An archaeologist excavates a circa-1000 English burial pit in summer 2009. The pit holds 51 headless young men, perhaps Viking warriors executed by early English fighters, experts say.

Photograph courtesy David Score, Oxford Archaeology

51 Headless Vikings Found in English Execution Pit?

James Owen in London
for National Geographic News

July 28, 2009

Naked, beheaded, and tangled, the bodies of 51 young men—their heads stacked neatly to the side—have been found in a thousand-year-old pit in southern England, according to carbon-dating results released earlier this month.

The mass burial took place at a time when the English were battling Viking invaders, say archaeologists who are now trying to verify the identity of the slain.

The dead are thought to have been war captives, possibly Vikings, whose heads were hacked off with swords or axes, according to excavation leader David Score of Oxford Archaeology, an archaeological-services company.

Announced in June, the pit discovery took place during an archaeological survey prior to road construction near the seaside town of Weymouth (map).

A Mere Flesh Wound

Many of the skeletons have deep cut marks to the skull and jaw as well as the neck. "The majority seem to have taken multiple blows," Score said.

The bodies show few signs of other trauma, suggesting the men were alive when beheaded.

One victim appears to have raised an arm in self-defense: "The hand appears to have had its fingers sliced through," Score noted.

The heads were neatly piled to one side of the pit, perhaps as a victory display, the team suggests.

Beheaded ... but Otherwise Healthy

Unusually, no trace of clothing has been found, indicating the men were buried naked.

Even if 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.

"They look like a healthy, robust, very strong, very masculine group of young males," he added. "It's your classic sort of warrior."

The burial has been radiocarbon-dated to between A.D. 890 and 1034.

During this time England was split between Anglo-Saxons, in the south and west, and Danish settlers, in the north and east.

The Anglo-Saxons were Germanic peoples who colonized England beginning in the 400s; founded the country on the island of Great Britain; and gave rise to the English language. Around the time of the mass burial, the Celts were still largely in control of the non-English regions of Great Britain: Scotland and Wales.

"You've got Danish and Saxon armies fighting backwards and forwards across England," Score said.

The early English also faced the threat of longship-sailing Vikings, Scandinavian seafarers who pillaged coastal regions (northern Europe map).

"It's not just the odd ship" attacking, Score said. For example, "there's a documented account of 94 longships attacking London at one point, and then they work their way down the coast."

CSI: Weymouth

The team hopes chemical analysis of the buried men's teeth will show whether they grew up in Britain or Scandinavia. (Related: "Vikings Filed Their Teeth, Skeleton Study Shows.")

Signs of muscle attachment on the bones could also help reveal whether the executed were Viking oarsmen, since "strong physical exertion in a particular direction does affect the bones," Score said.

"It might be possible to say they are overdeveloped in their upper body and arm strength ... people who are doing a lot of heavy rowing."

Anglo-Saxon Slayers, Viking Victims

The burial's prominent location on a hilltop by the ancient main road to Weymouth, which was already in existence, hints that a local group carried out the killings, Score said.

"Locations like this are classic sites for executions in late Saxon and medieval times," he added.

Vikings, he said, had a different M.O.

"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," he said.

Kim Siddorn, author of Viking Weapons and Warfare, suspects the executed men were indeed Vikings.

"I would say this was a Viking raiding party which had been trapped," he said.

"They had left their ship, walked inland, ran into an unusually well-organized body of Saxons, and were probably forced to surrender."

There was little to differentiate Vikings and early English warriors on the battlefield, said Siddorn, 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 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."

Vikings' Barbaric Bad Rap Beginning to Fade

Stefan Lovgren in Stockholm, Sweden
for National Geographic News

February 17, 2004

"Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now
suffered from a pagan race. … Behold, the church of St.
Cuthbert, spattered with the blood of the priests of God, despoiled
of all its ornaments; a place more venerable than all in Britain is
given as a prey to pagan peoples."

So wrote religious scholar Alcuin of York in the late eighth century in a letter to Ethelred, king of Northumbria in England. He was describing a violent raid by Vikings on a monastery in present-day Scotland.

It is no wonder that the Vikings have a reputation for mindless savagery. Since the Vikings were unable to write, much of their history was recorded by British and French clergy—the very people who fell victim to the Viking raids.

But were the Vikings merely primitive plunderers?

Far from it, say scholars. Using archaeological and other evidence, researchers have in recent years been piecing together a more complex picture of the Vikings that sharply contradicts the stereotype of the Vikings as mere barbarians.

"The Norsemen were not just warriors, they were farmers, artists, shipbuilders, and innovators," said Ingmar Jansson, a professor of archaeology at Stockholm University in Sweden. "More than anything, they were excellent traders who connected peoples from Baghdad to Scandinavia to the mainland of North America."

