OSLO, Norway (Reuters) -- The grave of a mysterious Viking queen may hold the key to a 1,200 year-old case of suspected ritual killing, and scientists are planning to unearth her bones to find out.
She is one of two women whose fate has been a riddle ever since their bones were found in 1904 in a 72 feet longboat buried at Oseberg in south Norway, its oaken form preserved miraculously, with even its menacing, curling prow intact.
No one even knows the name of the queen, but the Oseberg boat stirred one of the archeological sensations of the 20th century two decades before the discovery of the tomb of Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings.
Scientists now hope to exhume the women, reburied in the mound in 1947 and largely forgotten, reckoning that modern genetic tests could give clues to resolve whether one was the victim of a ritual sacrifice.
Archeologists almost a century ago concluded that the body of a woman in her 50s was the queen and the second woman, probably in her 20s, was a slave or lady-in-waiting killed to accompany her mistress to an afterlife in Valhalla.
But DNA tests of genetic material might acquit the Vikings of sacrifice in 834 AD if they show the two were relatives.
"You never know if there's enough DNA left in old bones for analysis, but it would be fascinating to try," said Professor Arne Emil Christensen, the head of Oslo's Viking Ship Museum where the Oseberg boat is on display.
"A DNA test would only tell us if the women were related," Christensen told Reuters. "They might be mother and daughter. If that's the case it's more reasonable to believe that they simply died of the same disease.
"That would be new information, with implications for Viking burials," he said. Ritual sacrifice was sometimes practiced in Viking times.
A contemporary account by an Arab traveler of the burial of a Viking chieftain in Sweden, for instance, includes an execution of a female slave. And in one Danish Viking grave, an old man lying next to a younger man had been decapitated.
The Oseberg grave could be reopened next year if Oslo University, which oversees Norway's longboats, gives permission.
Nothing is known of the Oseberg queen apart from the spectacular grave, which contained equipment ranging from carved wooden sledges to buckets made of yew wood that were probably plundered in a raid on Ireland or Britain.
Down the centuries, grave robbers may have taken gold and valuables from the ship, which had space for 30-50 warriors.
Christensen said the elder Oseberg woman was probably queen because the grave contained two pairs of shoes that would fit her feet, which were swollen by arthritis. A slave would hardly get a change of footwear for the afterlife.
Christensen said a forensic test of carbon 13 isotopes could also be used to indicate if the women had a fish-rich diet.
He said that Viking rulers might have favored meat -- like elk -- over commonplace fish. So if only one of the women had a meat-rich diet, she was most likely the queen.
The Viking longboats were the most feared craft of the time. Their design let Norse warriors land, pillage and plunder and sail off knowing that no other vessels could catch up.
The Oseberg ship, built from oak hewn in about 820, is the most spectacular of three big Viking-era ships found in burial mounds in Norway, preserved by the air-tight seal of the blue clay found in the area.
More than 250 Viking-era ship burial mounds have been found from Russia to Iceland. The Oseberg boat was dragged out of the sea and buried.
Norway is planning to examine another burial site in the south of the country, but Christensen said another find like Oseberg was highly unlikely.
"The best chance of finding Viking ships now would be in old harbors rather than in graves. But then of course you'd find a wreck instead of a well-furnished ship," he said.
The things we can learn today are unbelievable. I'm not only amazed by DNA being able to prove relationships and presence of disease, but also that scientists can tell what someone had for breakfast thousands of years ago. Boggles the mind!
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I thought all writers drank to excess and beat their wives. You know one time I secretly wanted to be a writer.---C.K. Dexter Haven
I was at my doctor's office the other day and we were talking about technology and what effect it will have on lifestyles of the future.
He stated that after mapping the entire DNA, scientists have been able to isolate the gene that causes cholestrol to attach to the interior of the arteries. A company, which I will not name, has supposedly found a drug which mutes or turns off that particular gene.
I asked him what the effect would be as a matter of lifestyle...
He smiled and said, you could eat Krispy Kremes all day long....
Quite interesting indeed. I have read the book " The road to Hel" A study of the conception of the dead in Old Norse Literature. In it there is extensive writing on the evidence found both in Archaeology and literature as well as concepts of afterlife and the soul in the Heathen cultures of Scandinavia.
while not exactly the same as the rest of northern Europe pre Christian era, it is somewhat simular.
They seem to be finding more and more evidence that disproves the The Church's stance that Heathenism is a savage belief.
I am still waiting to hear about more on the Kennewick man found in the US.
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The steel must suffer to become the blade.
One of the bodies may turn out to be Janet Reno. Well she looks that bad.[>:]
VC my son was telling me about that medical break through. From what he told me it would save millions of lives and almost eliminate most heart dease. Therefore I would not look for it real soon.
When men were men....human sacrifice?
