In the Darkest of Days: Exploring Human Sacrifice and Value in Southern Scandinavian Prehistory

This book collects recent works on the subjects of sacrificial offerings, ritualised violence and the relative values thereof in the contexts of Scandinavian prehistory from the Neolithic to the Viking era. It provides a detailed re-appraisal of key aspects of prehistoric bog bodies using the latest forensic and material culture analytical techniques to examine questions of sacrifice, execution and ritual behaviour.

The volume re-opens investigations into notions of value relating to diverse evidence and suggested evidence for human sacrifice and related ritualised violence. It covers a broad spectrum of issues relating to novel interpretations of the existing archaeological materials, but with a focus on the study of value and value dynamics in these diverse ritual contexts, engaging in questions of identity, cosmology, economics and social relations. Cases span from the Scandinavian Late Neolithic and Nordic Bronze Age, through to the well-known wetland deposits and bog bodies of the Iron Age, to Viking era executions, ‘deviant’ burials and contemporaneous double/multiple graves, exploring the implications for the transformation of sacrificial practices across Scandinavian prehistory.

Each contributor untangles the myriad forms of value at play in different incarnations of human offerings, and provide insights into how those values were expressed, for example in the selection and treatment of victims in relation to their status, personhood, identity and life-history.

The volume builds on a workshop hosted at the National Museum of Denmark in 2018 which inaugurated the beginning of the research project ‘Human Sacrifice and Value: The limits of sacred violence’ and was supported by the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo. It brings together research and perspectives that go beyond the who, what and where of most archaeological and anthropological investigations of sacrificial violence to address both the underlying and explicit forms of value associated with such events.

Table of Contents

List of figures
List of plates
List of tables
List of contributors
Acknowledgements

Foreword
Rane Willerslev

Introduction: In the darkest of days: Tracing human sacrifice through Scandinavian prehistory
Matthew J. Walsh, Marianne Moen, Sean O’Neill, Svein H. Gullbekk and Rane Willerslev

1. Noble hunter-gatherers and ‘cruel’ farmers – a discussion of the evidence of human sacrifices during the Mesolithic and Neolithic in South Scandinavia
Lasse Sørensen and Poul Otto Nielsen

2. Societies that sacrifice? Examining the potential for attendant sacrifices in the Nordic Bronze Age
Matthew J. Walsh, Samantha S. Reiter and Karin M. Frei

3. Human sacrifice and human remains – the ultimate sacrifice?
Pernille Pantmann

4. Naked or clothed? Bog bodies and the value of clothing in the Early Iron Age
Ulla Mannering

5. Sacrifice or execution? A brief forensic medical and archaeological perspective on the Danish bog bodies
Niels Lynnerup and Pauline Asingh

6. Six human skulls in a bog: Svennum – a 1st century AD sacrificial bog
Sidsel Wåhlin

7. Haraldskær Woman under a new light: Bog bodies, martial rituals and value
Mads Ravn

8. Figuring out bodies in watery places: Posthumanism, figurations and ecological relations
Christina Fredengren

9. Thrown stone for flesh and bone? ‘White’ stones in sacrificial context in Iron Age Scandinavia
Matthew J. Walsh, Pernille Pantmann and Marianne Moen

10. ‘Better not to pray than to sacrifice too much’ Human sacrifice and its alternatives in Northern Europe AD 750 - 1050
Bo Jensen

11. Regulated deviancy – ritual executions at Viking Age Tissø as indications of a complex judicial culture
Mads D. Jessen and Jesper Olsen

12. Human sacrifice in Old Norse skaldic poetry
Klas Wikström Af Edholm

Matthew J. Walsh is an anthropological archaeologist whose research focuses on cultural evolution and cultural transmission. He completed his PhD in 2015 at the University of Montana and is currently a senior researcher with the National Museum of Denmark.

Sean O’Neill studies inter-disciplinary approaches to anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, history and political science. He is currently a consulting researcher with the Human Sacrifice & Value project at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway.

Lasse Sørensen is Associated Professor in Archaeology at Århus University specialising in Mesolithic and Neolithic economic developments and zooarchaeology.