{"id":18693,"date":"2025-05-02T03:45:30","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T03:45:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thisbiginfluence.com\/?p=18693"},"modified":"2025-05-02T03:45:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T03:45:30","slug":"listen-bones-reveal-surprising-differences-among-vikings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thisbiginfluence.com\/?p=18693","title":{"rendered":"Listen: Bones reveal surprising differences among Vikings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"sticy-share-block\">\n<div class=\"article-share\">\n<div class=\"social-icons\">\n<p>Share this <br \/>Article<\/p>\n<div class=\"social-copyright\">\n<div class=\"media-body\">\n<p>You&#8217;re free to share this text below the Attribution 4.0 Worldwide license.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<p>\t<!--    \n\n<div class=\"topic share-section\">\n\t\t\t\t\n\n<div class=\"title\">Subject<\/div>\n\n\n\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/bones-vikings-violence-podcast-3279862\/--><br \/>\n\t<!--\" title=\"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/bones-vikings-violence-podcast-3279862\/--><br \/>\n\t<!--\">--><br \/>\n\t<!--<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n--><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p>An investigation into Viking skeletons reveals a hidden story of violence, energy, and the stunning variations between neighboring Viking societies.<\/p>\n<p>These bones got here from throughout Norway\u2014from the north, and from the Oslo Fjord area\u2014and a stunning variety of them confirmed proof of brutal deaths.<\/p>\n<p>Some had skulls crushed by blunt drive. Others have been slashed within the again or leg with swords. Just a few had arrowheads nonetheless embedded of their bones.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere was a number of violence within the comparatively few human stays that we needed to study,\u201d says Lisa Strand, an osteologist whose evaluation of the Viking stays was a part of her PhD research on the Norwegian College of Science and Expertise.<\/p>\n<p>All advised, almost 40% of the Viking stays she checked out confirmed proof of a violent dying.<\/p>\n<p>As Strand and a small group of researchers would uncover, these Viking bones weren&#8217;t simply from unfortunate people, they have been a part of a sample.<\/p>\n<p>And a key piece of the puzzle was that they have been Vikings from the place we now name Norway.<\/p>\n<p>In a brand new episode of 63 Levels North, Strand and her collaborators speak about how they got here to grasp the importance of the violence she recorded:<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/embed.acast.com\/$\/6007ebf7f983a73284ec8ef0\/new-clues-from-old-bones-some-vikings-were-much-more-violent?\" width=\"100%\" height=\"110px\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Everybody is aware of that Vikings are violent, proper? The identify itself comes from the Outdated Norse phrase v\u00edkingr which implies pirate or raider. However have been all Vikings equally violent?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-020-2688-8\">Previous research<\/a> (to which Strand was a contributor) confirmed that Vikings moved to and settled throughout larger Europe. Danish Vikings moved to England, Swedish Vikings infiltrated the Baltic; Norwegians moved to Eire, Iceland, and Greenland. Much more stunning was that a few of these Vikings weren\u2019t even Scandinavians.<\/p>\n<p>So\u2026 have been all Vikings equally violent?<\/p>\n<p>Or maybe Vikings weren\u2019t a monolithic group of marauding warriors as was beforehand believed?<\/p>\n<p>Viking bones, the researchers realized, have been solely part of the proof they wanted to grasp Viking violence.<\/p>\n<p>What they wanted was to determine what formed Viking societies, and the way these forces could have formed how\u2014and why\u2014folks died.<\/p>\n<p>In order that they determined to look throughout the North Sea, at Viking deaths in Denmark. And probably the most stunning clues they discovered concerned not solely what number of of those Vikings had died violent deaths, however <a href=\"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/smallpox-vikings-2409942\/\">exactly how they died<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Almost all the Danish Vikings had been executed by having their heads lower off.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not one thing you do in battle, Strand says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s fairly time consuming to decapitate somebody, even in case you are in a battle. You don\u2019t take time to chop their head off. No, no. It\u2019s fairly grim, but it surely\u2019s true,\u201d she says on the podcast.<\/p>\n<p>This was a vital clue, as a result of it suggests that there have been folks in Denmark, individuals who have been a powerful leaders, who had sufficient energy to order an execution.