A ‘Roman’ army from Norway of a thousand men may have fought in Denmark 1,800 years ago

The Battle of Jutland is one of the largest fought during the Iron Age for which we have concrete evidence.

And there is plenty of evidence.

In total, over 15,000 objects have been excavated from the army that lost the battle.

The army may have arrived on more than 50 ships from Norway.

There are probably at least 20,000 objects still buried underground.

The oldest runes we know of were on their weapons

Scandinavia was never conquered by the Romans.

But today archaeologists know that Norway was much more closely connected to the Roman Empire than was previously imagined.

Roman swords, shields, spears, lances, belts, knives, equipment for horses, and many personal items have been found in a bog in East Jutland, Denmark.

Distinctive combs, made from reindeer antlers and moose antlers, lead some researchers to believe that the large army may have crossed the sea from Norway. The soldiers' typical Norwegian fire steels – a kind of ‘lighter’ from 2,000 years ago – suggest the same.

Some of the objects have runes on them. These are some of the oldest runes we know of.

They probably tell us the owner's name. The soldiers had names like Lagutewaz (seaman), Gaups, Nithijo, and Swarta (the black one).

Something changed dramatically around the year 180

Dagfinn Skre is a professor of archaeology at the University of Oslo and has lived in Denmark for the past few years. He is an expert on Norway and Scandinavia in the Roman era.

In a new book, Skre concludes that something changed dramatically in Norway around the year 180.

From about the year 160 onwards, the Roman emperors needed large reinforcements of Germanic mercenaries – auxiliaries – to be able to defend the empire's northern border along the Danube.

Men flocked in the thousands from southern Scandinavia to the continent to earn a Roman annual salary – a stipend. If they kept working as soldiers for 25 years, they could also expect a large bonus. The soldiers who came from the north were surprisingly well organised.

When the fighting was over, the soldiers returned home.

These returning warriors fundamentally changed society in Norway, Skre believes.

We can follow the evidence all the way back to the Viking Age, 600 to 800 years later. Both then and in fact all the way into the Norwegian Middle Ages a thousand years later, Norwegians continued to travel south as mercenaries. In the Viking Age and the Norwegian Middle Ages, they sold their military skills to the Romans' successors in the Eastern Roman Empire, Byzantium.

Were they mercenaries heading south?

Even more weapons and other warrior equipment – perhaps 20,000 more objects – may therefore be hidden in the Illerup Ådal bog, outside the small Danish town of Silkeborg in Jutland.

Everything the losing army brought with them to the battle, which Dagfinn Skre dates to around the year 205 – including Roman coins and other valuables – were thrown into a small pond by the local victors. This was an offering and thanks to the gods for the victory.

In the centuries that followed, this pond turned into a bog.

“The army probably numbered around 1,000 men. All the swords and coins they brought with them were Roman,” Skre tells Science Norway. “Much suggests that they were on their way south to serve as mercenaries for the Romans.”

Skre's opinion is partly based on the findings and theories of the Danish archaeologist Jørgen Ilkjær. He led much of the work on the excavation in Illerup Ådal. Ilkjær was also the first to suggest Norway as a possible place of origin for the losing army.

Other researchers believe this is wrong. We’ll return to that.

Norwegian ‘lords’ may have organised the army

Dagfinn Skre thinks that Norwegian ‘lords’ may have organised and equipped the army for service in the Roman Empire. Norway did not yet have any kingdoms at this time.

“Around the year 180, a clear break in Scandinavian societies takes place. From this time we find warrior graves and large burial mounds with weapons,” he says. “New, large halls are built. Much more iron is also produced in Norway.” 

Trade along Norvegr – the coastal route from Rogaland and far up into northern Norway – was booming. Much of the trade may have involved furs purchased from the Sámi.

Just as goods from China and India came to Rome, the Romans may have received hides, wool, and slaves from Scandinavian areas in northern Europe.

Roman denarii found in Norway

In recent years, enthusiasts searching with metal detectors have found an increasing number of Roman coins – denarii – in Norway and Denmark.

