- 4 hours ago
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:03Southern England.
00:05Road builders dig foundations for a new highway.
00:11Cutting through the chalk, excavators make a shocking discovery.
00:22In a shallow grave is a tangled mass of headless skeletons.
00:27And to one side, a pile of severed skulls.
00:34Who are these victims?
00:37Why were they killed?
00:39Who committed this brutal atrocity?
00:45To find out, investigators must solve an ancient murder mystery.
00:53Piecing together ancient texts.
00:55On this Yerra was Æthelred the Könige Jelhalhod.
01:00Heroic sagas.
01:01I would rather face the blow.
01:03So strike me in the face.
01:06And using cutting-edge forensic science
01:11will lead them to a story of greed, betrayal, and revenge.
01:16Come on.
01:18Now!
01:20Oh!
01:21Ah!
01:23Ah!
01:26Ah!
01:33Ah!
01:48Dorset, the south coast of England.
01:51On a hill, at a junction of a Roman road and an ancient track known as the Ridgeway, lies the
01:57burial pit.
02:02It's clear that this is not a recent burial.
02:04So it's a case for archaeologists, rather than the police.
02:08There's a large pile of skulls here, and they are piled up.
02:15Dr Tal Simmons is a forensic anthropologist and war graves specialist.
02:19I've not seen anything like this before.
02:21I think it's rare to see mass-scaled decapitations.
02:27I've only seen one other sort of modern forensic decapitation, which was in Bosnia.
02:34The challenge is as macabre as any modern murder.
02:38It really is chilling.
02:41I'm finding it very difficult to take in.
02:43It's just this mass of bodies, and then that separate pile of heads.
02:49I mean, it's clearly, it's an atrocity.
02:54This is a really terrible moment in human history.
02:58Something really, really bad happened here.
03:06We need to know who were these people.
03:08That's always the first question.
03:10Who are they?
03:11What is their identity?
03:13The trouble with this site is, in essence, that they're not buried with anything.
03:16There are no artefacts.
03:18There are no things that give us a date or give us any idea of who they were as specific
03:23individuals.
03:26Strangely, the burial contains only bones.
03:30We would expect to perhaps pick up a few brooches, something like that.
03:34So we could perhaps begin to consider the possibilities that, you know, they're stripped.
03:41They're stripped.
03:41Yeah.
03:42Which makes you think it's an even more horrific atrocity.
03:47Angela Boyle and the team from Oxford Archaeology are lifting every bone to take back to their laboratory for analysis.
03:54But clues are already emerging.
03:58This is a fragment that I have just literally lifted from the ground.
04:03And look at that.
04:05So what do you think about that one? That's amazing.
04:08What we have there is part of the right temporal, which is just round about here.
04:13Yeah.
04:15It has a very visible, well-defined cut mark.
04:20Well, that is so clean, isn't it?
04:22It is.
04:23Yeah.
04:24I mean, you'd think sword, wouldn't you? That would be my first thought.
04:27Yeah.
04:27Because of the flatness of it and the cleanness of it.
04:30But I don't think that you can cut somebody's head off with a living person's head off with a sword
04:35unless you tie their hands up.
04:37Mm-hmm.
04:38You see, if I kneel down to be executed, I'm going to be like that, cowering, and my whole shoulders
04:44are shut.
04:45You can't get at my neck.
04:46But if you give me a good push, Cal, I can't help but to stop myself falling on my face.
04:52Yeah.
04:53I throw my shoulders back and lift my head off.
04:55Oh, yes.
04:56It's a grim thought.
04:57Yeah.
04:58So I don't believe you can execute somebody unless their hands are tied.
05:02Mm-hmm.
05:02Only one problem.
05:03Yes.
05:03None of these have their hands tied.
05:08Was it an execution?
05:12Or were they decapitated post-mortem? That's the big question.
05:17The site already presents some key pieces of evidence.
05:21There are 54 skeletons, but just 51 skulls.
05:28They were naked.
05:30Their hands were not tied.
05:33And their bodies were thrown into the pit.
05:37Is this the aftermath of a battle?
