A Skeleton Was Thrown Into A Norwegian Castle Well Over 800 Years Ago, And The Incident Is Described In A Medieval Norse Text
A dead body was thrown into a well outside of a castle in Norway more than 800 years ago. The incident is described in a medieval Norse text known as the Sverris Saga.
The tale is named after King Sverre Sigurdsson. He was known for fighting against enemies from the Roman Catholic Church. He was considered one of the most important rulers of Norwegian history.
The skeleton in the well was discovered during excavations in 1938 at Sverresborg Castle outside Trondheim in central Norway.
Now, a team of researchers has determined that the timing of the individual’s death and other details align with the Norse saga.
“This is the first time that the remains of a person or character described in a Norse saga has been positively identified,” said Michael Martin, a co-author of the study and an evolutionary genomicist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
“It is also the oldest case in which we have retrieved the complete genome sequence from a specific person mentioned in a medieval text.”
The Old Norse sagas are written in a former North Germanic language that was used during the medieval period. They feature historical figures and legendary mythical heroes, mixing facts with fiction.
They were mostly written by Icelandic scholars, but the events in their stories sometimes took place beyond Iceland.
They included settings like Norway, Greenland, and the British Isles. The sagas were often composed centuries after the described events.
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The Sverris Saga chronicles the life and rule of King Sverre Sigurdsson of Norway. He reigned between 1184 and 1202. He rose to power in the second half of the 12th century.
“Much of Norway’s early history is known from this single text, which depicts a period of political instability characterized by conflicts and civil wars lasting more than a century,” wrote the study authors.
It is believed that most of the text was written around the same time as the events it discusses, which is odd for an Old Norse saga. The author is thought to have been someone close to the king, possibly Karl Jónsson, the Icelandic abbot.
The text is detailed and consists of 182 verses. It does recount actual historical events, but it is also full of embellishments and biases, so it must be interpreted carefully.
One passage gives an account of a military raid on Sverresborg Castle in A.D. 1197. A body was thrown into a well. It was implied that the act was an attempt to poison the local water supply.
Radiocarbon dating supported the theory that the body at the bottom of the well was the person mentioned in the Sverris Saga.
Previous research suggested that the human remains belonged to a man who was between the ages of 30 and 40 at the time of his death.
When the researchers analyzed DNA extracted from the tooth of the “Well-Man,” they learned new information about his physical traits and lineage.
He was a male with “blonde hair, blue eyes, and an intermediate skin tone.” His ancestry is also traced back to a county in southern Norway, which was surprising because the attacking army in the saga was from southern Norway.
This means the attackers must’ve dumped one of their own men into the well. The researchers cannot fully confirm that the skeleton was really the dead man from the saga, but the evidence is strong.
The study was published in the journal iScience.
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