Peter Bakolia's Viking Funeral
The Norsemen often cremated their dead in ship burials, known from archaeology, sagas, Old Norse poetry, and notably from the account of Ahmad ibn Fadlan. The Norse funerals that took place on land have permitted archaeologists to study the varying funeral traditions of Viking age Scandinavians.
The dead were often laid in a boat, or a stone ship, and they were given grave offerings in accordance with the earthly status and profession of the deceased, and these offerings could include sacrificed slaves. Afterwards piles of stone and soil were usually laid on top of the remains in order to create a tumulus.
In Scandinavia there are many remaining tumuli in honour of Viking kings and chieftains, in addition to runestones and other memorials. Some of the most notable of them are at the Borre mound cemetery, in Norway, and Lindholm Høje and Jelling in Denmark.
It was common to leave gifts with the deceased. Both men and women received grave goods, even if the corpse was to be burnt on a pyre. The amount and the value of the goods depended on which social group the dead person came from. It was important to bury the dead in the right way so that he could join the afterlife with the same social standing that he had had in life, and to avoid becoming a homeless soul that wandered eternally.
The usual grave for a thrall was probably not much more than a hole in the ground.He was probably buried in such a way as to ensure both that he did not return to haunt his masters and that he could be of use to his masters after they died. Slaves were sometimes sacrificed to be useful in the next life (see the human sacrifice section, below). A free man was usually given weapons and equipment for riding. An artisan, such as a blacksmith, could receive his entire set of tools. Women were provided with their jewelry and often with tools for female and household activities. The most sumptuous Viking funeral discovered so far is the Oseberg ship burial, which was for a woman (probably a queen or a priestess) who lived in the 9th century
Funerary monuments
Jelling in Denmark is the largest royal memorial from the Viking Age and it was made by Harald Bluetooth in memory of his parents Gorm and Tyra, and in honour of himself. It was only one of the two large tumuli that contained a chamber tomb, but both barrows, the church and the two Jelling stones testify to how important it was to mark death ritually during the pagan era and the earliest Christian times.
On three locations in Scandinavia, there are large grave fields that were used by an entire community: Birka in Mälaren, Hedeby at Schleswig and Lindholm Høje at Ålborg.The graves at Lindholm Høje show a large variation in both shape and size. There are stone ships and there is a mix of graves that are triangular, quadrangular and circular. Such grave fields have been used during many generations and belong to village like settlements.
Rituals
Death has always been a critical moment for those bereaved, and consequently death is surrounded by taboo-like rules. Family life has to be reorganized and in order to master such transitions, people use rites.The ceremonies are transitional rites that are intended to give the deceased peace in his or her new situation at the same time as they provide strength for the bereaved to carry on with their lives.Despite the warlike customs of the Vikings, there was an element of fear surrounding death and what belonged to it. If the deceased was not buried and provided for properly, he might not find peace in the afterlife. The dead person could then visit the bereaved as a revenant or draugr. Such a sight was frightful and ominous and usually it was interpreted as a sign that additional family members would die. It was first and foremost in times of starvation, when communities were struck with a series of misfortunes, that rumours about revenants began to flourish. The sagas tell of drastic precautions being taken after a revenant had appeared. The dead person had to die anew; a stake could be put through the corpse, or its head might be cut off in order to stop the deceased from finding its way back to the living.
Other rituals involved the preparation of the corpse. Snorri Sturluson in the Prose Edda references a concern funeral rite involving the cutting of nails lest unpared nails from the dead be available for the completion of the construction of Naglfar, the ship used to transport the army of jötunn at Ragnarök.
The 13th Warrior - Viking King Funeral
Ibn Fadlan's account
A 10th century Arab Muslim writer named Ahmad ibn Fadlan produced a description of a funeral of a Scandinavian, probably Swedish, chieftain who was on an expedition on the eastern route.The account is a unique source on the ceremonies surrounding the Viking funeral, of a chieftain.The dead chieftain was put in a temporary grave which was covered for ten days until they had sewn new clothes for him. One of his thrall women volunteered to join him in the afterlife and she was guarded day and night, being given a great amount of intoxicating drinks while she sang happily. When the time had arrived for cremation, they pulled his longship ashore and put it on a platform of wood, and they made a bed for the dead chieftain on the ship. Thereafter, an old woman referred to as the "Angel of Death" put cushions on the bed. She was responsible for the ritual.
Then they disinterred the chieftain and gave him new clothes. In his grave, he received intoxicating drinks, fruits and a stringed instrument. The chieftain was put into his bed with all his weapons and grave offerings around him. Then they had two horses run themselves sweaty, cut them to pieces, and threw the meat into the ship. Finally, they sacrificed a hen and a cock.