05:40A massacre?
05:41Or some violent sacrifice?
05:45Hidden in the skeletons are vital clues that could unravel the mystery of this atrocity.
05:57For centuries, England was wracked with violence, invasions, and civil war.
06:05So there are many possible explanations for our mass grave.
06:10Before the investigation can make progress, we need to know exactly when the victims died.
06:17Depending on the date, they could be anything from Celts to Romans, Saxons, or Vikings.
06:24Every skeleton contains a hidden clock.
06:28When a person dies, carbon-14 isotopes in their bones begin to decay.
06:34Radiocarbon data measures this level of decay, zoning in on the date.
06:40The answer comes back from the lab.
06:43The victims almost certainly died between 980 and 1030 A.D.
06:48One of the most turbulent times in British history.
06:56A thousand years ago, Anglo-Saxon England was under attack from pagan warriors.
07:03Vikings.
07:06Sailing from Scandinavia in search of riches.
07:18Archaeologist Dr. Britt Bailey was raised in a country with Viking heritage.
07:23Modern-day Denmark.
07:24She has a lifelong fascination with her ancestors and the destruction they wrought.
07:31She's come to Britain's south coast.
07:33To the very place where the Viking Age had its violent beginning.
07:37Just over there is the site of our mass grave.
07:40But here, on the Isle of Portland, this is where the first recorded Viking raid on England took place.
07:53Three ships sailed here in 789.
07:57Kings Reeve rode down from Dorchester to meet them, thinking that they were traitors.
08:01But instead, they killed him.
08:03And this marked the beginning of the Viking Age in Britain.
08:08And wave after wave of raids followed on from that first initial attack.
08:14After a hundred years of conflict, a treaty was finally signed.
08:19Vikings settled in Britain and established their own separate kingdom.
08:23Danelaw, alongside the Anglo-Saxons to the south and west.
08:33For a century, they lived in relative peace.
08:36And the Anglo-Saxon kingdom prospered.
08:42England at the turn of the millennium is the most precociously organized state in the whole of Western Europe.
08:48It has a single language.
08:50It has a single religion.
08:53It has a single chain of authority, descending from a king, which reaches to almost every corner of the kingdom.
09:03Not only is England incredibly efficient as a state, it is also very rich.
09:12But if you have great wealth, it can also lead to great vulnerability as well.
09:17This is the England the victims in the pit would have known.
09:26Now their bones are out of the ground, they are digitally mapped to record where every victim lay.
09:34Archaeologist Angela Boyle begins her analysis of each skeleton.
09:39It's a unique find.
09:41There's nothing to parallel this.
09:43And that makes it very, very exciting.
09:45Also quite sad, quite moving and emotional as well because clearly all of these individuals met a very unhappy end.
09:56All 54 victims are male.
09:58So given the times in which they lived, they are most likely a band of warriors.
10:03Angela's analysis of their bones starts right at the bottom of the pit with the first man to go in.
10:10The development of the skeleton is not entirely complete.
10:15Fusion of the long bone ends is still happening, which you can see indicated by this line here.
10:21This gives Angela a good idea of his age.
10:31He's quite a young male, probably about 19 or 20.
10:36The length of his thigh bone gives his height.
10:41This particular individual was about five foot nine.
10:47The bones are quite big and robust.
10:55What's interesting is the fact that his upper body seems rather more well built.
11:11And there's one other striking discovery.
11:14The head of his femur is smaller than the head of his humerus.
11:19And that suggests to me that perhaps some sort of activity which involved the upper body was being regularly undertaken.
11:32In 980, after a century of peace, Viking raiders returned to plunder the riches of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom.
11:42Many believed it was the beginning of the end.
11:58There's a feeling in the shadow of the year 1000 that the order and prosperity that the English had previously
12:04enjoyed seems to be breaking down.
12:06That all these may be calamities that are serving to herald that ultimate breakdown, which will be represented by the
12:15Day of Judgment.
12:25One of the greatest pieces of ancient literature is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a record of events written by monks
12:33begun around 890 A.D.
