the Oseberg burial. Originally thought to have been aged about sixty–seventy and
twenty-five–forty respectively when they died, analysis of tooth-root translucency in
the ‘younger’ woman has shown that she was probably at least fifty and perhaps older
still, thus closing the age gap between the two. Most interestingly, successful extraction
of aDNA from one of her teeth has revealed that she belongs in mitochondrial
sub-haplogroup U 7 , which strongly suggests that she came from the Middle East,
particularly the area of modern Iran (Holck 2008 : 205 , 208 ). Very close matches in
radiocarbon-dating sequences indicate that the two women most likely died at the same
time, while^13 C analysis showed that both women had followed the same diet, perhaps
implying that they were of similar status (Holck 2008 : 204 , 205 ).
Another striking aspect of the ship burials is their construction for both women and
men – indeed the two women of Oseberg occupied the richest Viking Age grave
ever found (though on the basis of the artefactual assemblage, one scholar has even
argued that the primary burial at Oseberg was actually that of a man, whose body was
completely removed when the chamber was disturbed, see Androshchuk 2005 ). This
egalitarian ritual has considerable implications for the status of women in Viking society
and accords well with other female-sponsored memorials such as the runic inscriptions
mentioning bridge-building and similar activities.
HUMAN SACRIFICEHuman sacrifice in association with burial can be hard to identify with certainty, as
graves with more than one occupant may represent family groupings or multiple burials
due to disease, among other possibilities. However, a significant number of Viking Age
graves contain individuals who were clearly killed to accompany the primary occupant
of the burial in death – diagnostic injuries in these cases include decapitation, stabbing,
broken necks and hanging, with the hands and/or feet sometimes being bound.
Famous examples include a man buried at Stengade with a decapitated, bound man
placed beside him, both bodies covered by a heavy spear (Skaarup 1972 ), and a similar
burial from the hill fort wall at Birka, in which the decapitated body of a young male
was laid partly over that of an older man furnished with weapons and with elk antlers
placed behind his head (Holmquist-Olausson 1990 ). Another tied, decapitated man
accompanied the male buried at Lejre (Andersen 1960 ) while a woman’s grave from
Gerdrup near Roskilde contained the body of a man with a broken neck (Christensen
1981 ). At Ballateare on the Isle of Man, an armed male youth had been buried with
grave goods and covered by a mound, on top of which a young woman was killed with a
sword blow from behind, apparently while kneeling; the blow actually removed the
back of her head, and the resulting detached skull fragment was oddly absent from
the grave. A second layer of earth was then added to the mound, covering the woman’s
body (Bersu and Wilson 1966 ).
The human accompaniment of the dead seems to have been particularly common in
connection with ship burials. The example of Oseberg has been noted above, but the
most dramatic case comes from the account of Ibn Fadlan mentioned several times
previously (Montgomery 2000 ). The ship cremation ceremony includes the murder of a
young slave girl (the Arabic implies that she was about fourteen or fifteen years old),
stabbed and strangled after at least six acts of rape and many more of semi-consensual
sex. During the course of the rites she is seemingly drugged with some sort of beverage,
–– Neil Price––