800-Year-Old Skeleton Confirms an Ancient Norse Saga
Much of the history of the Norse is captured in their sagas, epic poems and stories which detail these hardy people, their gods and kings, their history and their beliefs. Much would be lost were it not for these tales of battle and conquest.
But these are not all historical documents, far from it. These tales were largely written by Icelandic scholars centuries after the events, and it is rare indeed that something can be found which directly corroborates them.
But it would seem that this is exactly what has happened, according to new research published in iScience. The find, a skeleton deep in the ruins of a castle well, comes straight from the Old Norse Saga known as Sverris Saga.
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This tale tells of King Sverri Sigurdsson and his rise to power in the latter half of the 12th century. It is the sole source for much of Norway’s early history, and it has long been thought that portions of the text were written at the time of Sverri’s reign, by someone close to him.
Part of the story tells of an attack by Sverri’s enemies the Baglers (“bishop wands” because they were in league with Catholics) on Sverresborg Castle in 1197 AD. The castle, near modern-day Trondheim in Norway, was overrun when the soldiers managed to enter through a secret entrance.
The Baglers in the saga are said to have thrown a man’s body down the castle well to poison the water supply and render the castle unusable. And now the researchers have confirmed that the body found in the well and retrieved in 2016 is the skeleton of that very man eight centuries later.
Interestingly, genetic analysis of the skeleton suggests that he comes from the far south of Norway; Sverri’s stronghold was much further to the north and it would be unusual to find such a man in his service. This suggests that the Baglers, who were themselves from the south, may have thrown one of their own dead into the well.
Sverris Saga offers some supporting evidence for this, telling us that the man was dead before he was thrown into the well; the Baglers would hardly throw their own living soldier in there. Further, the discovery allows modern science to add meat to the bones of the Old Norse saga: this man was large, blonde haired and blue eyed, and free from disease when he died.
Sverre would not survive the ongoing, decade-long civil war against the Baglers. He died in 1202, five years after the raid on the castle. His own resting place was destroyed in 1591, but now we at least have something tangible from the archaeology which supports his story.
Header Image: The skeleton recovered from the well in 2016 has been confirmed as the man mentioned in Sverris Saga. Source: iScience; doi:10.1016/j.isci.2024.111076.
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