Viking Age England

by Julian D Richards

  HEATH WOOD, INGLEBY AND REPTON: TWO VIKING CEMETERIES IN THE EAST MIDLANDS

  The only other mound burials from England come from the unique site at Heath Wood, Ingleby (Derbyshire), where there is the only known Scandinavian cremation cemetery in the British Isles. Here there are some 59 barrows on a commanding site on a natural ridge overlooking the river Trent, 1.2km (¾ mile) from the river (15). Although the site has become known as Ingleby it is in fact some distance from the modern village, whose name may indeed reflect an ‘English village’, noted as unusual in an area which was under Scandinavian control. In total 20 or approximately one third of the mounds have been excavated. Thomas Bateman, the notable Peak District barrow digger, records that he opened five on 22 May 1855, presumably at the invitation of his hosts at nearby Foremark Hall. Bateman found that each covered the site of a funeral pyre, upon which burnt human bones remained as they had been left by fire. Further work in the 1940s and 50s confirmed the presence of cremation hearths, but also indicated that some of the mounds were apparently empty. The mounds were generally 9m in diameter and several contained cremation hearths, often in stone settings, about 1.8m in diameter (plate 34). The hearths comprised a layer of charcoal and burnt bone. This included the remains of both men and women, as well as sacrificial animal offerings including cattle, sheep, dog, and possibly horse and pig. A number of grave-goods were found mixed in with the burnt remains, including two mutilated swords, iron buckles, and a copper alloy strap-end. In one mound there were the remains of an iron spade, three nails and wire embroidery, comparable to finds from ninth- and tenth-century graves at Birka in Sweden (Posnansky 1956; Richards et al. 1995).

  Excavation of Mounds 50 and 56 in 1998-2000 has further demonstrated the presence both of human cremation and animal sacrifice, but has thrown doubt on the existence of empty cenotaph mounds. Mound 50 contained the cremated remains of an adult human and several animals, as well as the unburnt jaw of a cow, and a horse tooth. A cow skull was also found in the neighbouring Mound 6. A variety of nails and tacks and badly burnt copper alloy objects were recovered from the cremation hearth, including a hinge plate from a coffin or chest. The mound had been constructed by levelling an area down to bedrock, and then dumping a circular platform of clean sand, c.0.1m in depth. Upon this the funeral pyre had been constructed. Following this, sand and stone quarried from the surrounding area had been heaped to create a substantial mound, upon which a soil or turf line developed. The neighbouring Mound 56 had also been built from the natural bedrock but contained no levelling layer of clean sand. Initially no trace of a burial was found but in the final season of excavation a small patch of cremated human bone was found associated with a well-preserved Hiberno-Norse ring-headed pin on the edge of the barrow. This does not appear to have been derived from a central cremation pyre but was instead placed deliberately on the ground surface before Mound 56 was constructed. This discovery suggests that all of the mounds may originally have contained burials, but that these small peripheral cremations could easily have been missed in earlier investigations, giving rise to the cenotaph theory. The presence of the ring-headed pin is also of interest. It is the first from a burial in England outside Cumbria, and could indicate a Hiberno-Norse connection. Examination of the relationship of a number of mounds in the main cluster has demonstrated that these mounds were constructed on the same surface and suggests that they are broadly contemporary. It is proposed that the cemetery was in use for a relatively brief period of time, and probably for no more than 20-30 years. Indeed, the most likely scenario is that the cemetery was created in a single act. Although cremation is rare in England there are cremation barrow cemeteries from northern Jutland and from Sweden and the site should be understood in the context of the over-wintering of the Viking Great Army at Repton.

