Archaeologists discover huge treasure trove including 50 extremely rare Viking skulls | World | News
Archaeologists in a village in central Denmark have made a landmark discovery of 50 “exceptionally well-preserved” skeletons in a burial ground, which could hold important clues to the Viking era.
Experts hope to conduct DNA analyses and possibly reconstruct detailed life histories, as well as looking at social patterns in the Viking Age, such as kinship and migration patterns.
“This is such an exciting find because we found these skeletons that are so very, very well preserved,” said archeologist Michael Borre Lundø, who led the six-month dig, according to The Associated Press.
“Normally, we would be lucky to find a few teeth in the graves, but here we have entire skeletons.”
The site was discovered last year during a routine survey, ahead of power line renovation work in the outskirts of the village of Aasum, three miles northeast of Odense, Denmark’s third-largest city.
The skeletons were preserved to such an impressive extent thanks to the favourable soil chemistry, particularly chalk and high water levels, experts from Museum Odense said.
“This opens a whole new toolbox for scientific discovery,” said Borre Lundø as he stood on the muddy, wind-swept excavation site.
“Hopefully we can make a DNA analysis on all the skeletons and see if they are related to each other and even where they come from.”
The Viking Age is considered to run from 793 to 1066 AD, a period during the Middle Ages when Norsemen undertook large-scale raiding, colonising, conquest and trade throughout Europe and as far as North America.
The Vikings unearthed at Aasum are not believed to have been warriors. Lundø believes the site was likely a “standard settlement”, such as a farming community, located three miles from a ring fortress in what is now central Odense.
The 2,000-square-metre (21,500-square-foot) burial ground holds the remains of men, women and children, with a few cremated bodies.
In one grave, a women is buried in a wagon – the higher part of a Viking cart was used as a coffin – suggesting that she was from the “upper part of society”, Lundø explained.
During the dig brooches, necklace beads, knives and even a small shard of glass that may have served as an amulet were also unearthed. The brooch designs suggest the dead were buried between 850 and 800 AD.
“There’s different levels of burials,” he explained. “Some have nothing with them, others have brooches and pearl necklaces.”
Archaeologists suggest that many of the artefacts came from far beyond Denmark’s borders, shedding light on the extensive trade routes of the Vikings during the 10th-century.
“We also found a brooch that comes from the island of Gotland, on the eastern side of Sweden,” said Lundø, “But also whetstones for honing your knife … all sorts of things point to Norway and Sweden.”
Boxes of artefacts have been shipped to Museum Odense’s preservation labs for cleaning and analysis. Conservator Jannie Amsgaard Ebsen hopes the soil may also hold other preserved organic material on the backs of the brooches or knife handles.
“We’re really hoping to gain the larger picture. Who were the people that were living out there? Who did they interact with?” she said. “It’s a little bit like a jigsaw puzzle: all the various puzzle parts will be placed together.”
