Researchers Question Remains of Two Viking Women
Experts say the bones of two Viking women found in a buried longboat have dispelled 100-year-old suspicions that one was a maid sacrificed to accompany her queen into the afterlife.
Tests of the bones showed that the broken collarbone of the younger woman had been healing for weeks, indicating that the break was not part of a ritual execution as suspected since the 72 ft long Oseberg ship was discovered in 1904.
Per Holck, professor of anatomy at Oslo University studied the two women who died in 834. He put their age at around 80 and 50 and believes there is no reason to think violence was the cause of death.
"The fracture could have been caused by stumbling or whatever. She could have been seriously hurt, got brain damage. But this fracture alone is no sign of killing," he said.
The Oseberg oak longboat in south Norway, with a curling prow and the bodies of two women, became one of the archaeological sensations of the early 20th century when it was discovered.
Ritual killings were believed to be an occasional practice of the Vikings. In the 10th century, Arabic traveler Ahmad Ibn Fadlan wrote a detailed description of a Viking burial in Russia where a servant girl was stabbed to death and buried.
“The bones of the older Oseberg woman showed she had cancer,” Holck said. The skeletons were exhumed last year to see if modern technology could discover more about them than when they were re-buried in 1948.
Holck said her cancer was terminal and believes that to be the cause of her death “” it is also the earliest documented cancer in Norway.
Both Viking women were probably of high rank, as the study found that their diets consisted mostly of meat “” when most Vikings lived off fish. The teeth of the younger woman indicated that she was the owner of a rare 9th century luxury, a metal toothpick.
According to historians, it is suspected that one of the two was Queen Aasa, mother of Halfdan the Black, father of the first king of all Norway, Harald Fairhair.
The old woman suffered from Morgagni’s syndrome, a hormonal disturbance that gave her a man-like appearance with a beard and a thick-set body.
Unfortunately, there was not enough DNA to tell if the two were related. The possibility of the women being a queen and her daughter may never be known.
"There are still more questions than answers," said Egil Mikkelsen, director of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History.
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