12:39In 979, it documents the crowning of an unpopular king who would fuel fear of the apocalypse, Æthelred the Unready.
12:50In this year, Æthelred was consecrated king on the Sunday 14 days after Easter.
12:59And in this same year was seen a bloody cloud many times in the likeness of fire.
13:13This is particularly unnerving because it is well known that clouds of blood appearing on the sky will be a
13:21marker that the end days are approaching.
13:23So right from the beginning, there is this sense that Æthelred is a king who is marked by looming calamity.
13:31The carbon dates show the 54 men in the pit could have died during the troubled reign of Æthelred.
13:38But whose side were they on?
13:40The Vikings returned to Dorset again and again.
13:45It was from here that they could drive deep into that kingdom.
13:49And therefore, it's likely that the bodies that we find in the mass grave are probably Anglo-Saxons defending themselves
13:56from these marating sea pirates.
14:05But no objects of any description were found in the pit.
14:09So far, the burial offers no clear answer to the men's identity.
14:19The investigators must dig deeper by turning to science.
14:25The victims' life story is locked in their teeth.
14:29Professor Jane Evans of the British Geological Survey has taken one of them for analysis.
14:35I think if you start to think what one tooth can tell you, it's absolutely fantastic.
14:40And what we can build up about a person's past and their childhood and their subsequent movement just out of
14:46a tooth.
14:49We're going to separate strontium and oxygen out of the tooth enamel of this individual.
14:54And we're going to look at the isotope composition.
14:57The strontium isotopes tell us about the type of area the person grew up in geographically.
15:03And the oxygen isotopes will tell us something about the type of climate in which they spent their childhood.
15:13Tooth enamel is created during childhood and its composition remains unchanged throughout life.
15:20During its formation, strontium and oxygen are incorporated from the local food and drink, fixing the isotope signature of that
15:29place into the teeth.
15:35So what this machine is doing at the moment is measuring the isotope composition of the strontium that's in this
15:41machine that comes from a tooth.
15:43And when it's completed its analysis, we will get a ratio that we will be able to use to diagnose
15:49where that person spent his childhood.
15:56I think it's absolutely fantastic when you're sitting at the mass spectrometer and waiting and the answer comes out and
16:01you sit there and you think,
16:02the only person that knows that. You want to run down the corridor and tell somebody.
16:07But you usually check all your calculations first before you do that.
16:11The most likely scenario is that the victims in the pit are local Anglo-Saxons killed by Viking raiders.
16:19If this is true, their teeth should show they grew up in southern Britain.
16:24This is the field that we would expect them to plot in if they had spent their childhood in Britain.
16:29And all the individuals plot to the left hand side, which is the colder climate side.
16:36So all these individuals spent their childhood in a colder climate.
16:45This is Brit's first opportunity to analyze Jane's isotope data.
16:51The results are totally unexpected.
16:55What's immediately apparent is that the victims in the mass grave are not from England.
17:01They're not Anglo-Saxons. They're from Scandinavia.
17:04And that must mean that they're Vikings.
17:14We usually think of the Anglo-Saxons as victims of the Vikings and not the other way around.
17:20So this changes the way that we need to approach this grave entirely.
17:26Surprisingly, the victims are Scandinavian.
17:29Now Brit must work out why 54 Vikings were beheaded.
17:37It's likely a mass Viking execution would have been recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.
17:44Just nine copies remain.
17:47The oldest is held here at the University of Cambridge.
17:52Not only is it written by Anglo-Saxons in the period that we're looking at, but it's also written in
17:59their own language, in Old English or Anglo-Saxon.
18:11It very much gives us a year-by-year account of the major salient episodes of what's going on.
18:19So the text is divided into two columns.
18:22One lists the dates down the side, and the other, the entries for each year.
18:30Hopefully, somewhere in these pages, there'll be clues telling us what happened on that day on the Dorset Ridgeway.
18:40Brit searches for incidents that may have resulted in Vikings being captured and killed.
18:46We know that this is a period where we're seeing an increase in the scale of the battles.
