Mass Grave of the Viking Great Army,
Burial Monument to War Dead
Found in Britain

The Great Viking Army, known by the Anglo-Saxons as the Great Heathen Army, was a coalition of Norse warriors, primarily originating from Denmark but with elements from Sweden and Norway, who came tog,ether under a unified command to invade the four Anglo-Saxon kingdoms that constituted England in 865 AD.

The name Great Heathen Army is derived from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 865. Legend has it that the force was led by three sons of Ragnar Lodbrok. The campaign of invasion and conquest against the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms lasted 14 years. Surviving sources give no firm indication of its numbers, but it was clearly amongst the largest forces of its kind.

A team of archaeologists, led by Cat Jarman from the University of Bristol's Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, has discovered that a mass grave uncovered in the 1980s dates to the Viking Age and may have been a burial site of the war dead.

Although the remains were initially thought to be associated with the Vikings, radiocarbon dates seemed to suggest the grave consisted of bones collected over several centuries. New scientific research now shows that this was not the case and that the bones are all consistent with a date in the late 9th century. Historical records state that the Viking Great Army wintered in Repton, Derbyshire, in 873 A.D. and drove the Mercian king into exile.

This is one of the female skulls from the Repton charnel.

Credit: Cat Jarman

Excavations led by archaeologists Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle at St Wystan's Church in Repton in the 1970s and 1980s discovered several Viking graves and a charnel deposit of nearly 300 people underneath a shallow mound in the vicarage garden.

The mound appears to have been a burial monument linked to the Great Army.

An Anglo-Saxon building, possibly a royal mausoleum, was cut down and partially ruined, before being turned into a burial chamber.

A map of the routes taken by the Great Heathen Army from 865 to 878

Credit: Hel-hama / Wikimedia Commons

One room was packed with the commingled remains of at least 264 people, around 20 percent of whom were women. Among the bones were Viking weapons and artefacts, including an axe, several knives, and five silver pennies dating to the period 872-875 A.D. 80 percent of the remains were men, mostly aged 18 to 45, with several showing signs of violent injury.

During the excavations, everything pointed to the burial's association with the Viking Great Army, but confusingly, initial radiocarbon dates suggested otherwise. It seemed to contain a mix of bones of different ages, meaning that they could not all have been from the Viking Age.

Now, new dating proves that they are all consistent with a single date in the 9th century and therefore with the Viking Great Army.

This is an overview of the charnel burial from the original excavations.

Credit: Martin Biddle

Cat Jarman said: "The previous radiocarbon dates from this site were all affected by something called marine reservoir effects, which is what made them seem too old.

"When we eat fish or other marine foods, we incorporate carbon into our bones that is much older than in terrestrial foods. This confuses radiocarbon dates from archaeological bone material and we need to correct for it by estimating how much seafood each individual ate."

A double grave from the site - one of the only Viking weapon graves found in the country - was also dated, yielding a date range of 873-886 A.D.

The grave contained two men, the older of whom was buried with a Thor's hammer pendant, a Viking sword, and several other artefacts.

He had received numerous fatal injuries around the time of death, including a large cut to his left femur. Intriguingly, a boar's tusk had been placed between his legs, and it has been suggested that the injury may have severed his penis or testicles, and that the tusk was there to replace what he had lost in preparation for the after-world.

The new dates now show that these burials could be consistent with members of the Viking Great Army.

Outside the charnel mound another extraordinary grave can now be shown to be likely to relate to the Vikings in Repton as well.

These are bones from the Repton charnel during excavations.

Credit: Mark Horton

Four juveniles, aged between eight and 18, were buried together in a single grave with a sheep jaw at their feet.

Next to them large stones may have held a marker, and the grave was placed near the entrance to the mass grave. At least two of the juveniles have signs of traumatic injury. The excavators suggested this may have been a ritual grave, paralleling accounts of sacrificial killings to accompany Viking dead from historical accounts elsewhere in the Viking world. The new radiocarbon dates can now place this burial into the time period of 872-885 A.D.

Cat Jarman added: "The date of the Repton charnel bones is important because we know very little about the first Viking raiders that went on to become part of considerable Scandinavian settlement of England.

"Although these new radiocarbon dates don't prove that these were Viking army members it now seems very likely. It also shows how new techniques can be used to reassess and finally solve centuries old mysteries."

Contacts and sources:

Richard Cottle

University of Bristol'

Paper: The Viking Great Army in England: new dates from the Repton charnel' - by Catrine L. Jarman (1), Martin Biddle (2), Tom Higham (3) & Christopher Bronk Ramsey (3) in Antiquity. Volume 92, Issue 361, February 2018  https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2017.196

(1) Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, University of Bristol (2) Winchester Research Unit

(3) Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit, University of Oxford