A Viking Funeral!
What could be cooler? Placed on a boat with your sword and shield, sent into a lake, set ablaze with a flaming arrow, all your friends and family hoisting horns of mead to your memory, cheering as they envisage the Valkyrie leading your spirit to Valhalla! It is so badass that upon reading this, regardless of gender or orientation, your testosterone level increased by at least 3% (after reading this diary, those who do not want beards and mustaches should peek into mirrors just in case).
After the discovery a couple of weeks ago of the first female warrior (pretty much 99% certain; there are some arguments about the chain of custody of the bones which were originally excavated in 1889 and her haplogroup is more Eastern European than Scandinavian but I’m hearing there are more papers on the way about other exciting graves…) the topic of Viking burials is in the air. Were they all that majestic and elaborate?
Well, yes and no. First, a brief digression - the Vikings had no clue they were Vikings. To them, the word “Viking” was a verb indicating raiding, piracy, which were normal, acceptable ways to go about getting wealth and fame. So, pretty much like wall street today except with more blood and fewer lawsuits. As for who they were that changed over time. At the start of what we call the Viking Period, (well just say 800 CE for this diary and quibble about details later), well in a spiritual sense, they probably thought they were the children of Ask and Embla. Pressed for who they were you’d get a lot of Sven the farmer, Hild the seamstress of the tribe of Svear under chieftain Halvdan the Raven or something similar. By the end of the Viking period (call it 1100 CE for ease) they might possibly have identified as Norse, Dane, Swede.
This is important because the funeral customs varied widely over time and geography – as did the spiritual belief systems that informed the burial rituals. And the reason these mortuary rituals and practices are so important to the study of ancient cultures is because they reveal something of how people from the past viewed life and death. But sorting things out is quite a task.
According to archeologist and Viking specialist Dr. Neil Price there are over 500,000 known graves from the Viking period. Ground penetrating radar reveals more graves as its usage grows. In the past ~150 years we have excavated just over 10,000 graves. Two obvious categories of burial are inhumation (buried body) and cremation. Roughly speaking, Sweden preferred cremation throughout the period. In Denmark and Norway there are a mix of inhumation and cremations. Many cremation graves take the form of burial mounds which are very visible today and would have been even more visually apparent to the Vikings themselves. Sometimes these mounds are off on their own, sometimes in small clusters and then there are necropolises such as the Birka cemetery of over 3,000 in Sweden.
Sometimes these sites, both inhumation and cremation are marked. Stones are often set up in patterns such as ships, circles, other more obscure designs. Other times there is simply a single stone. In one island in the middle of the Baltic sea, Gotland, they used elaborate picture stones to mark graves and that deserves a diary of its very own because it is AWESOME.
But the inhumation graves… the burial graves… they get interesting….
WARNING: Vikings had a very different view of animals and people. The following images and discussions may be uncomfortable for some. And I’m actually not kidding about that.
Let’s start with our woman warrior from the Birka cemetery. Dr. Neil Price thoughtfully commissioned an illustration of this grave and even more thoughtfully gave permission for me to use it.
We have a woman, roughly 30 or so years old (nice long life for that era and that profession) who has been carefully placed in a sitting position. Her clothing was not preserved but at the back of her skull were several wonderfully ornate bits of silver which had silk fibers attached – high possibility that they were part of a hat. Turns out people sitting in Viking graves is not very usual. It also turns out there are suggestions that some people slept sitting upright during the middle ages, including the Viking period. In her lap was a bag which held 30 gaming pieces (the bag is presumed; nothing survived of it). She may or may not have been sitting in a wooden chair.
Surrounding her was the gear of war. Sword, war knife, arrows, spears, axes, shields, a utility knife, a stone (whetstone?), comb (very common in Viking graves, male and femaile), a bronze bowl, and a belt with decorative. At her feet were the stirrups from (presumably) her saddle.
Very interestingly, on the ground was a quarter of an Arabian silver coin, a dirham, for Nasr ibn Ahmad under the Caliph al-Muktadir who ruled in Baghdad from 908-932 CE. Is it remotely possible that a female Viking warrior walked the streets of Baghdad? We know male Vikings did – they left graffiti at the Hagia Sophia! Oh, the unanswered questions… at the time Baghdad was a center of learning and trade. I wonder what she would have thought of it? On another note, the coin confirms the general timeline for this burial.
Then we have the horses, a mare and a stallion (based on skeletal differences). Interestingly a spear seems to lean against the barrier separating the horses from her body. Was the spear cast into the grave? There are references to the casting of a spear before battle dedicating all who die to Odin (who wielded a spear called Gugnir). Was she dedicated to Odin?