Exaggerating Atrocities

The origin of the word "Viking" is highly disputed. Some experts say it means "pirate." Others believe it refers to people coming from the region of the Viken (the old name for Norway's Oslo Fjord).

Today, the word "Viking" is used to refer to the people who lived in Scandinavia—Sweden, Norway, and Denmark—from around A.D. 750 to 1100. However, not everyone was a Viking.

"Viking is misused as an ethnic term," Jansson said. "The Vikings belonged to the upper class. They were the sea warriors. But most people were just Scandinavians. For them, the normal life was to stay home and be a farmer."

Still, the Vikings are best known for their sea voyages. Along the coasts of Western Europe, they traveled to the Mediterranean and North Africa. By way of the Russian rivers, they reached Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) and beyond to Baghdad in Asia.

The Vikings quickly developed a fierce reputation. In letters to their bishops, Christian priests in Britain and France chronicled the violent deeds of the Vikings, which included attacking wealthy monasteries and killing women and children. (Many churchmen believed the Viking raids were God's punishment on the Anglo-Saxons for their sins.)

But it was also in the interest of the churchmen to exaggerate the atrocities of the Vikings in their reports. Many of the Christian rulers at the time behaved equally unpleasantly, without being condemned on religious grounds.

"This was a ruthless age," said William Fitzhugh, the director of the Arctic Studies Center at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. He was the curator of a major Viking exhibit at the museum in 2000. "There were constant battles in the British Isles and mainland Europe between rival princes vying for kingship and control of local regions."

Reconnecting Humanity

Scholars say the Viking raids were about survival, not conquest, and were prompted primarily by a shortage of land. In most cases individual Viking chieftains gathered followers and set off on raids. Wherever they went, the Vikings lived off the land, often driving the locals out and taking whatever valuables they could get their hands on.

But the Vikings were also driven by a pioneering spirit. Their most spectacular trek took them across the Atlantic Ocean to Iceland, Greenland, and eventually North America. Around A.D. 1000, hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus arrived in the New World, the Vikings landed in Newfoundland, Canada, a land they reportedly named Vinland.

"The Vikings reconnected humanity and made the world a smaller place by traveling huge distances," Fitzhugh said. "We look back to the Vikings as the origin of this kind of human endeavor to find new horizons, use new technology, meet new people, and think new thoughts."

The only written monuments of the Vikings themselves are runic inscriptions. In Sweden there are some 3,500 inscriptions, mostly written on stone. They are often brief and laconic, and not very informative.

Instead, archaeological excavations have made the most important contribution to the understanding of the Viking world. Funeral sites are usually fragmentary—the Vikings followed the heathen practice of burning the dead—but some large, unburned ship burials have provided archaeologists with invaluable insight into the lives of the Vikings.

"Archaeology, not medieval texts, is beginning to set the record straight about the Viking history and achievements," said Fitzhugh, whose exhibit "Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga" highlighted the Viking discovery of North America.

Reconstructed Viking villages have become popular tourist attractions. In Birka, Sweden's first trading town, located near present-day Stockholm, large-scale models recreate a Viking harbor, life in craftsmen's quarters, and the splendor of the king's power. Birka has Scandinavia's largest Viking-age cemetery, with 3,000 graves.

Dualism

A tour of the Viking exhibition at the History Museum in Stockholm underlines the importance of trade to the Vikings.

The Viking's most important weapon was his sword. The best blades were imported from continental Europe and brought back to Scandinavia, where they were equipped with exquisitely ornamented handles, symbols of their owner's high status and wealth.

Viking art found its expression in everyday objects—in swords, belts, horse harnesses. But most Vikings probably also walked around with a pound of jewelry around their necks. The Scandinavian craftsmen borrowed motifs from continental Europe as well as Arabia, then made their artwork to fit their own traditions and needs.

"There is a dualism that prevailed in Viking art," said Kent Andersson, a senior curator at the History Museum. "We see strong influences both from the East and from the West."

Viking society was extremely unequal. Slavery was a fundamental contributor to the wealth of the upper class. Vikings participated actively in the lucrative slave trade abroad. The slaves had no rights and were owned like cattle.

But the Scandinavians also had a highly developed legal system, perhaps the most democratic in the known world. Decisions were reached by voting at open meetings where all free men had the right to speak.

Women also had substantial powers. They could own land, inherit, and get divorced. Keys have been found in graves of women, which suggest that women controlled farms and property. There are even legends that tell of women warriors.

The Viking culture was a heathen and rich in mythology. The Viking gods, all with human characteristics, directed and dominated everyday life. The supreme god was Odin, whose two ravens, Hugin (Thought) and Munin (Memory), flew everywhere and spied on everyone.

The end of the Viking age corresponded with the arrival of Christianity in Scandinavia. But scholars say Christianity probably did not finish the Vikings. At the time, many Vikings had become citizens of Europe. Well traveled, the Vikings assimilated into the new cultures, abandoning many of their own practices.