51 Tangled Skeletons
Many years ago I visited the little Essex village of Castle Hedingham. We wandered around the Norman keep and its associated earthworks and then, following the instructions in a guide book I had borrowed from my local library, we made our way into the middle of the village and visited the church. Inside was a splendid example of an Easter Sepulchre which I duly photographed.
A leaflet inside the church drew our attention to the splendid iron work on the door and casually mentioned that beneath it could still be seen the skin of a Viking, captured by the locals and flayed alive. The skin was then attached to the church door, though whether as a trophy or a grim warning to other Vikings is not clear. The skin had long since worn away elsewhere, but where the iron straps and hinges were attached to the door it had been preserved.
We duly peered and made out something like brown cardboard between the iron and the wood, but whether that was the unfortunate Viking's skin or something else entirely, I have no way of knowing.
This grisly relic was brought to mind by news that down in Weymouth archaeologists have found the evidence for another massacre of Vikings. David Score of Oxford Archaeology, an archaeological services company and nothing to do with the university of the same name, reports that his team have uncovered a mass grave containing the bodies of 51 young men while conducting an archaeological survey in advance of a road building project.
The first indication that this was no ordinary burial came when the archaeologists discovered the heads neatly stacked to one side of the burial pit. Then, as the bodies were uncovered in a tangled mass that kept the archaeologists busy trying to sort the bodies out, further evidence was discovered that showed this was not a plague burial. Many of the skeletons had deep cut marks to skull and jaw as well as the final blow that severed the head. The weapons involved appear to have been swords and axes.
An indication that some, at least, of the men were alive when they were beheaded came from one skeleton whose owner appears to have raised his arm to try and ward off the fatal blow. His fingers had been sliced off and were found elsewhere in the pit. This is interesting for another reason: the team found no clothing in the pit, a clue that at some time before death the men had either discarded their clothes or had been stripped of them. This implies that the victims were captives who must have known - or guessed - their fate, yet apparently they were not bound beforehand, which is why one man was able to throw up his hand and others took two or three blows to kill.
As might be expected, no weapons were found in the pit, another indication that the victims had been killed and buried by their enemies. Their pagan friends would almost certainly have thrown their weapons in after them to serve as grave goods.
Although the team has not done any DNA analysis yet, they have had the bones carbon-dated and the result puts the burial to between AD 890 and 1034, a time when Anglo-Saxons and Vikings were fighting back and forth across the whole of England. Although only DNA analysis can prove whether the bodies are Viking or Anglo-Saxon, there are two things that point to the former.
Firstly, the bodies were buried: Vikings normally killed and then boarded their ships and sailed away, leaving the survivors to bury the dead - and in such a case we would expect to find the bodies buried in a nearby church yard, for the Anglo-Saxons at this time were Christian. Secondly, the burial pit is on a prominent hilltop near the main road to Weymouth, a typical location for Anglo-Saxon executions.
However the team does intend to have the teeth analysed in the hope that the radio-isotopes in the material of the teeth will indicate whether the young men grew up in Britain or Scandinavia. If the former, then they may be part of one of the Viking armies that ranged over the land from the Danegeld in north and east Britain; if the latter, then they are probably a raiding party from a ship's crew who walked inland looking for isolated farmsteads they could attack and pillage.
In either case, they were surrounded by an Anglo-Saxon eorl and his household, as well as armed and vengeful villagers summoned from the country round about, and forced to surrender. Once disarmed, they were treated like the criminals they were and summarily executed.
Easter Sepulchre This is an alcove or niche in the side wall of the church (usually in the chancel) where the consecrated Host - believed to be the actual body of Christ - was placed on Good Friday. This was intended to represent the burial of the Lord and all candles were extinguished and suitable mourning vestments were worn by the priest. On Easter Sunday morning the Host was retrieved from the Sepulchre, thus representing the resurrection of Christ.
Most of these sepulchres are mediaeval in date and are decorated - if at all - with faint and fragmentary mediaeval fescoes. The exception is the Easter Sepulchre in Ruthun parish church in north Wales, where the alcove was decorated by a young lady whose brothers were fighting in the Great War. In her picture the women who came to the tomb are depicted wearing the typical dresses and cloche hats of flappers, giving the scene an appearance that is both contemporary and curiously dated. Return
the unfortunate Viking It may sound callous, but I wasted little sympathy on the fellow. As well as being villainous robbers and pirates, killing, raping and looting their way across Britain and large swathes of Europe, the Vikings delighted in cruelty for its own sake. The Viking calling card, so to speak, was "Eagle's Wings": the victim - who was by no means always dead - was laid down on his face and held in position. Two swift strokes with a battle axe on either side of his spinal cord severed his ribs which were then pulled upwards to make a ghastly parody of wings. Fortunately death usually followed swiftly.
It is highly likely that the villagers of Castle Heddingham were avenging a whole list of atrocities practised on their friends and relatives. Return
discarded their clothes A coat of mail was heavy and hampered movement and it was not unknown for Vikings, in the heat of battle, to throw off their mail and fight just in their sarks or shirts. Someone who did this was known as a bare sarker, from which comes our term "beserk". Young men, however, who were not yet wealthy enough to afford a protective mail coat, might well fight bare chested or even completely naked - and for very good reason.
A sword cut or arrow wound is, all things considered, a relatively clean wound. However if it has penetrated clothing then almost certainly some of the fibres from the clothing will have been forced into the wound - and given that there weren't many laundry facilities on the average Norse longship, this greatly increased the risk of infection. If you couldn't afford mail, then fighting naked actually increased your chances of surviving the battle! Return
© Kendall K. Down 2009
