Abandon Ship! Digging out the Dead from the Vendel Boat-Graves

Is there anybody in there? Entomological evidence from a boat burial at Øksnes in Vesterålen, northern Norway

“…Penecontemporaneous disturbance of burials has recently been discussed in both the Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian context [ 108 ] and the rather simplistic hypothesis of ‘grave robbing’ has been subject to scrutiny. At both Gamla Uppsala and Vendel, Klevnäs [ 109 , 110 ] considers the possibility that disturbance reflects part of the process of adoption of Christianity, although other reasons are considered. In Iceland, graves were opened and the occupants reburied in consecrated ground [ 111 ] and Christian cemeteries were cleared when farms were abandoned or relocated.…”

‘Imbued with the Essence of the Owner’: Personhood and Possessions in the Reopening and Reworking of Viking-Age Burials

“…At Vendel, for example, the disturbance probably took place in connection with the building of the nearby church around the end of the thirteenth century. Here the main part of each burial was dug out, removing the human remains and the artefacts immediately associated with them (see Figure 1; Stolpe & Arne, 1912;Klevnäs, 2015). Similarly the Gamla Uppsala boat-graves suffered at least one further episode of reopening many decades later, with one or more burials dug out in a manner similar to that seen at Vendel.…”

“…For Viking-age graves, secondary interventions have been sporadically but persistently reported in excavations over many decades. They are particularly common in inhumation boat-graves, for example in the eighth to perhaps eleventhcentury burial ground at Gulli in Vestfold, Norway (Gjerpe, 2005), the single grave discovered at Årby in Uppland, Sweden in the early twentieth century (Arbman et al, 1993), the heavily ransacked cemetery at Vendel (Stolpe & Arne, 1912;Klevnäs, 2015), and three of the four boats excavated in the garden of the priest's house at Gamla Uppsala (Nordahl, 2001;Klevnäs, 2007). This may be a matter of recognition: in general disturbance can most readily be observed in burials with better skeletal preservation and larger numbers of artefacts, and boat-graves in particular often provide further corroboration in the form of damage to the timbers of the vessel or disordering of the lines of clinker nails left behind when the planks decay ( Figure 1).…”

“…Such secular 'translations' have been proposed at several major excavated sites, most famously at Jelling, with the possible transferral of the bones of King Gorm of Denmark from pagan barrow to Christian church by his son Harald Bluetooth (Krogh, 1982;1993;Andersen, 1995;Staecker, 2005). A related form of ancestor-transferral, although not seeking out specific individuals, has been suggested for the extensive emptying of burials at Vendel (Klevnäs, 2015).…”

Viking Mortuary Citations

“…These have revolved around reanalyses and reinterpretations of finds and sites long familiar to scholars, including large burial assemblages and cemetery analyses as well as wealthy chamber-graves and boat-graves (e.g. Staecker, 2005;Ljungkvist, 2008;Gräslund & Ljungkvist, 2011;Nordeide, 2011;Bill & Daly, 2012;Harrison & Ó Floinn, 2014;Hedenstierna-Jonson, 2015;Klevnäs, 2015). Yet across Scandinavia and areas affected by the Viking diaspora, new discoveries, and methods have driven forward research on burial sites and their environs (e.g.…”