DNA analysis of man thrown into well in the Middle Ages shows that the story in the Norse epic really happened

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A new scientific examination of 800-year-old human remains in Norway confirms the royal history that a body was dumped there to poison its water.

The man’s skeletal remains were found in a well in a castle in Norway in 1938. A new study was published Friday, October 24, in the journal Science. iSciencecombines radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis to determine that he probably died in 1197 during a raid on the castle of the Norwegian king Sverre Sigurdsson near Trondheim in central Norway. Events are “Saved to”Legend of SverrisOne of the “King Epics” or prose poems written in Norway and Iceland between the 12th and 14th centuries to glorify the Norse kings.

Co-author of the study michael martinAn evolutionary geneticist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology told LiveScience that this is the first time a person found in Norse sagas has been found.

He stated that genetic analysis was used to identify the remains. King Richard III of EnglandHowever, these dated from 1485. But the body in the well dates from centuries earlier, from 1197: “This is the earliest time that genomic approaches have been applied,” Martin said.

New ancient DNA analysis also suggested that the dead man’s ancestors came from southern Norway; this refutes the assumption of some researchers that he was one of the castle defenders in central Norway. Instead, the authors wrote, either this defender had origins from the south or the attackers threw one of their own dead into the well.

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poison the well

Archaeologists think that the “Legend of Sverris” was written around the time of the events it describes, and perhaps under the control of Sverre, who reigned from about 1177 until his death in 1202.

According to the research, the 182-line prose poem describes Sverre’s rise to royal power in Norway in the second half of the 12th century. He details many of the battles fought by his soldiers, who were called “Birkebeiner” or “birkebeiner” or “birkebeiner” after the birch bark bandages they wore to protect their lower legs; Sverre’s main enemies were a rival group called “Baglers,” the study authors wrote. During the Bagler attack in 1197, the dead man was reportedly thrown into the well outside the castle near Trondheim to poison its water for the defenders of Sverre and Birkebeiner.

The translated epic reads: “They took a dead man and threw him into a well, and then filled the well with stones.”

The bones in the well may not belong to the dead man in the saga, but radiocarbon dating shows he died at the same time, the study authors wrote.

“Although we cannot prove that the remains recovered from the well within the ruins of Sverresborg castle belong to the person mentioned in the Sverris Saga, circumstantial evidence is consistent with this conclusion,” they wrote.

southern man

Genetic analysis suggests that the man in the well probably had blue eyes, blond or light brown hair, and had ancestors typical of people who grew up in the southern Agder region.

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However, the authors of the study wrote that the Agder region appeared to be a Bagler stronghold, so it is no longer known whether the dead man was from the Birkebeiner army or the Bagler army.

University of Stavanger archaeologist and historian Roderick DaleAn expert on Old Norse literature who was not involved in the new study agreed that the analysis appeared to confirm the events described in the saga. However, he noted that like most of the King’s Sagas, “Sverris Saga” is “more propaganda than history.”

“So we can treat this the same way we approach the autobiography of a modern politician,” Dale told LiveScience in an email. “Although it deals with historical events that occurred during the author’s lifetime, it is not a history in itself.”