Previous research on the funerary practices of the Viking Age has found evidence to suggest that people were sometimes executed for the purpose of following others into death. There are several well-known examples of this practice from around Scandinavia, including graves from Birka, Bollstanäs, and Gerdrup, where men appear to have been executed using brutal methods. Written sources such as Ibn Fadlān's travelogue and Sigurdskvädet, however, often place an emphasis on the killing of women during funerary rites – a practice that is inconsistent with the archaeological evidence. Where women have been suggested to have been executed as part of a funerary ritual, their skeletons often show no evidence for violence. This study was therefore conceived in order to critically compare the archaeological and textual evidence with a view to establishing the potential reasons for this discrepancy. By applying a theoretical framework that focused on the funeral as a ‘mortuary drama,’ the study has identified different potential causes for the absence of skeletal injuries on female individuals. It is possible, for example, that while women were killed they were often subjected to other types of fatal violence that do not leave injuries on the bone. It is also possible that women who were executed were more often cremated, rather than buried. Finally, it is possible that both men and women could be killed as part of these rites, and that the identity and the gender of the victim was of less symbolic importance than the act itself. The study shows that although the graves are scattered over vast geographical areas, they appear to have some certain commonalities, nevertheless the graves are interpreted differently. Variations, when comparing graves and the historical sources, appear natural, as Viking culture as well as their graves carry great variations. This study has shown that the types of fatal violence described in historical sources differ from the archaeological evidence presented in modern excavations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:uu-413780 |
| Date | January 2020 |
| Creators | Liw de Bernardi, Simone |
| Publisher | Uppsala universitet, Arkeologi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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