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| Credit : Jeff Veitch Durham University |
Vikings, who lived in modern-day Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, have a reputation as skilled raiders and warriors. As seafaring people, they travelled extensively from the late 8th to the early 11th centuries, establishing settlements in various parts of Europe and the North Atlantic.
It is likely that they acquired horses through conquest and raids. However, a study of cremated bones found at an archaeological site in the English midlands suggests that at least some of their horses had been brought with them from Scandinavia.
The findings are published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
Lead author Tessi Löffelmann, a doctoral researcher jointly working in the Department of Archaeology, Durham University, and the Department of Chemistry, Vrije Universiteit Brussels, said: “This is the first solid scientific evidence that Scandinavians almost certainly crossed the North Sea with horses, dogs and possibly other animals as early as the ninth century AD and could deepen our knowledge of the Viking Great Army.”
“Our most important primary source, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, states that the Vikings were taking horses from the locals in East Anglia when they first arrived, but this was clearly not the whole story, and they most likely transported animals alongside people on ships.”
The work was a collaboration between academics at the Universities of Durham and York in the UK, and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, in Belgium.
They explain: “The barrow cemetery at Heath Wood, Derbyshire, is the only known Viking cremation cemetery in the British Isles. It dates to the late ninth century and is associated with the over-wintering of the Viking Great Army at nearby Repton [ in present day Derbyshire] in AD 873–4.”
Fragments of cremated bone from the site were available for analysis: two adult humans, a child and a horse, dog and pig.
But how to tell where these cremated bony fragments originated?
Strontium analysis helps provide the answer. Strontium (Sr) is an element, related to calcium, that is taken up by plants, which are then eaten by animals. The ratio of strontium isotopes in the soil varies from one geographical location to another.
Because strontium is so like calcium, it is taken up by the bone. The ratio of strontium isotopes in the bone reflects that of the soil of the area in which the animal lived.
The researchers explain: “The Sr isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr) from the bones and teeth of an individual, who grows up while ingesting plants from the immediate surrounding area, should reflect the local biologically available Sr (BASr). By measuring these ratios in plants from the ‘local area’, it is possible to define the local BASr and its variations around the site.”
Strontium ratios in one of the adults and the child showed that they could have been from the area local to the Heath Wood cremation site.
But the remains of the other adult and all three animals – a horse, a dog and what the archaeologists say was possibly a pig – had strontium ratios normally found in the Baltic Shield area [the geological region comprising Norway, Sweden, Finland, and parts of Russia].
As the human and animal remains were found in the same cremation pyre, the researchers believe the adult from the Baltic Shield region may have been someone important who was able to bring a horse and dog to Britain.
Professor Julian Richards, of the Department of Archaeology, University of York, who co-directed the excavations at the Heath Wood Viking cemetery, said: “The Bayeux Tapestry depicts Norman cavalry disembarking horses from their fleet before the Battle of Hastings, but this is the first scientific demonstration that Viking warriors were transporting horses to England two hundred years earlier.
“It shows how much Viking leaders valued their personal horses and hounds that they brought them from Scandinavia, and that the animals were sacrificed to be buried with their owners.
For more details, see:
Sr analyses from only known Scandinavian cremation cemetery in Britain illuminate early Viking journey with horse and dog across the North Sea
Tessi Löffelmann , Christophe Snoeck, Julian D Richards , Lucie J Johnson, Philippe Claeys , Janet Montgomery
PLoS One (2023) Feb 1;18(2):e0280589.
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