Particularly coins that date from 180 to 200 have been found to have a composition that corresponds to the salary of a soldier in a Roman army.

“Hundreds of swords, made by skilled Roman blacksmiths, have also been found in Scandinavia from this time,” Skre says.

When archaeologists have looked more closely at finds made in Norwegian warrior graves from the first centuries of our era, they often find that the deceased was partly equipped like a soldier from a Roman unit.

A militarised Norway

In his new book, Dagfinn Skre has compiled the knowledge we have about the final part of the Roman period in Scandinavia.

He theorises that small groups of elite warriors set out to completely change local communities in Norway at this time.

Large wooden halls were built in Norway – inspired by similar Roman structures, called basilicas. The Norwegians had almost certainly visited such basilicas in the military camps of the Roman Empire’s northern provinces. But some may also have travelled much farther. Mercenaries from the north served as far south as in the Roman province of Egypt.

“Around the year 200, today's Norway may have consisted of many smaller societies, characterised by strong militarisation,” says Skre. “These were societies where many men may have had an identity as warriors.”

Scandinavia was not on the periphery

Both Dagfinn Skre and other archaeologists are keen to challenge the notion that Norway was on the periphery of Roman Europe almost 2,000 years ago.

“In Norway we have more Roman finds than in many other parts of what was then Germania, an area the Romans often also called Barbaricum,” he says. “Many people here probably had close contact with the Roman Empire.”

The many hillforts in Norway from this time bear witness to the level of conflict. They may have been built as protection against slave traders. It was not until the 5th century that Norway entered a new era with larger kingdoms, which meant that society was more often peaceful.

At the same time, the Roman era was a time when great wealth flowed to Norway from the south.

Weapons were ritually destroyed

The first spectacular finds from the large losing army in Jutland were made as early as the late 1950s.

The weapons, many of which clearly bear the mark of contact with the Roman Empire, were ritually destroyed. They were then thrown into a small lake. It eventually became a bog which provided good conditions for preservation.

Many of the 15,000 objects from Jutland are of high quality. Many seem to have been standardised for use by a larger military force. About 300 nearly identical belts have been found.

The swords show very clear connections to Roman workshops.

Skre says this suggests a more organised and professional military force than researchers previously thought existed in Scandinavia so long ago, during the first part of the Iron Age.

A catastrophic defeat

It's especially the personal items the soldiers carried – such as combs and fire steels – that researchers like Jørgen Ilkjær and Dagfinn Skre believe point towards Norway.

Such items looked different depending on where in the Nordic region people came from.

It's the sheer quantity of objects that leads researchers to estimate that the army may have consisted of around a thousand men.

If all these soldiers came from Norway, they must have been transported to Denmark in what Skre believes must have been at least 50 ships.

Needed a thousand kilos of grain every day

From East Jutland it was 650 kilometres – perhaps a 30-day march for the soldiers – to the Roman defence lines – limes – along the Rhine.

Perhaps the intention wasn’t that the soldiers would end up in a battle with the people of Jutland.

But such a large army on its way south needed a great deal of supplies. Probably over a thousand kilos of grain every single day, Skre estimates. The army must have had to plunder villages and farms to obtain all this food.

It's no coincidence that the early Germanic verb for plunder – harjon – comes from the word harja, which means ‘army.’

When the people of Jutland saw the ships approaching the coast, they probably lit their signal beacons and gathered their army. They likely managed to assemble an even stronger force.

The defeat must have been a disaster for the soldiers who may have been from Norway – and for the communities they came from.

Norway was a tribal society

The land area we now call Norway was not divided into territories around the year 200.

It was organised into tribes.

These included raumar (today’s Romerike district), egdir (Agder county), hardar (the former Hordaland county), rygir (Rogaland county), and finnar in the far north.

There may also have been a federation of tribes. These were in turn bound together by personal alliances, entered into between the tribal leaders.

60 per cent still lies in the bog

The Illerup Ådal discovery was first made in May 1950. Excavations began in the 1950s.

The digging continued in the 1970s and 1980s. It was then that people first got a sense of how incredibly large this find would turn out to be.

