Vikings buried with their dogs, horses, new study discovers
The Vikings have gained a reputation as fierce, merciless raiders but new research suggests they also had a soft spot for animals.
Archeologists have found the first evidence showing that when the Vikings crossed the North Sea to Britain they brought along dogs and horses.
They valued their animals so much they were even cremated alongside them, the evidence suggests.
Researchers at Durham University made the discovery while carrying out excavations at Britain’s only known Viking cremation cemetery at Heath Wood, in Derbyshire.
The cemetery is linked to the Viking Great Army, a combined force of Scandinavian warriors that invaded Britain in AD 865.
Human and animal remains were found on a single funeral pyre and analysis of the bones showed they came from the Baltic Shield area of Scandinavia, which encompasses Finland, Sweden, part of Norway and northwest Russia.
The findings are published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
“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,” said lead author Tessi Loffelmann, a doctoral researcher at Durham University and Vrije Universiteit Brussels.
To determine the origin of the bones, the team looked for traces of the element strontium in the remains of two adults, one child and three animals at the Heath Wood site.
Strontium occurs naturally in the environment in rocks, soil and water before making its way into plants. When humans and animals eat those plants, strontium replaces calcium in their bones and teeth.
But because different versions of strontium appear in different geographical areas, it acts as a fingerprint that identifies the region from which people or animals originated.
The ratios showed that the remains of a horse, a dog and possibly a pig were not British.
“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,” said Prof. Julian Richards, of the Department of Archaeology, University of York, who co-directed the excavations at the Heath Wood Viking cemetery.