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe truth that in Denmark, we\u2019re seeing principally executions, factors to the thought of a extra centralized authority,\u201d says David Jacobson, a sociologist from the College of South Florida who was a part of the analysis staff.<\/p>\n<p>Among the many iconic artifacts from the Norwegian Viking age are the Viking ships from the Museum of the Viking Age.<\/p>\n<p>Jan Invoice, an archaeologist and curator of the ship assortment, has studied the Gokstad ship intimately, together with attempting to be taught extra in regards to the man who was buried on this lovely ship. He was additionally one among Strand\u2019s PhD supervisors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo we&#8217;ve a person apparently lifeless in battle and we&#8217;ve this magnificent grave, which extremely signifies that he was on very prime degree society, a king or one thing like that,\u201d Invoice says.<\/p>\n<p>However finds just like the Gokstad ship are comparatively uncommon.<\/p>\n<p>As an alternative, Invoice, now working with Jacobson to higher perceive the violence that the researchers had documented, realized they wanted different info.<\/p>\n<p>There was loads of proof to be present in each nations.<\/p>\n<p>The Viking sword is the handgun of the Viking age, since you couldn\u2019t actually use it for the rest than killing different folks, or threatening to kill them.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe noticed that in each locations there have been burials with weapons, however the proportions have been very totally different. Whereas in Norway, it\u2019s a really, quite common factor that males have weapons within the burials, in Denmark, solely a small a part of the burials the place you&#8217;d have weapons,\u201d Invoice says.<\/p>\n<p>This wasn\u2019t only a trivial distinction, he says.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI used to be stunned to see how excessive they have been. Taking a look at Norway and, and Denmark, you&#8217;ve gotten motive to consider that there have been about 50 instances as many weapons accessible among the many Norwegians if measured per capita, so to talk, in comparison with Denmark,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>One issue that may have performed a task on this putting distinction was the provision of iron. Invoice says Norway had far more iron accessible as a uncooked materials than Denmark, so it was simpler to make swords to start with. Nonetheless, there have been nonetheless a LOT extra weapons in Norway.<\/p>\n<p>Does that imply that Norwegian Vikings have been much more violent? Invoice says you may take a look at modern-day society, the place the quantity of handguns in a society is correlated with the quantity of murders in that very same society.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd you possibly can sort of say that the Viking sword is the handgun of the Viking age, since you couldn\u2019t actually use it for the rest than killing different folks, or threatening to kill them,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n<p>The mixture of those and different puzzle items turned their investigation into one thing larger.<\/p>\n<p>It grew to become greater than a narrative about how folks died, however how communities functioned, how justice was delivered, and what held totally different Viking societies collectively\u2014or pushed them into battle.<\/p>\n<p><em>Supply: <a href=\"https:\/\/norwegianscitechnews.com\/2025\/04\/viking-bones-dont-lie\/\">Norwegian University of Science and Technology<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.futurity.org\/bones-vikings-violence-podcast-3279862\/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=bones-vikings-violence-podcast-3279862\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Share this Article You&#8217;re free to share this text below the Attribution 4.0 Worldwide license. An investigation into Viking skeletons reveals a hidden story of violence, energy, and the stunning variations between neighboring Viking societies. These bones got here from throughout Norway\u2014from the north, and from the Oslo Fjord area\u2014and a stunning variety of them [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18695,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[281,3186,8291,8676,561,362,13034],"class_list":["post-18693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tech","tag-among","tag-bones","tag-differences","tag-listen","tag-reveal","tag-surprising","tag-vikings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisbiginfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisbiginfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisbiginfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisbiginfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisbiginfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thisbiginfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisbiginfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thisbiginfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisbiginfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thisbiginfluence.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}