51
Headless Vikings in English Execution Pit Confirmed
"Anglo-Saxons
rounded up these Vikings and executed them."
James Owen in London for National Geographic News, updated
March 16, 2010
Naked, beheaded, and tangled, the bodies of 51 young
males found in the United Kingdom have been identified as brutally slain
Vikings, archaeologists announced Friday.
The decapitated skeletons—their heads stacked neatly to the
side—were uncovered in June 2009 in a thousand-year-old execution pit
near the southern seaside town of Weymouth.
Already radio-carbon dating results released in July had shown the men lived
between A.D. 910 and 1030, a period when the English fought—and often
lost—battles against Viking invaders.
But until now it hadn't been clear who the headless bodies had belonged to.
Analysis of teeth from ten of the dead—who were mostly in their late
teens and early 20s—indicates the raiding party had been gathered from
different parts of Scandinavia, including one person thought to have come from
north of the Arctic Circle.
The new study, led by Jane Evans of the U.K.'s NERC Isotope Geosciences
Laboratory, investigated telltale chemical markers called isotopes, which can
reveal a person's geographic origins.
Oxygen isotopes from drinking water, for example, become fixed in people's
teeth as they age. Since isotope ratios vary with climate, Evans could tell
that the had all been raised in much cooler regions than Britain.
"The values these individuals gave us could not be British," Evans
said, but the ratios do match those from Norway and Sweden.
In addition, nitrogen-isotope readings showed the men enjoyed a meaty,
high-protein diet—similar to readings from remains from the same period
found in Sweden.
"What's fascinating about these findings is that Vikings are renowned for
their pillaging, ransacking, and raping," Evans said.
"But here we've got real evidence that it was the other way round:
Anglo-Saxons rounded up these Vikings and executed them."
Vikings Found With Hacked Heads, Naked
Bodies
Many of the skeletons have deep cut marks to the skull, jaw, and neck. This
suggests the men were war captives whose heads were savagely hacked off, said
David Score of Oxford Archaeology, leader of the preconstruction survey that
found the Vikings' execution pit.
"The majority seem to have taken multiple blows," he noted.
Other injuries hint that some of the slaughtered attempted to shield themselves
from their executioners' blows. For instance, the hand of one victim had its
fingers sliced through, Score said.
The heads were neatly piled to one side of the pit, perhaps as a victory
display.
Unusually, no trace of clothing has been found, indicating the men were buried
naked.
Even if only their weapons and valuables had been taken, "we should have
found bone buttons and things like that, but to date we've got absolutely
nothing," Score said.
Aside from their injuries, the headless Vikings "look like a healthy,
robust, very strong, very masculine group of young males," he added.
"It's your classic sort of warrior."
Vikings Forced to Surrender?
The burial's prominent location on a hilltop by the ancient main road to
Weymouth also points to the victims being Vikings, Score said.
"Locations like this are classic sites for executions [by British-born
warriors] in late Saxon and medieval times," he said. "If you're a
Viking raider, you're much more likely to leave people where you killed them in
the town or on the beach."
What's more, the new isotope findings suggest that the slain men had much more
diverse origins than would be expected among soldiers from the Saxons' other
enemies, such as ethnic Danes in northern Britain, tooth-study leader Evans
noted.
Even before the new results were released, Kim Siddorn, author of Viking Weapons and Warfare, had thought
the dead were Vikings.
"They had left their ship, walked inland, ran into an unusually
well-organized body of Saxons, and were probably forced to surrender,"
Siddorn speculated in July.
Despite the Vikings' brutal reputation, there was actually little to differentiate
Vikings and early English warriors on the battlefield, said Siddorn, also a
founder of Regia Anglorum, a historical-reenactment society.
"You would find it very difficult to tell the difference between a Viking
and a Saxon if they stood in front of you in war gear," he said. Both used
spears as their primary weapons, with swords and axes as backups, Siddorn
added.
But Vikings usually had surprise and, in some cases, numbers on their side.
"Whilst the Vikings were no better than the Saxons at fighting, they did
come by the shipload," he said.
"During the height of the Viking raids, it's reasonable to say it was
unsafe to live anywhere within 20 miles [32 kilometers] of the coast."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/03/100315-headless-vikings-england-execution-pit/
PAULO ALEXANDRE MONTEIRO
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