  15 Plan of Viking barrow cemetery, Heath Wood, Ingleby (Derbyshire).

  Courtesy English Heritage

  Heath Wood is only 4km (2.5 miles) to the south-west of Repton, where the over-wintering of the Viking army saw the construction of a fortified camp and the transformation of a royal mausoleum into a charnel house (chapter 2). As well as the mass burial, a number of Scandinavian style burials have been excavated at the east end of the church at Repton. Although adjacent to the church these burials were beyond the contemporary limits of the monastic cemetery. The earliest grave was of a man aged at least 35-40, who had been killed by a massive cut to the top of his left leg. He wore a necklace of two glass beads and a silver Thor’s hammer amulet. By his side was a sword in a leather bound wooden scabbard with a fleece lining, a folding knife, and a key. A wild boar’s tusk and a jackdaw bone had been carefully placed between his thighs; the former may be seen as symbolically replacing what had been cut off by the sword blow. If the boar’s tusk is a sign of fertility, and the jackdaw bone a substitute for a raven then those burying the slain warrior next to the church were looking after his options with Frey and Odin, as well as with Thor, in addition to seeking the protection of the adjacent Christian shrine. A substantial post-hole at the eastern end of the grave suggests that it had been marked by a wooden post. Other graves were accompanied by knives and weapons; it is likely that an axe found in the graveyard in 1922 also came from a grave. One burial was accompanied by five silver pennies and a gold finger ring, lying together beside the skull. The coins suggest a burial date in the 870s; it is likely that these were further burials of Viking warriors of the ‘Great Army’ which wintered at Repton in 873-4 (Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle 1992).

  16 Grave 511, Repton (Derbyshire). This male burial was found north of the church, inside the line of Viking defences, but outside the monastic cemetery. The man had been killed by a massive cut to the head of the left femur (after Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle 1992)

  Whilst the Heath Wood cemetery represents the maintenance of a pagan rite, incorporating animal sacrifice and cremation, in a hostile situation on an isolated hilltop, those buried at Repton deliberately sought to associate their dead with the Mercian royal and ecclesiastical complex. It is likely that both cemeteries are contemporary, but it might be that the two cemeteries represent a division in the Viking camp, one group preferring legitimation through association with the Mercian site; the other preferring traditional pagan values.

  It might be significant that from Repton the army split into two bands. One group was tired of war and returned to Northumbria where in 876 Healfden and his men ‘shared out the land of the Northumbrians, and they proceeded to plough and support themselves’. Guthrum, on the other hand, left Repton in 874 and marched on East Anglia and then Wessex.

  CHURCHYARD AND CHRISTIAN CEMETERY BURIAL

  Other Scandinavian burials have been identified on the basis of objects found in churchyards. Their interpretation is rather problematic. In the first place churchyards are inevitably heavily disturbed and the association between objects and a skeleton is rarely clear. Secondly, there is a tendency to categorise any accompanied grave as pagan and therefore Scandinavian, despite the lack of any documentary sources which would indicate that the Christian church prohibited the practice, and the fact that many of the objects are ostensibly Anglo-Saxon in style. Thirdly, the clear physical juxtaposition between Scandinavian and Christian burials does not in any case necessarily indicate a causal link. The burials may be adjacent, as in the case at Repton where the burials are adjacent to the church, but not in the area of the monastic cemetery, which only later spread over it. Or the burials may pre-date the use of the land by the Christian church, as may be the case at Kildale (Yorkshire) where seven or eight were observed when the floor of the church was removed in 1867. All were aligned east-west, and all were accompanied by grave-goods. One burial had a sword, tweezers, a silver-inlaid knife, and a set of scales; a burial found under the nave had an axe and there were at least three more with swords and knives (Elgee 1930).

  The fact that a number of weapons have been recovered from churchyards in north-west England gives some support to the idea tha
t whilst some pagan settlers in this area sought to legitimise claims to land through prominent mound burial, others chose to associate themselves with churchyard sites. It also indicates that there was a greater tendency to maintain the weapon burial practice in churchyards in an area where weapon burial was more widely practised anyway. A sword has been found in the churchyard at Rampside (Lancashire), and a sword, shield boss, iron bar and knife were found in the churchyard at Ormside in 1898. An elaborate silver bowl had been found at the same site at least 75 years later, and may represent a second grave, or earlier disturbance of an object from the same grave. There is also a record of an iron spearhead being found, about 1800, in the same place as a fine hogback stone in the churchyard of St Peter’s at Heysham. When put alongside a female burial with a bone comb from the cemetery beside the adjacent chapel of St Patrick, it is suggestive of the presence of a number of accompanied burials (Potter and Andrews 1994). Similarly, a ringheaded cloak pin recovered from the churchyard at Brigham (Cumbria) may have originated in a burial. These burial rites were also maintained in the larger population centres and in the context of major ecclesiastical sites. A number of early tenth-century burials with grave-goods, including buckles, strap-ends and a small whetstone, were revealed by excavations at Carlisle Cathedral in 1988 (Keevill 1989).

