DNA helps match ‘Effectively Man’ skeleton to 800-year-old Norwegian saga

A Norwegian saga written greater than 800 years in the past describes how a useless man was thrown right into a fortress nicely – and now, researchers imagine they’ve recognized the stays of this man.

The Sverris saga is an 182-verse Outdated Norse textual content that information the exploits of King Sverre Sigurdsson, who rose to energy within the second half of the twelfth century AD. One half says {that a} rival clan who attacked Sverresborg fortress, close to Trondheim, Norway, “took a dead man and cast him unto the well, and then filled it up with stones”.

The nicely was contained in the fortress’s ramparts and was the neighborhood’s solely everlasting water supply. It has been speculated that the person thrown into the nicely within the saga could have had a illness and placing him there was an early act of organic warfare.

In 1938, a medieval nicely within the ruins of Sverresborg fortress was partly drained and a skeleton was discovered beneath rubble and boulders on the backside. Whereas it was broadly believed that the skeleton, known as Effectively Man, was the stays of the person talked about within the saga, it wasn’t potential to substantiate this on the time.

Now, Anna Petersén on the Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage Analysis in Oslo and her colleagues have used radiocarbon relationship and DNA evaluation of a tooth from the physique to point out that the date vary the person was alive is according to the raid on the fortress. Whereas not definitive proof that the person was the one talked about within the saga, the “circumstantial evidence is consistent with this conclusion”, says Perersén.

What’s extra, the group has been in a position so as to add to the story. “The research we have done has shown many details concerning both the event and the man that the saga episode doesn’t mention,” says Petersén.

For instance, the DNA suggests he most definitely had blue eyes and blond or light-brown hair. The researchers additionally imagine his ancestors have been from what’s now Vest-Agder, the southernmost Norwegian county, based mostly on comparisons with the DNA of contemporary and historic Norwegians.

One factor they couldn’t discover was any proof that the person was thrown into the nicely as a result of he had a illness or to render the ingesting water unusable, however in addition they discovered no proof in opposition to it, leaving the query unanswered.

Michael Martin on the Norwegian College of Science and Expertise in Trondheim says the group’s method of matching historic paperwork with DNA proof may be utilized to assemble household bushes of long-dead royal households or to “physically describe and sketch out the life stories, such as movement between geographic regions, of the otherwise anonymous people whose remains are recovered from archaeological excavations”.

“This is, to my knowledge, the oldest case where genomic information has been recovered from a specific character, or even a specific person, mentioned in an ancient text,” says Martin.

He says by producing genomic info from historic skeletal stays, we will present new particulars about an individual. “These details are not in the original text, thus the genetic data enriches the story and provides a way to separate fact from fiction,” says Martin.