Price investigates more than 20 burials from the Viking Age, lingering on details that can tell us about these individuals and their world. He also shines a light on frequently overlooked groups, including the enslaved people known as thralls that the Norse ruled over and even sacrificed in some of their burials. Price also delves into the realms of powerful women, including a "shield-maiden" buried with war-grade weapons in Sweden, a "sorceress" in Denmark, and an elderly matriarch whose children carved out a local empire in Sweden.
Read an excerpt: 'The back of her head had been removed by a single blow from a sharp blade': Archaeological clues are revealing the horrific lives and deaths of the people enslaved by Vikings
Neil Price is distinguished professor and chair of archaeology at Uppsala University in Sweden. He has been researching, teaching and writing on the Vikings for nearly 40 years and is the author of several books on the history of the Viking Age, including "Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings" (Basic Books, 2020). (Image credit: Linda Qvistrom)Neil Price: I think quite simply because of the cliche that you've just mentioned, the idea that the Vikings are all barbarian raiders who go about burning down churches and frightening the English and things. Those raiders were certainly real, but they were only ever a tiny minority of the Scandinavian population, and I wanted to bring out all the different kinds of Viking lives, and that's why this book really came together.
LG: How would you define the epitome of a Viking from that age?
But it was never a name for a people. If we could go back in time and just meet some people in Scandinavia and say, "Did you know that you're all Vikings?" — they'd be astonished.
And really it's a job description, it means something like pirate — not necessarily negatively.
LG: Your book starts with the sea-king, a commander and his crew who were buried in boats with swords and shields in Estonia. Usually, the Viking Age is said to have begun in 793 with the raid on the island of Lindisfarne in the U.K., but you say this burial suggests that the Viking Age started earlier and in another part of Europe. Can you tell us more about this?
Obviously it's absurd that an entire period of time starts on an afternoon, you know, not the day before or the day after. So it's obvious that we're talking about something that is really a matter of social processes, things that go on over a long period of time. But the thing that makes the finds that are in the sea-king chapter — they're from this place called Salme in Estonia — really interesting is that they seem to be the remains of, or the traces of a raid.
LG: I really enjoyed your focus on women, since stereotypically the Viking Age is associated with burly male warriors. What are some roles that women held in the Viking Age that you don't think most people know about?
But actually, the [thing that was] far more present than the gods in people's lives were lots of kinds of local spirits and creatures and the elves that live in the stone behind your house. Getting in contact with that world of supernatural creatures and forces and powers — or whatever we call them — was something that was very much in the domain of women.
So the practice of, it's hard to know what to call it in English. Sorcery or magic — they're not very good words, but there's lots of Norse words for it. To be able to do that is a very powerful thing and it's a very prominent role in society. And this was very much in the domain of women.
We talked about Lindisfarne just now. When I started studying the Vikings, Viking women were one display case in the museum exhibition, next to the display case on pottery or something. Not half the population, and that has really changed. I think we look at Viking Age people now, not just assuming they're male by default.
Neil Price, archaeologist
NP: Birka is this huge town. It's Sweden's first urban center, and it's absolutely surrounded by burial mounds. So you have the area of the town and then all the people who lived in it. You can wander through their cemetery, which is a pretty spectacular place — there's 5,000 burial mounds.
Birka, Sweden is home to thousands of burials from the Viking Age, including those of a merchant woman and a woman who was possibly a warrior. (Image credit: AA Images via Alamy)
If we look in her grave, she has things that have come from all over the western Viking world, things that I think probably came as loot from the raids, so she knew somebody who was involved in those things.
And then the warrior is about 100 years later than the merchant woman, when Birka has grown; it's quite a big settlement by then that's a really powerful place.
This burial was excavated like most of the ones in Birka in the 1870s, so a long time ago. And this grave is absolutely full of weapons. It's got all the weapons. And out of all the about 1,100 burials that were excavated on Birka, only two have a complete set of weapons, so this is rare. It's a very spectacular grave.
Then, between 2011 and 2017, first a series of osteological studies looking at the bones, and then DNA, confirmed that this person was female. And actually the team that worked on it, which included me, none of us were particularly surprised.
A drawing of the woman's burial in Birka, whose grave goods suggest she was a warrior. (Image credit: Drawing by Harald Olsen; Public Domain)[Editor's note: Following the 2017 study, there was an intense reaction to the interpretation that the woman in the grave was a Viking Age warrior.]
No, we weren't, it was extreme. I'm not going to go into that in any detail, but some people were very, very happy, and some people were really not, and there we are.
That applies to any other kind of profession. So we don't know [if the different events and professions] in somebody's life course [are] represented in the burial. Is it when they die, or is it somebody who did something famous when they were young, and that is in the grave. We don't know. So there's lots of question marks, but the one thing it does show is the diversity of life in the Viking Age. There's so many different kinds of people, which is not a surprise, really, but it's something I just wanted to bring out in the book.