Meanwhile, the thrall girl went from one tent to the other and had sexual intercourse with the men. Every man told her "tell your master that I did this because of my love to him". While in the afternoon, they moved the thrall girl to something that looked like a door frame, where she was lifted on the palms of the men three times. Every time, the girl told of what she saw. The first time, she saw her father and mother, the second time, she saw all her relatives, and the third time she saw her master in the afterworld. There, it was green and beautiful and together with him, she saw men and young boys. She saw that her master beckoned for her.By using intoxicating drinks, they thought to put the thrall girl in an ecstatic trance that made her psychic and through the symbolic action with the door frame, she would then see into the realm of the dead.The same ritual also appears in the Icelandic short story Völsa þáttr where two pagan Norwegian men lift the lady of the household over a door frame to help her look into the otherworld.
Thereafter, the thrall girl was taken away to the ship. She removed her bracelets and gave them to the old woman. Thereafter she removed her finger rings and gave them to the old woman's daughters, who had guarded her. Then they took her aboard the ship, but they did not allow her to enter the tent where the dead chieftain lay. The girl received several vessels of intoxicating drinks and she sang and bid her friends farewell.
Then the girl was pulled into the tent and the men started to beat on the shields so her screams could not be heard. Six men entered into the tent to have intercourse with the girl, after which they put her onto her master's bed. Two men grabbed her hands, and two men her wrists. The angel of death put a rope around her neck and while two men pulled the rope, the old woman stabbed the girl between her ribs with a knife. Thereafter, the relatives of the dead chieftain arrived with a burning torch and set the ship aflame. It is said that the fire facilitates the voyage to the realm of the dead, but unfortunately, the account does not tell to which realm the deceased was to go.
Afterwards, a round barrow was built over the ashes and in the centre of the mound they erected a staff of birch wood, where they carved the names of the dead chieftain and his king. Then they departed in their ships.
Human sacrifice
Thralls could be sacrificed during a funeral so that they could serve their master in the next world. In Ibn Fadlan's account above, there is a description of a slave girl who was to be sacrificed and who had to undergo several sexual rites.When the chieftain had been put in the ship, she went from tent to tent where she visited warriors and traders.Every man told her that they did what they did for their love to the dead chieftain. Lastly, she entered a tent that had been raised on the ship, and in it six men had intercourse with her before she was strangled and stabbed. The sexual rites with the slave girl show that she was considered to be a vessel for the transmission of life force to the deceased chieftain.Sigurðarkviða hin skamma contains several stanzas in which the Valkyrie Brynhildr gives instructions for the number of slaves that were to be sacrificed for the funeral of the hero Sigurd, and how their bodies were to be arranged on the pyre, as in the following stanza:
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Cremation
It was common to burn the corpse and the grave offerings on a pyre, in which the temperature reached 1,400 degrees Celsius—much higher than modern crematorium furnaces attain. All that would remain was some incinerated fragments of metal and some animal and human bones. The pyre was constructed so that the pillar of smoke would be as massive as possible in order to elevate the deceased to the afterlife.The symbolism is described in the Ynglinga saga:Thus he (Odin) established by law that all dead men should be burned, and their belongings laid with them upon the pile, and the ashes be cast into the sea or buried in the earth. Thus, said he, every one will come to Valhalla with the riches he had with him upon the pile; and he would also enjoy whatever he himself had buried in the earth. For men of consequence a mound should be raised to their memory, and for all other warriors who had been distinguished for manhood a standing stone; which custom remained long after Odin's time.
The funeral ale and the passing of inheritance
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| A drinking scene on an image stone from Gotland, in the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm. |
Several of the large runestones in Scandinavia notify of an inheritance, such as the Hillersjö stone which explains how a lady came to inherit not only her children but also her grandchildren and the Högby Runestone, which tells that a girl was the sole heir after the death of all her uncles. They are important proprietary documents from a time when legal decisions were not yet put to paper. One interpretation of the Tune Runestone from Østfold suggests that the long runic inscription deals with the funeral ale in honour of the master of a household and that it declares three daughters to be the rightful heirs. It is dated to the 5th century and it is consequently the oldest legal document from Scandinavia that talks of female right to inheritance.
VIKING FUNERAL
Preserved Viking ships
The excavation of several Viking burial mounds have yielded complete intact maritime craft, large open boats propelled by oars and sails, several of which are now exhibited in various Scandinavian museums. These craft were in use prior to burial, giving insight into the shipcraft techniques of the time.Remains in the Oseberg Ship Burial
The Oseberg ship was buried in a trench dug into blue clay that preserved the oak almost intact for more than a millennium. The trench was filled with rocks and layers of peat, grass-side down. The Viking ship was tied to a rock, with its bow pointing towards the sea. It had an anchor, but it was not cast. Within the burial, archaeologists found an amazing variety of objects: kitchen utensils, axes, wooden chests, three bed-posts, a chair, two tents, a cart, three sleighs and a sled. It is interesting that the headboard of one of the beds had a Valknut symbol carved on it. Oseberg textiles included woolen garments, silks and even tapestries. On board and outside of the ship skeletal remains of 13 horses, 3 dogs and an ox were discovered. As a grave chamber, a tent-like structure made of logs was erected in the center of the ship. However, the burial barrow was opened early in Middle Ages either by robbers or by descendants of the buried who wished to collect relics. These unknown intruders dug a tunnel into the mound, hacked through the ship’s prow and the roof of the chamber. They took away nearly all the metalware, chopped one of the beds into pieces and disturbed the remains. Skeletons of two women, an older and a younger one, who had been buried on the Oseberg Viking ship were found by archaeologists in the collapsed tunnel.