  Like mound burial, accompanied churchyard burials are also found across the Pennines in Yorkshire. As well as the possible Kildale finds mentioned above, another male burial was found in Wensley churchyard. This grave was also orientated east-west and contained a sword, spear and knife, and an iron sickle. These objects seem to symbolise the sources of Viking power and wealth, through force of arms (the weapons), through trade (the set of scales), and through agriculture (the sickle). In Ripon (North Yorkshire), 36 burials have been found associated with a two-celled church, the Ladykirk, which has produced sculptural fragments of eighth and ninth century date. Four burials within the chancel contained bone combs of a typical Anglo-Scandinavian type but it has also been suggested that these may represent priests, accompanied by liturgical equipment (Hall and Whyman 1996), rather than wavering pagans. As Halsall (2000) has pointed out, the presence of grave-goods in later firstmillennium English burials has been enough for most researchers to label the occupant of the grave Viking, although many of the artefacts are Anglo-Saxon. In York, capital of the Viking kingdom, many years of excavation have produced less than half-a-dozen burials which have been identified as Scandinavians. Two accompanied skeletons were found immediately to the north of the present church of St Mary Bishophill Junior (Wenham et al. 1987). The first was of an adult male buried with an iron knife and a schist whetstone across his torso. He had a copper alloy buckle-plate at his waist, presumably from his belt, and was holding a St Peter’s penny of c.905-15 in his hand. The second, of indeterminate sex, had a silver armring on the upper left arm. Several other bodies were buried with them on the same alignment, but these were unaccompanied by grave-goods, although several objects were found nearby, including a bone dress pin and fragmentary silver armlet. At the neighbouring church of St Mary Bishophill Senior there was a further possible Scandinavian grave with a tenth-century strap-end; a piece of Scandinavian silver appliqué ornament has been identified from the same site, probably from another burial (Hall 1997).

  Apart from Repton, the evidence for accompanied burial in the graveyards of the southern Danelaw is very slight, and there is often nothing distinctively Scandinavian about many of the candidate burials. In Essex, there are two examples of Anglo-Saxon cemeteries in which there are accompanied burials. At Saffron Walden one burial in a row of Late Saxon graves contained a knife and a necklace with silver pendants which had probably been manufactured in Scandinavia in the tenth century. A copper alloy strap-end was also found on the site, and may have been disturbed from a second burial. There is a mention of a man being found buried with a horse from the same cemetery (Evison 1969). At Waltham Abbey a Middle Saxon cemetery with uncoffined burials also continued in use into the Viking period (Huggins 1988). One grave contained a decorated copper alloy plate of the late tenth or early eleventh century (Huggins 1984). At Sonning (Berkshire) the skeletons of two young males were discovered in 1966 during gravel quarrying. They were buried with a sword, a ring-headed pin, an Anglo-Saxon knife and six arrowheads (Evison 1969). Not far away, at Reading, a human skeleton had been found with a bent sword and a horse in 1831. At Santon Downham (Norfolk) an iron sword and pair of oval brooches were discovered in 1867 (Margeson 1997). They have been interpreted as representing a double burial of the late ninth century, but the brooches may represent an offering, like those at Claughton Hall. A pair of oval brooches, wired together, were also found at Bedale (North Yorkshire) (plate 20). The trefoil brooch from Low Dalby (North Yorkshire) may also have originated from a grave, although it was found on its own. In Nottingham two swords and a spear were found associated with two skulls; traces of wood were observed on the spear head, possibly representing a shield. Burial 451 from Middle Harling (Norfolk) contained four knives, a copper alloy buckle with iron plate, an iron buckle, a whetstone, a copper alloy earscoop, and an iron spur (Margeson 1997). Finally, there are a seaxe and knife from Wicken Fen (Cambridgeshire), although the knife is thought to be Anglo-Saxon (Evison 1969).

