(Eldjárn 2000 ), while in England there are few burials under mounds (Halsall 2000 ). In
the eastern areas of Viking expansion, Norse funerary rituals are found amalgamated
with Slavic, Khazar and other ethnic practices (see Androshchuk, ch. 38 , below). Some
areas, such as Continental Europe, have noticeably few graves that can be unequivocally
interpreted as of Norse origin. No Scandinavian burials have so far been found in North
America.
It has been suggested that this diversity is a signal not of varying treatment of the
dead within a single society, but is instead evidence for the illusory nature of the ‘Viking
Age’ itself: that the highly regional burial traditions are indicators of distinctive ethnic,
social or political groupings that make a mockery of the notion of a pan-Scandinavian
culture (Svanberg 2003 ). The problem with this interpretation is that it ignores the very
real, general similarities of material culture within the region (not to mention language
and settlement pattern) and focuses only on variations that are nonetheless practised
within a broader, consistent framework. That villages or even larger communities pro-
mote their own identities does not mean that they have no part of larger ones. As will
become clear (and, not least, is also demonstrated by the other contributions to this
volume) the culture of the Viking Age Scandinavians is as evident in their burials as in
other aspects of their society.
CREMATIONSBefore discussing specific rites for the burial of the dead, it is important to mention an
aspect of Viking Age mortuary behaviour that is often overlooked: quite simply, it is
clear from settlement–burial correlations that not everyone was accorded a grave at all.
Estimates of the proportion of the populace not accorded a formal grave are unreliable,
but more than half is not impossible.
It is perhaps reasonable to assume that these ‘missing’ dead were marked by low
status, either the very poor or slaves, but we cannot be sure. We have no identifiable
evidence for the burials of slaves in their own right, as opposed to their presumed
presence as sacrificial offerings in a few cases treated below. Whether these people were
cremated and their ashes then scattered or disposed of in water, or whether they were
just discarded in an informal version of excarnation, is impossible to say. It is worth
noting that these archaeologically invisible burial forms are mentioned not only in
Ynglingasaga 8 as we have seen, but also in first-hand accounts left by Arab writers
such as Ibn Fadlan who described in the tenth century how dead slaves were simply
abandoned, at least while on the move (Montgomery 2000 ).
Children are also under-represented in the burial record, which may reflect a number
of factors. We know little of how the child to adult transition was regarded at this time,
and accordingly whether dead children were seen as ‘worthy’ of formal burial; the fact
that we have child burials at all suggests, however, that the same criteria of familial and
personal status may have been applied. The practice of child exposure and abandonment
may also account for a large number of the children missing from the archaeological
burial record.
For those that received a burial, the most common means of disposing of the dead was
through cremation, followed by the interment of the ashes either in unmarked graves or
under mounds. The corpses were most often burned in situ and the grave raised over them,
sometimes with a burial pit dug down through the pyre to accommodate the ashes. In
–– chapter 19: Dying and the dead––