Much has been recovered. But probably around 60 per cent of the discovery still lies in parts of the bog that have not yet been excavated.

The Illerup Ådal  find is unique because it's so large. But it's not unique in and of itself. There have been about 50 similar discoveries in wetlands in Scandinavia. Most of these are in East Jutland in Denmark. None have yet been found in Norway.

Archaeologists call these discoveries war-booty sacrifices.

Strontium analysis of the horses

No human remains have been found in the Illerup Ådal bog.

If skeletal remains had been found, it would have been possible today to use strontium analysis to say something about where the soldiers in the army came from. Or more precisely: to exclude areas they did not come from with a certain degree of certainty.

But the skeletons and teeth of four horses have been found.

Strontium analysis of the horses so far shows that they had different geographical origins. Nothing clearly points towards Norway. The strontium analyses instead hint at present-day Denmark, Scania in southern Sweden, or possibly northern Germany.

But it has been suggested that the horses may have been traded, exchanged, or taken as war booty by the soldiers before the battle.

“I don't consider this to be likely,” says Danish researcher Andres Minos Dobat from the Department of Archaeology at Aarhus University.

In a study Dobat and his colleagues conducted on these very horses, they argue that the horses were used in battle.

He explains that these were specialised horses, and they were ridden with highly specialised equipment. Equipment for battle.

“You don't just trade for or plunder such horses casually. So when the strontium values in the horses make a Norwegian origin less likely, that has implications for the origin of the entire army,” Dobat tells Science Norway.

“The Norway theory was an interpretation Jørgen Ilkjær made of the finds. When we look at this today, the theory seems less likely,” he adds.

The army commander from Western Norway

Frans-Arne Stylegar is also an archaeologist and has mapped warrior graves in Norway from the Roman era.

“Jørgen Ilkjær's main point has probably been that many of the combs found with the soldiers were made of moose antler and could point towards Norway,” Stylegar says.

“I myself think of the rich burial mound at Avaldsnes Church on Karmøy, called Flagghaugen. It dates from the first half of the 3rd century and had exclusive weapons and other objects that may point in the direction of a man similar to the army leader from Illerup Ådal,” he says.

What's often referred to as the Avaldsnes find is considered Norway's richest burial mound find from the Roman era. It's also one of the richest graves in all of Northern Europe from this time.

The grave contained a man fully equipped with weapons.

Around him lay several objects that testify to contact with the Roman Empire. Next to him was also a necklace in pure gold that weighed 590 grams.

A very special time

Stylegar also highlights the fact that the Illerup Ådal army was clearly well organised and must have had something to do with the Roman Empire.

“I myself am particularly fascinated by the discovery of a Sarmatian bronze amulet that one of the soldiers carried. When I mentioned this to a young Hungarian researcher colleague, he said this must be the only discovery of such an amulet outside Hungary,” he says.

“I think this tells us something about how the entire European continent during the last part of the Roman period was a huge melting pot. Things happened quickly and changed very fast. People moved over great distances. Ideas moved almost even faster,” Stylegar says.

References:

Skre, D. The northern routes to kingship. A history of Scandinavia AD 180-550, Routledge, 2025. ISBN: 9781138831384

Jørgen Ilkjær: Illerup Ådal – et arkæologisk tryllespejl (Illerup Ådal – an archaeological magic mirror (2000). Norwegian edition: Den første Norgeshistorien: Illerupfunnet, ny insikt i skandinavisk romertid (The first history of Norway: The Illerup discovery, new insights into the Scandinavian Roman period) (2001), Kulturhistorisk forlag.

Press release from the Museum of Cultural History: "Is this the oldest royal seat of the Nordic countries?", January 27, 2025

Andres S. Dobat et al.: "The four horses of an Iron Age apocalypse: War-horses from the third-century weapon sacrifice at Illerup Aadal (Denmark)". Antiquity, 2014. Doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00050304

———

Translated by Nancy Bazilchuk

Read the Norwegian version of this article on forskning.no

Subscribe to our newsletter

The latest news from Science Norway, sent twice a week and completely free.

Sign up