graves have been interpreted as the burials of battle casualties or deaths otherwise
incurred on campaign.
CHAMBER BURIALSA prominent form of high-status inhumation found in concentrations throughout
Scandinavia sees the dead buried not in a coffin or other container but instead placed in
an underground chamber. In the more modest examples, especially in Norway, this may
resemble a kind of large box built in situ in the grave cut. The majority of the chambers,
however, are the size of small rooms, constructed as square or rectangular pits with
wooden walls and a raftered roof, over which a mound is usually raised. Chamber graves
are known from the centuries before the Viking Age, especially in the Roman Iron Age
and migration period, but it is in the ninth and especially tenth century that they
reached their zenith.
They are most common in Sweden, where 111 examples have been found at Birka
alone (Arbman 1940 – 3 ), while around 60 are known from Denmark and northern
Germany (Eisenschmidt 1994 ). The latter examples cluster around Hedeby, and it
seems likely that the early towns were epicentres for the spread of what became an
unusual but interregional burial rite (Stylegar 2005 ). In Norway the custom was not as
widespread and no such burials have yet been found at Kaupang (the nearest equivalent
to Birka and Hedeby), and on present knowledge chamber graves appear as a primarily
eastern and southern phenomenon. This burial form is also found in areas of Scandina-
vian settlement or influence abroad, especially in Russia and Ukraine where elaborate
chamber graves have been excavated at Chernigov among other sites.
Some of the chamber graves are among the most spectacular burials known from the
Viking Age. Every grave is different and many can be reconstructed as microcosms
of local belief and funerary practice. Only isolated examples of this rich variety can
be given here, but at Hedeby the burials include a large chamber with a ship placed
on top of it (Müller-Wille 1976 ) and the Mammen grave from Denmark represents
what may be the resting place of a Viking man of princely rank. Dating to c. 970 ,
the chamber was built to resemble a hall, with a pitched roof and sturdy wooden
walls, all buried by a mound. Inside was a wooden coffin-box, on the lid of which lay a
candle. The rich textile finds in particular have revolutionised our knowledge of
high-status male dress, and the silver-inlaid axe is among the most famous finds
from the whole period, giving its name to the Mammen art-style (Iversen 1991 ). The
greatest chamber grave of Denmark, probably built for his father by King Harald
Bluetooth as part of the Jelling monuments, is covered elsewhere (Roesdahl, ch. 48 ,
below).
In some of the chamber graves, especially at Birka, the dead are found to have been
buried seated, presumably on chairs or stools though the latter have decayed. The
deceased sometimes have objects placed in the hands or on the lap, with grave goods laid
out around and particularly in front of them. In rare examples, as in the tenth-century
grave IX at the Vendel cemetery, Uppland, Sweden, individuals are found seated in
chairs on the decks of ships (Stolpe and Arne 1912 : 37 ). Female seated burials are more
common in the chambers, whereas on ships the rite is largely confined to men.
Exceptionally in two chamber graves from Birka, men and women have been found
buried sitting on top of each other in the same chair, the woman uppermost in both cases
–– chapter 19: Dying and the dead––