spur-mounts), or are of indeterminate origin (three knives, a hone, a flint strike-a-light,
belt buckle and strap-end, and the iron handle of a bucket). Boat graves are rare in
Scandinavian Britain – two are recorded from the Island, two from the Hebrides and
three from Orkney: all contained the remains of four-oared clinker-built boats (fer-
æringr). That few, if any, of the grave goods from Balladoole were made in Scandinavia is
of little significance: the burial rite is Scandinavian.
On St Patrick’s Isle, Peel, a middle-aged woman of high status was buried in a cist
grave (Figure 27. 3. 2 ) in a pre-existing Christian graveyard which continued in use into
the Middle Ages. Buried in a woollen dress with a tablet-woven sash, she may also have
worn a head-covering. With her were an iron roasting-spit, the remains of three silver-
mounted knives, shears, an antler comb, two needles, a miniature limestone ‘pestle and
mortar’, a pierced ammonite and a necklace of seventy-three beads of coloured glass,
amber and jet. Traces of textiles, cord and cooking herbs were also recovered. While of
normal Viking type, the grave contained no specifically Scandinavian objects (save
possibly the spit), and particularly no brooches of the type normal in female burials.
Figure 27. 3. 1 The Balladoole burial. The kerb of the Viking mound overlies earlier burials.
(© Bersu and Wilson.)–– David M. Wilson––