Thursday 6 March 2014

Dead Vikings on display



I see from a piece on the BBC News website that some of the human remains from Ridgeway Hill near Weymouth, and which were discovered during the construction of a road scheme in 2009, are going on display in an exhibition at the British Museum, before travelling on to one in Berlin and then going to their new, permanent, home in the excellent County Museum in Dorchester.

The bones are those of the victims of a massacre of Vikings in the period 970-1025. The 47-52 victims were all from Scandinavia or the Baltic region and probably died in the troubled period under King Ethelred II or the dispute over the succession after his death in 1016.

The illustrated report can be viewed at Viking skeletons, and it has links to other, related, online pieces about the discovery. I have posted before about the Ridgeway deaths in Decapitating Vikings in Dorset.


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