  Nonetheless, it is most likely that Scandinavian settlers were using established cemeteries. The Vikings found a native population who were accustomed to burying their dead in communal cemeteries and appear to have quickly adopted this practice. From Scandinavia, the Nävelsjö stone, for example, records that ‘Gurnkel set this stone in memory of Gunnar, his father, Rode’s son. Helgi laid him, his brother, in a stone coffin in England in Bath’. It seems likely that Gunnar was buried in a Christian cemetery. Burial near a church, in holy ground, had been considered important for the aristocracy from the eighth century onwards, as attested by sculptural evidence, including elaborate grave covers such as those from Kirkdale (North Yorkshire), sarcophagi such as those from Bakewell and St Alkmund, Derby, and small inscribed upright grave markers such as those from York Minster. As the Minsters lost their control over burial, the growing number of manorial churches also acquired graveyards. As part of this process it seems that the Minster graveyards went out of use or contracted, and a number of cemeteries of early medieval religious communities have been discovered beyond the later churchyard walls. At Whitby (North Yorkshire) there was a pre-Conquest cemetery and probable enclosing ditch in the vicinity of Abbey Lands Farm, sealed by a thirteenth-century layer and overlain by ridge-and-furrow. At Aylesbury (Buckinghamshire), an ordered row cemetery of later eighth- to early tenth-century burials was found c.150m south-east of the medieval parish church of St Mary in an area which had, by Viking Age times, ceased to be used for burial, and where, by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, rubbish pits indicate domestic activity. Similar sequences can be seen at Pontefract (West Yorkshire), Crayke (North Yorkshire), and Addingham (West Yorkshire). In the last case 55 graves were discovered in part of a cemetery which can be dated to the eighth to tenth centuries and which is to the west of the present parish churchyard. The cemetery appears to have gone out of use in the eleventh or twelfth century, when the manorial centre spread over the former burial ground, and burial was confined to an area much closer to the parish church (Adams 1996).

  It is probable that the majority of English medieval churchyards were in use for burial before the Norman Conquest. Where there has been the opportunity for large scale churchyard excavation then accompanied burials have sometimes been found, as at Repton, but such cases appear to be unusual. At Wharram Percy, where establishment of the nucleated village may date to the Scandinavian settlement, and Scandinavian Borre style dress fittings have been recovered from the South Manor site, complete excavation of the church and associated cemetery has yielded no accompanied graves. Radiocarbon dating of the skeletons, however, has indicated that a large number date to the founding of the church, around the tenth century (plate 19).
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  At Raunds Furnells 363 burials have been excavated in a tenth- and eleventh-century graveyard clustered around the church within a rectangular ditched enclosure. It has been estimated that the graveyard probably served a community of around 40 individuals. Most of the bodies were simply placed in holes in the ground, although in about 60 per cent of cases slabs of limestone were used as head or foot pillows. There are indications of wooden coffins being used in a few cases and six elite burials were differentiated from the rest by being placed in lidded stone coffins. All the graves were aligned west-east with the head to the west. None were buried with grave-goods. The cemetery appears to have developed in rows and zones around the church, and post-holes may represent the position of grave-markers, although some graves may simply have been marked by shallow mounds. It was considered proper to bury infants in the cemetery; these were concentrated to the south and east of the church. After two centuries of use the Raunds churchyard was effectively full. In order to prepare it for its ‘second generation’ of burials there was dramatic clearance — posts and markers were uprooted; crosses and coffins were broken up; mounds levelled; hollows filled with mortar and sand from the demolition of the first church (Boddington 1996).

  A striking feature of the various excavated burial grounds of the seventh to ninth centuries is the variety of burial practices and forms of commemoration. At Caister-by-Yarmouth (Norfolk) an extensive cemetery has been excavated containing 12 burials that included clench nails (Darling and Gurney 1993). The cemetery is generally regarded as being Mid-Saxon, but some of the clench nail burials may be later. Developed Stamford ware was found in two graves, and a silver penny of Ecgbert of Wessex dated c.830-5 in another. Six of the burials with clench nails were of adult males; four were of adult females; one was an adolescent, and the last was of a child, aged 3-4 years. At Caister, in almost all cases the nails were spread over the body; only in one case were the timbers used as a bier. It appears, therefore, that re-used, lapped planks, possibly derived from boats, were being employed as grave-covers or coffin lids. At St Peter’s Church, Barton-on-Humber, there were 16 graves with coffins of wood held together by clench nails; again these are seen as being boats, or parts of boats, used as coffins or covers (Rodwell and Rodwell 1982). Parts of old boats might have simply provided handy materials from which to construct coffins and biers in coastal and riverine regions, but this is really too mundane an explanation. Given the Scandinavian tradition of ship burial it is possible that the symbolism of the boats’ timbers was significant, and that even those burials without grave-goods may be Scandinavian settlers, who may have accepted a Christian style burial but retained at least one element of their own customs. Similarly, at Thorpe-by-Norwich (Norfolk) at least two rows of clench nails were discovered with a burial beneath the former church. A Viking Age silver pin was also found, although apparently not with the burial.