Horses have a long history of being used as sacrificial animals which go back to the Proto Indo-European Steppe Cultures four thousand years before this woman lived; five thousand years before I sit here avoiding work and writing about Vikings. Is it possible that a connection exists over four thousand years of time in ritual practice? This is a question I will return to when we get around to the Gods. Suffice it to say that Dr. David Anthony’s book The Horse, The Wheel and Language has really made me (and people a lot smarter than me) think long and hard about that question. One final note: the horses are not side by side. They were carefully placed, one atop the other, legs folded beneath them.
There, that wasn’t so bad was it? Except for the horses, it looks like a funeral ritual not to horribly alien from our own… you could imagine a female air force pilot being buried in her uniform with her medal ribbons on her chest, jets flying overhead for a send off, right? Different but not completely alien!
Ok, have a look at the next burial from Kaupang, Norway, a lovely trading town on the banks of a Fjord.
It all started so simply… in the mid 800’s a man was buried on his left side with his chest against a large stone. He had been covered in fine cloth. Buried with him were two knives, fire steel and flint, a whetstone, fragments of a soapstone bowl and something called “an egg shaped stone.”
So what does this have to do with the boat above?
Well, about 50 years after the man I mentioned was buried the (presumed) locals very carefully put a 27 foot long boat exactly on top of this man with the keel aligned with his body. So, what is in this boat? Let’s start at the prow (bottom of picture for you landlubbers). There is a dead woman and infant. Her hand is on the head of the infant, placed upon blankets. The woman is 45 to 50 years old; could she be the mother? The grandmother? Her right hand was placed on her breast, ankles crossed. Her head rested on a stone, like a pillow. The clothing indicated wealth and were held together with silver jewelry. At her belt hung a knife and a key (keys appear to have been a symbol of women of status). At her right side was a bucket, balanced across her knees was a weaving sword (not a weapon; used to smooth threads on a loom). The infant had been wrapped in her dress at her hip.
Lying head to head with her is a man of unknown age. His feet point the opposite way, to the stern. Around him were weapons. Two axes, one of which would have been an antique when it was buried with him — its head is a type that has been out of style for decades. Spear, sword in sheath with point at his head, two knives, whetstone, multiple shields, arrows. On his stomach: an inverted frying pan. The scattered bits of a shattered pot from Germany lay upon him. An iron dog chain draped next to him and sickle nearby.
Now, we come to the horse.
The decapitated horse.
Oops, sorry, the decapitated, dismembered and reassembled horse.
With a single silver spur inserted into the body.
After that things get a bit strange.
There is a woman, sitting up in the stern of the boat. It appears as though she was buried with the ship’s oar in her hands. Against her feet are a whetstone and a bridle bit which were arranged so as to touch the horse. A shield behind her body propped her up. Indications are that her clothing was expensive and well made. Resting on the deck was “an egg shaped stone” and another weaving sword. Underneath a rock was an unusual iron staff – possibly the staff of a volva, a woman who practiced magic and fortunetelling. An axe was nearby.
In her lap was a imported bronze bowl engraved with runes to say “in the hand basin”. Inside the bowl? Some bits of metal. And the head of a dog. The body of the dog – most of it anyway – was across the woman’s feet. One pair of dog legs may have been detached. The other two legs? Nowhere to be found. Oh, and it looks like there was some carving on the flesh of the dog based on marks on the bones.
The whole thing was covered in earth and complex arrangements of rocks. Mixed in were cremated human bones and wood.
Does this in any way resemble any kind of funeral you understand? Were the man and woman a couple? Did everyone die at once? Or were some of them killed so they could accompany the others? What relationship does the woman in the stern have to the three other occupants of the boat?
Now consider this: neither of the graves above are horribly atypical for Viking burials (except for the whole confirmed female DNA in a weapon grave thing. That bit is new). That is how diverse Viking burials are.
Let’s look at some other graves. I won’t go into nearly as much detail but look at the pictures and see what kinds of stories they tell.
So by now you are probably wondering: JUST WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED AT A VIKING FUNERAL?
Fortunately, someone wrote about that. But that will have to wait for the next diary.
Previous Viking Diaries which are good references:
Vikings: Who the Hel were they?
Vikings: Cosmology and the World they lived in
The First DEFINITE Female Viking Grave Burial
Sources for this diary:
Female Viking Warrior Confirmed by Genomics
The Dangerous Dead? Rethinking Viking-Age Deviant Burials
The Viking Way
The Viking Mind Messenger Lectures by Neil Price at Cornell University 2012:
Children of Ash
Life and the Afterlife: Dealing with the Dead in the Viking Age
The Shape of the Soul: the Viking Mind and the Individual