This note is a re-written translation of one of the aspects of research I’ve done on my master thesis. Because of lack of time and inspiration it is not likely that I will produce anything “brand new” in the coming months.
In the year 2007 a new book on a famous site of Kaupang in Norway was published. In one of chapters the burial grounds surrounding the trading centerwere re-described and re-discussed. All of the burials got a new catalog numbers, and some of them were reinterpreted. One of theese “lucky” graves was the triple burial Ka296-Ka298.
It was discovered in 1950’ during the times when Charlotte Blindheim was responsible for the excavations, on the southern part of the Bikjholberget burial ground. It was a grave in which three burials were placed in one boat, around 9 meters long, that was itself cut into an older grave - it is an unpopular form of burial, but there is at least one similar burial located near. More unusual was the rectangular stone pavement placed on top of the grave, the position of buried bodies and the grave goods placed with them.
The researchers are convinced that in the prow part of the boat a woman was buried, placed stretched on her back. All that remained from her body are teeth, left ulna and radius, bones of the palm and the phalanges, parts of the pelvis, lower parts of spine and both femurs with patellas. Researchers are estimating her age to be around 35-40 by the wear of her teeth and changes in her spine. Near her pelvis the bones of a small animal or a child were found. Behind her head, in the part more to the middle of the boat carcasses of a horse and a dog were placed, dividing her corpse form a corpse of a man, buried also stretched on his back, from whom only a part of skull bones, a humerus and another bones consisting a hand, the bones from the feet and patellas remained. In the stem part of the boat the most mysterious burial was placed - a femur and a parts of tibia were found of an individual whom sex can not be determined on a biological basics, but the grave goods, in majority pointed to the conclusion that it was a woman. Also their position in the grave - the oval brooches were on the bottom with their down side pointing upwards led archaeologists to believe that the woman was buried in a seated position.
The grave goods accompanying the first two burials are rich, but there is nothing extraordinary about them - the man is buried with weapons (shield, sword, spear and two axe heads) and agricultural tools, the woman in the prow part of the boat with ornaments (oval brooches, a trefoil brooch, a sliver arm ring, pearls) and some tools for weaving. The most interesting, regarding the later re-interpretation, is the one placed in the stem part of the boat. The individual was buried with ornaments suitable for women - oval brooches, pearls and a weaving sword - a tool most often (but not exclusively) found in woman graves. Also some peculiar items were found - a bronze basin with a runic inscription, a tweezers shaped tool and an iron staff that can be interpreted as a tool for sorcery, but also might be just a cooking spit. Also some items traditionally associated with male burials - two axe heads an fragments of a shield boss were found near the dead individual.
The presence of the iron staff with the grave goods that can point to a male burial, near a body that was declared as female pointed F.A Stylegar to the conclusion that this is a grave of a couple buried together with a volva. The discussion of volva related topics often circles around their “different” social status, and presumably the transgendered goods supposed to be a proof for that. However, the hypothesis put forward by Stylegar is quite weak and can be attacked on many different levels, putting aside the general lack of knowledge about the gender related topics among the most archaeologists (probably including myself - I still have this Judith Butler book to read!:)
First, the most basic - biological level, the sex of the dead person (ka.298) is unknown - we are working only with archaeological estimation here. The value of this kind of reasoning was criticised, quite well in a book titled Masking moments, basically to some extension the XIX century preconceptions about male and female work places were transferred on archaeological material.
However even sticking to those preconceptions, there is a problem here - let’s have a look at female artifacts from the burial - these are, mainly, the two oval brooches and a weaving sword and the glass pearls. All of those artifacts are sometimes found in the male graves, and pearls are especially tricky, as the gendering is done according to their number in the grave. The male artifacts are an axe head and a shield boss. Both are also known from the female graves as well, as an example burials from Hopperstad in Norway where axes were found in a large number of female cremations must be mentioned. Even if we remove the doubts about the “gendering” of the artifacts it is still two (or three if you count the beads) against two (or three if you count the axe heads separately).
Of course there are other possibilities that must be considered - this is a triple boat burial, in which a male skeleton with “male” grave goods is present - the fragments of a shield boss might have been transferred somehow to the stem part of the boat as shields are usually placed in the inhumation burials on top of the body of the deceased or behind his head. The position of the axe heads might have been also changed during the excavations, as in the first publication form 1995 one axe head is recorded in the stone pavement above the burial.
There is also another way in which this interpretation can be criticised - mainly the idea that an axe and also the shield not always should be looked upon as a weapon, but might have been carrying a different meaning when placed in the mortuary context. To start with less obvious example, the axe can be also a tool, as Anne Pedersen and Judith Jesch point out in theirs books and articles. This interpretation is often adopted when this kind of item is found in the “woman’s” grave. Another fascinating possibility is the idea that there was a ritualistic need of placing an axe in a grave of certain individuals, what can be observed in for instance in graves Ka. 316, Ka. 299 and Ka. 305, were it was stuck in to the ground or the grave construction. Another example is described on this blog grave from KIinta were an axe had was piercing the cremation layer. It might be a similar tradition to plunging the spears in the walls of chamber graves known from Birka. It might be interpreted in the light of the late source - The Saga of Erick the Red, as an apotrophaic mean to prevent the dead from rising for some reason (In this case it was Sigrid, she was a Pagan, and her body has risen from the grave). A similar reasoning can be used to deal with the fact that shield boss is present in the grave. As it was mentioned, the shields in inhumation graves were frequently placed in the places that would be very visible for people that were witnessing the ceremony. There are some evidence, that allows to assume that some of the shields used in the viking age were painted (the traces of paint were found at Gokstad, Baalatere and others). Also on one of the Danish run stones (Rønninge on Funnen) an individual is named as Asgot the Red Shield. In the Sagas, for example in the Saga of Saint Olaf, kings man are equipped with white shields with gold, red or blue cross, or shields are used to communicate intention - red for hostile, white for peaceful intentions. All of those evidence point to the conclusion that a shield might have been a simple medium of visual communication, not only a weapon. If the burial ceremonies where a public meeting on which new social relations were negotiated, there was a need to communicate the affiliation of the dead people to certain groups and families. The other idea is that the shields had a function as a talisman - in some of the female graves across the Scandinavia they are present in a from of miniature amulets. In this case it would be a simple magical thinking that would associate them with protection. Of course this is a speculation, but maybe not only miniature items were perceived in this way, and in some cases the normal sized artifact would be placed in a grave.
The main misinterpretation of the grave is caused by the idea that the grave goods are the possession of the dead, and this is the main reason of their presence in the burial. This is quite outdated approach towards mortuary archaeology, and it can only lead to artificial simplification of the complex problems. In this case I fear that the “transgenderism” was used to attach the grave to a larger corpus of the presumed volva graves, a topic that is quite popular among modern scholars and public, as it is connected to paganism, dark magic and other attractive and mysterious topics. It is unfortunate that this kind of oversimplification can de-rail the important research question considering the “viking age” burial rituals.
I am not providing references this time, but the literature mainly is:
Blindheim Ch., Heyerdahl-Larsen B.
1995 Kaupang-Funnene Bind II. Gravplassene i Bikjeholberget / Lamøya undersøkelsene 1950-1957, Oslo
Stylegar F.A
2007 The Kaupang cmementaries revisited, in: Kaupang in Skiringssal ed:Skre, Oslo
other references can be provided on demand, as I am to lazy to write a proper literature list on weekend.
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