Emily Chan
A dead body was thrown into a well outside of a castle in Norway more than 800 years ago. The incident is described in a medieval Norse text known as the Sverris Saga.
The tale is named after King Sverre Sigurdsson. He was known for fighting against enemies from the Roman Catholic Church. He was considered one of the most important rulers of Norwegian history.
The skeleton in the well was discovered during excavations in 1938 at Sverresborg Castle outside Trondheim in central Norway.
Now, a team of researchers has determined that the timing of the individual’s death and other details align with the Norse saga.
“This is the first time that the remains of a person or character described in a Norse saga has been positively identified,” said Michael Martin, a co-author of the study and an evolutionary genomicist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
“It is also the oldest case in which we have retrieved the complete genome sequence from a specific person mentioned in a medieval text.”
The Old Norse sagas are written in a former North Germanic language that was used during the medieval period. They feature historical figures and legendary mythical heroes, mixing facts with fiction.
They were mostly written by Icelandic scholars, but the events in their stories sometimes took place beyond Iceland.
They included settings like Norway, Greenland, and the British Isles. The sagas were often composed centuries after the described events.
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