Norwegian body from 1197 identified

[Duncan Head]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/27/remains-of-man-whose-death-was-recorded-in-1197-saga-uncovered-in-norway

[Imperial Dave]

Blimey...

[Jim Webster]

Intriguing

[Nick Harbud]

Sorry, not entirely convinced that this is the same unfortunate bloke.  The siege took place in 1197, yet radiocarbon dating of the remains indicates that he met his end no later than 970. 

I mean, is it current best historical practice to unquestioningly accept discrepancies of over 200 years?

 

[Duncan Head]

Sorry, not entirely convinced that this is the same unfortunate bloke.  The siege took place in 1197, yet radiocarbon dating of the remains indicates that he met his end no later than 970. 

I mean, is it current best historical practice to unquestioningly accept discrepancies of over 200 years?

That's not quite what it says.

The article says an age of 940 +/- 30, not date - 940 years before 2024 gives us 1054. Still a century out, but not quite as bad.

[Erpingham]

The article also points out that the authors applied a marine reservoir correction, concluding

"The resulting calibrated/corrected date range, 1055–1076 (2.5%), 1153–1277 (92.9%) cal CE, agrees well with the expected date of the Sverresborg Castle raid, 1197 CE."

One might expect that the date of the castle might be significant - it was built in 1182.  Unless the well predated the castle by a couple of centuries , it would be odd to find a tenth century skeleton in it.

[Nick Harbud]

Torture the data sufficiently and it will tell you anything you want.

The Grauniad article just says 940 ±30 years without any indication as to whether this is before or after application of any marine reservoir or other fiddle factors and makes no statement regarding any investigations or hypotheses regarding the age of the well, let alone its continued use after this body had been cast into it.  One might expect that if one could no longer draw water, it would simply be filled in order to avoid it remaining a hazard to others and a location for fly tipping.

I suppose this is merely another example of the piss-poor state of modern journalism.

[Erpingham]

If we think about well-wrecking, just throwing a dead body in is pretty temporary.  You can lower a peasant down to drag out the decaying corpse and proceed.  Certainly easier than digging a new well.  Throwing rocks down really puts it out of commission - you might no longer reach the water table.  We would really need to know more about the castle excavations to know what they did to secure another water supply, because they didn't reopen this one and the castle was rebuilt later.  This webpage has a nice reconstruction of the castle, incidentally.

Overall, it's intriguing but seems to make too much of the saga tie-in and perhaps not enough about parallels of dumping bodies in the wells of slighted castles.

[Keraunos]

If we think about well-wrecking, just throwing a dead body in is pretty temporary.  You can lower a peasant down to drag out the decaying corpse and proceed. 

What do we know about the nature of labour relations in Medieval Norway?  How do you assure the peasant that lowering him down the well is compliant with health and safety regulations? 

[Imperial Dave]

So, will this appear on the Norweigian version of crimewatch anytime soon?