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The 21 graves in this story are not a sample from across the Viking world: they are graves containing artefacts at one cemetery, Trekroner-Grydehøj, near Roskilde. Jens Ulriksen’s study records artefacts in 21 of the 27 inhumation graves detected there. One grave, A505, stands out for its unusual combination of human remains, animals and an object that may have been a ritual staff. The evidence offers a glimpse of varied burial practices—not proof that the dead were hunters, nomads or sorceresses.
What do the 21 graves refer to?
They are 21 graves with artefacts among 27 detected inhumation graves at Trekroner-Grydehøj, a burial ground on a west-facing hillside near Roskilde. The count comes from Jens Ulriksen’s study of the cemetery; it does not mean that researchers assembled 21 exceptional graves from across the Viking world, nor does it establish how common any burial custom was among Vikings generally. Ulriksen’s study and its account of Trekroner-Grydehøj
The cemetery matters because its graves preserve different arrangements and traces of activity, including the exceptional A505. Archaeologists can describe the remains and objects found in a grave; identifying a person’s role, beliefs or ritual requires interpretation and remains less certain.
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A505 contained the remains of a woman at the base of the grave. Higher in it were parts of another woman and a man. The grave also held an iron point fitted to a bronze socket, which had once held a wooden shaft. A dog’s body had been divided, and an old stallion lay along one side.
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- A “thrilling” (Wall Street Journal) history of the Vikings by a pre-eminent scholar
These are the reported finds. Their arrangement is the basis for further interpretations, not proof of a single explanation. The combination of human remains, a staff-like object and animals makes A505 unusual in the cemetery, but it cannot by itself establish the deceased’s occupation or how she understood herself.
Was the woman in A505 a Viking sorceress?
That is a possible interpretation, not an archaeological identification. Ulriksen suggests that the iron-and-bronze object may have been a völva’s staff—a staff associated in Norse tradition with a seer or ritual practitioner. The object’s function is not proven, and a possible staff does not prove that the woman buried with it was a sorceress.
The animals and the grave’s arrangement have also been interpreted as potentially ritual. Those ideas help explain why the burial draws attention, but the physical finds do not settle what the burial meant to the people who made it.
What can other Viking Age graves tell us about burial customs?
Ulriksen’s comparative study considers inhumation graves from present-day Denmark, Scania and Southern Schleswig, drawing on excavations carried out between 1895 and 2007. It describes both recurring traces and regional differences, rather than a single uniform burial practice. The study discusses secondary burials, bones and objects placed in grave fill, stones, and differences in grave orientation. The comparative study of Viking Age burial practices
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Such evidence can show that a grave’s history may have involved more than placing a body in the ground once. But the meaning of a stone, an object in the fill or a later burial is an interpretation; the physical trace alone does not demonstrate a particular rite. Differences among regions also caution against treating one cemetery as a model for all Viking communities.
Were there female Viking warriors?
A separate burial at Birka provides important evidence. A 2017 genomic study of Bj 581 identified the sampled individual as biologically female; the grave had a warrior-associated assemblage. The researchers cautioned against generalizing from this individual to all Viking social arrangements. The study also found the individual’s strontium values inconclusive on whether she was local or nonlocal. The 2017 genomic study of the Birka burial Bj 581
Bj 581 and A505 are distinct cases. The genomic evidence at Birka supports female biological sex in a grave furnished as a warrior burial. A505’s possible staff and animal remains support a different, tentative discussion of ritual. Neither case makes every Viking woman a warrior or a ritual practitioner.
O. Ye. Fialko’s 2018 article describes a small survey series of 16 funerary complexes associated with armed women in the Scandinavian countries considered. That is a figure from the article’s survey, not an estimate of all Viking Age women who fought or evidence that women commonly served as warriors. Fialko’s 2018 article, “Amazons in Viking Age”
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So, who were the Vikings?
These graves do not yield one definitive portrait. They show that burial evidence can preserve strikingly different arrangements, objects and human or animal remains, while leaving room for competing interpretations. Trekroner-Grydehøj documents artefacts in 21 of its 27 detected inhumation graves; A505 invites—but cannot prove—a ritual reading. The independent Birka case supports the presence of a female individual in a warrior-associated burial, without establishing a universal rule about Viking society.
The labels “hunters” and “nomads” are not established by the evidence described here for the 21 graves or for A505. The more defensible answer is that Viking Age people and their burial practices were varied, and that the archaeological record can show both what was placed in a grave and where certainty about its meaning ends.
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