NP: Well, the bear is a holy animal to the Sámi, and it's obviously a massive source of protein and food and pelts, you know, all kinds of useful things. But what I really wanted to get at was the idea of personhood. If you think about all the different kinds of prejudice, some people are sort of "more people" than others. Think about racism, for example.
I wanted to bring out in that chapter a different kind of way of looking at "persons." So the fact that the Sámi bury the bears they hunt with tremendous respect, it's partly to ensure that the bear will come back in the future from the spirit world as another bear, so that the cycle of hunting and life can go on.
Neil Price, archaeologist
NP: We don't really know whether they have burials at all, actually. The institution of slavery, or thralldom, is absolutely central to the Norse economy, and just putting that back into the picture is very important, I think.
But we do find — not often, but it's not that uncommon — that people have been killed in the course of funerals. You have a burial of a man or a woman, and then an extra body is in the grave, which has clearly been treated very differently. So their hands might be tied or they've been decapitated or something, and there's people who have very clearly been killed at the funeral.
So the implication really is that they might be enslaved. So I think that's where we are with the burials of enslaved people.
NP: The first thing is that an awful lot of people didn't make it out of childhood at all. Putting numbers on this is a bit of a game, but probably less than half the population got past the age of 10. So child mortality is massive.
We don't find as many child burials as we should. There are a couple of written sources that mention that dead children are effectively discarded, and maybe this is connected with a coping mechanism for child mortality that people don't become sort of "full people" until they get to a certain age. We don't know.
The age of maturity seems to be somewhere between about 14 and 16. After that, you're an adult, and then you're just out there with the rest.
NP: And even in adults — you asked about skeletal analysis — there are an awful lot of adults that are malnourished as children, and it leaves traces in their bones.
LG: The Scandinavians settled in the Rus' in what is now Ukraine. What do we know about these people? Were they traders, warriors, or a mix of many things?
Over time, as they travel on the eastern rivers, they become much more ethnically diverse. So it's a culture that grows up around an activity, rather than people from a particular place. Probably the closest parallel [is] if you think of the fur trade on the Canadian rivers and some parts of the states as well — the sort of 1600s and 1700s.
The Piraeus lion (left) is now on display at the Venetian Arsenal, but it was originally stationed in the port city of Piraeus in Greece. In the 1020s or 1030s, a group of Varangians carved graffiti into the lion's side (middle image), leaving runes saying that their comrade had died and his family needed payment. At right is an illustration of the surviving carvings. (Image credit: abrizio Troiani; G.dallorto/Wikipedia; C.C. Rafn; Wikipedia; Public Domain)
LG: You focus on this group of Rus' warriors, the Varangians, and you give the example of them leaving graffiti on a marble lion statue that's now in Venice. Can you tell us the story about these runes they carved?
The Varangians were kind of a subset of the Rus', but they're basically Scandinavians who take very clear contracted employment in the armies of Byzantium, the Eastern Roman Empire. So they're mercenaries, and they were very sought after, and there's lots and lots of written sources about them.
Exclusive to Live Science Pro
'His urine goes on tour around Europe, showing the kings and queens this glowing pee': The weird world of alchemy before chemistry'Call it Genghis Khan's final victory': Why the tomb of the 'Disturber of the Universe' remains hidden after 800 yearsHe looked like Ramses the Great': How experimental archaeologists used ancient techniques to mummify a modern-day person
You get this little vignette of a soldier's life. And also carving the inscription on this lion is a pretty major job. This isn't like scribbling on a wall or something — they're carving it, and so they're there a long time. And presumably have control of the harbor because you can't just chisel this thing on, you know, people are trying to stop you.
LG: Your book is loaded with details about Viking Age people. What do you hope readers will take away from your work?
This interview has been condensed and edited lightly for clarity.
Penguin The Sea-King and the Sorceress: Life and Death in the Viking Age
Drawing on the latest archaeological research and scientific analysis, The Sea-King and the Sorceress brings us closer to understanding the lives and times of the Vikings. The era that bears their name will never seem so simple again.
Hence then, the article about it gives us a glimpse of a different kind of viking life archaeologist neil price on the sea kings sorcerers and sami who lived during the viking age was published today ( ) and is available on Live Science ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( 'It gives us a glimpse of a different kind of Viking life': Archaeologist Neil Price on the sea-kings, sorcerers and Sámi who lived during the Viking Age )
Also on site :
- In 1940, Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Oscar and had to sit at a segregated table; the Academy replaced her lost statuette in 2023
- ‘Southern Charm’s Taylor Ann Green and Gaston Rojas Look Coupled-Up on ‘Below Deck’ as She Eyes a Bravoleb Match for Fraser
- ‘River Monsters’ Star Jeremy Wade Announces Major Return Nearly 10 Years After Fan-Favorite Show Ended: ‘I’m Back’