by a farmer. At least three of the dead had no skulls,
each buried next to a complete skeleton. The graves were between 1000 and
1200 years old. While the graves were excavated without archaeological
precision, it has been possible for the bones to be analysed scientifically.
Isotopes in the bones were measured, and it became clear that the headless
bodies, and a dog buried at the site, had eaten a diet mostly of fish, while the
bodies with heads had dined on beef and drunk milk. It is thought that this
represents a significant variation in social status between the two groups of
bodies. Those who had access to meat and dairy products were richer, more
powerful people. The DNA analysis showed that people buried in the same
grave were not related to each other. It is therefore possible that the headless,
mutilated bodies were those of slaves, killed to accompany their rich, beef
eating masters to the halls of Valhalla.^7
Another possible example comes from Anglesey. In a ditch around a Dark
Age village, a number of bodies were carelessly thrown in and covered with
stones. There were two men, one with his hands tied behind his back, a
woman and two children. They were buried at a time when two Viking
DARK AGE CRIMES