Who were the two women? This riddle excited the minds ever since the sensational discovery. Researchers concluded that the elder woman was in her fifties. Allegedly, she was a queen accompanied to an afterlife by a slave woman in her twenties. The theory of a ritual killing was based on the fact that the younger woman had a broken collarbone, as well as on the account of Ahmad ibn Fadlan, a 10th century Arab Muslim writer, who described the burial of a Viking chieftain in Russia. According to his account, during the burial ceremony a servant girl was strangled, then stabbed and buried with her master on a ship. In a Danish Viking grave a younger man was accompanied by a decapitated old man near him. Another theory suggested that two Oseberg women were royal mother and daughter who died at the same time. It was even supposed that one of the two was Queen Åsa, mother to Halfdan the Black and grandmother to Harald Hairfair, the first king of all Norway.
Remains from the Viking ship were reburied in the Oseberg mound in 1948 in an aluminium casket that was put inside a five-ton stone sarcophagus. However, a few smaller pieces were held back and stored at the University of Oslo. Later Dr Tom Gilbert at the Panum Institute in Copenhagen obtained a DNA profile from the remains of the younger woman. Quite surprisingly, her sample fell into the haplogroup U7, nearly absent in modern Europeans, but common in Iranians, which means that her forefathers may have lived in the Black Sea region. The sample from the elder woman’s remains were too contaminated to provide a clear profile.
More detailed tests were necessary, and in September 2007 Oseberg remains were exhumed again. Workers discovered that the casket was damaged at one end and was sitting in water, but the skeletons were intact. Results of the new study proved startling. It was discovered that the collarbone of the younger woman had been healing for several weeks before she died, which excluded the ritual killing idea. Moreover, her age was about 50 rather than 25, as was believed earlier. The remains of the older woman showed that she had terminal cancer and a hormonal disorder called Morgagni’s syndrome, that gave her a masculine appearance, including a beard. Both women ate high-grade food (meat rather than fish). The younger one used a metal toothpick, which was a luxury during the Viking Age. There was not enough DNA to tell if the two were relatives.
Egil Mikkelsen, director of Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, summed up the results of the new study: “There are still more questions than answers.” Indeed, many finds related to the Oseberg ship have no satisfactory explanation, including the image of Buddha that was found on it.
Who were the two women? This riddle excited the minds ever since the sensational discovery. Researchers concluded that the elder woman was in her fifties. Allegedly, she was a queen accompanied to an afterlife by a slave woman in her twenties. The theory of a ritual killing was based on the fact that the younger woman had a broken collarbone, as well as on the account of Ahmad ibn Fadlan, a 10th century Arab Muslim writer, who described the burial of a Viking chieftain in Russia. According to his account, during the burial ceremony a servant girl was strangled, then stabbed and buried with her master on a ship. In a Danish Viking grave a younger man was accompanied by a decapitated old man near him. Another theory suggested that two Oseberg women were royal mother and daughter who died at the same time. It was even supposed that one of the two was Queen Åsa, mother to Halfdan the Black and grandmother to Harald Hairfair, the first king of all Norway.
Remains from the Viking ship were reburied in the Oseberg mound in 1948 in an aluminium casket that was put inside a five-ton stone sarcophagus. However, a few smaller pieces were held back and stored at the University of Oslo. Later Dr Tom Gilbert at the Panum Institute in Copenhagen obtained a DNA profile from the remains of the younger woman. Quite surprisingly, her sample fell into the haplogroup U7, nearly absent in modern Europeans, but common in Iranians, which means that her forefathers may have lived in the Black Sea region. The sample from the elder woman’s remains were too contaminated to provide a clear profile.
More detailed tests were necessary, and in September 2007 Oseberg remains were exhumed again. Workers discovered that the casket was damaged at one end and was sitting in water, but the skeletons were intact. Results of the new study proved startling. It was discovered that the collarbone of the younger woman had been healing for several weeks before she died, which excluded the ritual killing idea. Moreover, her age was about 50 rather than 25, as was believed earlier. The remains of the older woman showed that she had terminal cancer and a hormonal disorder called Morgagni’s syndrome, that gave her a masculine appearance, including a beard. Both women ate high-grade food (meat rather than fish). The younger one used a metal toothpick, which was a luxury during the Viking Age. There was not enough DNA to tell if the two were relatives.
Egil Mikkelsen, director of Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, summed up the results of the new study: “There are still more questions than answers.” Indeed, many finds related to the Oseberg ship have no satisfactory explanation, including the image of Buddha that was found on it.
The Oseberg Priestess Burial - A Viking Age Mystery
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