Bones Of A Fancy-Pants Viking Remains

Live Science

Watch video how Archaeologists located the remains of the elite Viking that were excavated in 1868 and have been missing for nearly a century.

Transcript

00:00A team of archaeologists recently found the bones of a Viking nobleman in Denmark.

00:05But they didn't find the bones at a dig site.

00:07They found the bones in a mislabeled box in a Danish museum.

00:11And those bones had been missing for nearly a century.

00:14Now, these remains were found in Bjerringhout in Denmark in 1868.

00:24And they weren't even found by archaeologists then.

00:26What happened was a local farmer was digging up some soil to fill in a pit.

00:32And he uncovered a burial mound with a wooden chamber and a coffin.

00:39And what looked like a very richly appointed burial, there were beautiful ornate fabrics

00:46wrapped around the remains.

00:48There were a pair of axes, one of which was inlaid with silver.

00:53What happened was the farmer basically told all his friends and they all helped themselves

00:59to what was in the grave.

01:01And it wasn't until nearby archaeologists heard about the find, came to the town and gathered

01:08everything back together and then just tried to reconstruct what the site looked like before

01:13it was essentially looted.

01:15The remains, which were bones wrapped in fabric and the other artifacts, were then brought

01:21to the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen and where they were catalogued and analyzed.

01:30But at some point, and it's not clear exactly when this happened, the bones and the fabric

01:36that was wrapped around them got separated from the rest of the artifacts.

01:41And then efforts to locate them were unsuccessful.

01:45What likely happened is that after they got separated, they were then filed with a similar

01:51group of artifacts, also from the Viking Age.

01:54But there was no clear trail as to where that was.

01:57So there were two efforts to locate these missing remains in 1986 and in 2009.

02:04And both of them were unsuccessful.

02:07And so it was thought that the bones were lost forever.

02:12However, recently, a team of scientists was looking at Viking remains from another site.

02:20And there was a box that was together with all of these other boxes from that site.

02:27And what was in it just looked like it didn't quite belong.

02:31There was something about the textiles that was a little different in style from the rest

02:38of the materials from this other site.

02:40And what's more, the bones were male bones.

02:44They looked like male bones.

02:45And the burial that they were looking at, that they were investigating, the burial was a female.

02:50So something there wasn't quite right.

02:52So they looked at the remains a little more closely.

02:57They looked at the textiles a little more closely.

02:58And they saw that there were structural details in the textiles that matched the Viking burial

03:07from 1868, where the remains had gone missing.

03:12And so they did a series of tests for the bones and for the fabric.

03:17They did dye tests and fiber tests to confirm what they suspected.

03:21And they were able to show that the box that they had found was, in fact, the box from the

03:281868 burial.

03:30And it had been mislabeled and filed with another Viking-era dig site.

03:36One of the details of the fabric in the box of remains that they thought was especially

03:43interesting, was that there were these almost like rolled tubes of fabric that were around

03:49the lower part of the leg bones, around what would have been the ankle.

03:52And the researchers, from their experience working with fabrics and textiles and Viking costumes,

04:00they recognized these as what were likely the cuffs of a pair of pants.

04:05Now, Viking women did not wear trousers, but Viking men did.

04:11That was another clue that these bones were likely from a different burial entirely and had

04:19not been filed away where they belonged.

04:22And then, another piece of evidence, in the Beringhold burial, there were a pair of very

04:29well-preserved sleeve cuffs.

04:31And the style of these sleeve cuffs was very, very similar to the cuff that the researchers

04:37thought came from a pair of pants.

04:40So this was just another piece of evidence that helped them bring these things together

04:45and reunite these long-lost bones with the burial where they came from.

04:50The scientists who located the missing remains were working on a project called Fashion in

04:55the Viking Age.

04:56And recently there have been some really interesting discoveries of textiles, fabrics, little details

05:04showing the ways that Vikings dressed.

05:08And what's really interesting about this is that all of these, all of these little pieces,

05:13maybe in and of themselves, aren't going to tell you much.

05:17You know, here's a little bit of detail of a cuff or a little bit of embroidery.

05:21But bringing them all together, the way that this project does, offers a whole new perspective

05:26on clothing, thousands of years ago during the Viking Age.

05:31And this particular man, the one whose remains were recently found, was likely a wealthy, important

05:40person, judging by the richness of the detail in the fabrics that the bones were wrapped in.

05:47And those pants that he was wearing were probably quite fancy.

05:51They were stitched with gold and silver thread.

05:54There were elements of silk in the fabric.

05:57So that's the story of the recovery of the long-lost bones of a fancy-pants Viking.

06:03So that's what we're going to do.

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06:13So that's what we're going to do.

06:15So that's what we're going to do.

06:17So that's what we're going to do.

06:19So that's what we're going to do.

06:21So that's what we're going to do.

06:23So that's what we're going to do.

06:25So that's what we're going to do.

06:27So that's what we're going to do.

06:29So that's what we're going to do.

06:31So that's what we're going to do.

06:32So that's what we're going to do.

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