most elaborate pre-Christian Scandinavian burial in Continental Europe, as well as the
region’s only ship burial. On the Île de Groix, a rocky island off the south coast, in the
mid-tenth century a longship was set on fire, having been dragged into a stone-setting
on a headland overlooking the sea. Two individuals – an armed man and a youth – were
burned within, accompanied by dogs, birds and a very large array of grave goods
including high-status gaming-pieces and many weapons. Up to twenty-four shields
were present of a type unknown elsewhere, and were perhaps manufactured by the
isolated Scandinavian occupation army itself (Müller-Wille 1976 ; Price 1989 ). New
work has demonstrated that the Groix warrior’s connections stretched to England,
northern Germany along the Rhine and the Elbe, southern Norway and even Birka
(Tarrou 2002 , 2004 ). At l’Île Lavret off the Breton coast, raided several times by
Vikings, two more warrior burials have been found cut into a rocky slope, badly eroded,
with only the most fragmentary grave goods and generally poor preservation (Renaud
2000 : 96 ). What has survived, however, are pieces of shield-bosses that resemble those
found in the Groix burial.
The singular nature of the ship burial on the Île de Groix and its dating that
coincides with the height of the occupation raise inevitable questions of attribution.
Assigning named individuals to archaeological graves is usually a foolhardy business,
but it is not impossible that Groix marks the resting place of one of the Viking com-
manders whose ambitions for this tiny province briefly raised it to the level of its
Norman neighbour. If this is the case, this unique burial would be a fitting memorial for
a unique endeavour.
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–– Neil Price––