Found 1,000-year-old graves in Norway: “15 skeletons is far more than we expected”
Researchers found both children and adults buried at the thousand-year-old cemetery.
Archaeologists have excavated several graves containing multiple individuals at a medieval cemetery in Hamar, Eastern Norway.(Photo: Nina Hildre, Innlandet County Municipality)
“15 skeletons is far more than we expected based on the preliminary investigations,” says Aksel Haavik.
The archaeologist from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) is leading the excavation of the cemetery by the Valum farm in Hamar, Eastern Norway.
The first bones were discovered in the field by a metal detectorist in 2020.
Archaeologists from Innlandet County Municipality then investigated the site and were able to confirm that there had once been a cemetery here. It was already known that there had been a church and cemetery in the area during the Middle Ages. But exactly where they had been located remained uncertain – until now.
The graves were shallow.
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“If this area had been ploughed now, everything would have been lost,” Haavik says by phone from the excavation site. “Now we have the chance to save it before it disappears forever.”
Aksel Haavik from NIKU records the skeletons.(Photo: Nina Sofie Hildre, Innlandet County Municipality)
Christian graves from the Early Middle Ages
Dating of a rib and a finger bone recovered during the preliminary investigation showed that the people laid to rest here were buried sometime between the years 994 and 1190.
“This is an early phase of Christianity, during the transition from the Viking Age to the Middle Ages,” says Åsa Celius, county archaeologist in Innlandet.
Both Celius and Haavik believe the finds most likely date to the Early Middle Ages.
Carbon-14 dating of bones has a wide range of probability, which is why one end of the date range falls in the 900s, which is part of the Viking Age.
But the graves are clearly Christian, according to the archaeologists.
One indication is that the bodies were buried with their heads facing west and their feet facing east. According to Christian belief, this is meant to allow the dead to rise facing the sunrise and see Christ at the resurrection. The practice became common in Norway during the Early Middle Ages.
No evidence of grave goods has been found either, which were common during the Viking Age. The practice of cremating the dead also ended with the introduction of Christianity.
Four people in one grave
“There's something special about excavating people who lived 1,000 years ago. You feel very close to them,” says Celius.
One individual had suffered a broken leg that later healed – at the wrong angle. As a result, one of his legs was much shorter than the other, meaning he must have walked with a limp for the rest of his life.
“But what's particularly unusual here is that most of the graves contain several individuals,” she says.
In one grave, four people were buried closely together. One of them is clearly a child. All four were buried at the same time, and the grave gives an impression that the dead were laid to rest with care.
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There are also graves containing three people and others containing two.
“That gets you thinking,” says Celius. “Was there a plague or some other illness that caused them to die at the same time? Or were those who died during the winter buried together after the frozen ground had thawed? And if so, why did they not survive the winter?”
Eline Røsseng from Innlandet County Municipality examines the communal grave where four people were buried close together.(Photo: Nina Sofie Hildre, Innlandet County Municipality)
Åsa Celius from Innlandet County Municipality examines one of the graves that lay right at the surface of the soil. A little more ploughing, and they would have been gone forever.(Photo: Nina Sofie Hildre, Innlandet County Municipality)
Funding from the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage has made it possible to excavate the medieval cemetery in Hamar.(Photo: Nina Sofie Hildre, Innlandet County Municipality)
Hope they will be studied further
The archaeologists have only found skeletons in the cemetery.
"There are no coffins or traces of anything like that," says Haavik. "We don't know whether that means they didn't have coffins. As I mentioned, the graves are very shallow, and the land has been ploughed."
The 15 skeletons will be catalogued by NIKU before being transferred to the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, where they will be stored.
"And hopefully studied," says Haavik.
Age and gender – and were they related?
Celius also hopes that funding will become available to investigate the lives of these 15 individuals in greater detail.
"If we could carry out DNA tests, we could find out whether any of them were related," she says.
During the Middle Ages, it was not unusual for people who were not related to be buried together, the researcher explains.
"It would be exciting to see whether that was the case here as well. There is still so much that could be studied," says Celius.
Osteological analyses could provide information about their age and gender, and whether those buried here had injuries or illnesses. Using isotope analyses, researchers could also determine what they ate and where they grew up.
The history of Christianisation in Innlandet is otherwise characterised by strong resistance to the new religion, Celius points out.
"According to history, Saint Olav had to resort to forceful measures to Christianise the mountainous region. That makes it especially exciting to find unmistakably Christian graves dating from such an early period right here!" she says.