18:54And in 991, we come across an entry for the Battle of Maldon.
19:07Olaf Tryggvossum raided Folkestone with 93 ships.
19:14He then went on to Maldon in Essex.
19:19There, Eldulman Byrhtnoth met him with his army and fought.
19:25The Chronicle documents that Brythnoth led the Anglo-Saxon army against the Viking horde.
19:33Precise details of the battle were recorded in an epic Anglo-Saxon poem.
19:42Here stands a good earl in the midst of his men,
19:47who will defend his homeland, the Kingdom of Æthelred.
19:55You heathen shall fall in battle.
20:03Brythnoth drew his sword from its sheathens.
20:06Broad and bright-edged, and struck against the armour.
20:14Warriors in conflict fell.
20:21The slain fell on earth. They stood steadfast.
20:27Brythnoth stirred them.
20:29Fiercely with his sword, he didn't restrain the blow.
20:33And the doomed warrior fell at his feet.
20:40Fiercely with his sword.
20:47Fiercely with his sword.
20:49Fiercely with his sword.
20:50Fiercely with his sword.
20:50Despite their gallant fight,
20:52ultimately, Brythnoth's Anglo-Saxon army lost the battle.
20:59Fiercely with his sword.
21:08Fiercely with his sword.
21:08The prisoners of warveen.
21:14If so, their bones should shown evidence of battle injuries.
21:19Do we see trauma on the leg bones?
21:22Or any that would have been incurred, perhaps in a fracas or some type of battle?
21:26There's actually a surprising lack of trauma that's not related to the beheadings.
21:34There are virtually no battle scars, just some minor injuries.
21:40There are a couple of examples, and it's trauma to the hand, to the left hand.
21:46Again, with a sharp, bladed weapon.
21:50It's what we would describe as a defensive wound that the individuals put their hand up.
21:56With so little trauma to the bones, it's clear the victims aren't war-dead.
22:07If the victims in the mass grave weren't the victims of battle,
22:10one needs to look for other incidences in which they might have died.
22:15One of the things that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions is the massacre on St Bryce's Day.
22:23By the dawn of the first millennium, it seemed the prediction of apocalypse was coming to pass.
22:31Viking raids were on the rise.
22:37King Ethelred took drastic action.
22:42November 13th, 1002.
22:45St Bryce's Day was one of the darkest days in Britain's history.
22:53The king ordered all the Danish men who were among the English race to be killed on St Bryce's Day.
22:59Because King Ethelred was told they wanted to ensnare his life and all his counsellors and take his kingdom.
23:19I think the St Bryce's Day massacre, far from illustrating the king who's somehow losing it,
23:24is the mark of someone who feels that he is getting the kingdom back under his control.
23:30Are the skeletons in the Dorset Ridgeway Pit, victims of this massacre on the 13th of November, 1002?
23:42The best way to find out is to compare them with other burials that are closely linked to St Bryce's
23:48Day.
23:49A gruesome mass grave was recently discovered 150 kilometers away in Oxford.
23:56Brits come to see if they have similar injuries to the men in the Dorset Ridgeway Pit.
24:01In terms of cause of death, what do we know about these individuals?
24:06Well, this guy here is a good example.
24:09He's actually got multiple injuries.
24:12He's got some sword cuts to the back of his spine.
24:17This is a leg bone.
24:19It's quite a clear blade cut, either from a sword or an axe.
24:25So this guy's actually had a cut to the back of the leg there.
24:29This skull seems to show some quite clear traces of trauma.
24:34What happened to this individual?
24:35Well, this chap has actually been hit by a bladed weapon, either a sword or an axe, several times.
24:42So we've got two clear scars on the front of the skull.
24:47And then there's further marks on the top of the skull and the back.
24:52In addition to that, we believe he's also been speared twice because there's two triangular holes in the top of
24:59his skull.
24:59Clearly, they wanted him quite dead.
25:02Yeah, and by the looks of it, he might have put up quite a fight.
25:05Mm.
25:06These individuals from the Oxford burial seem to have been killed in some kind of frenzied massacre by perhaps even
25:13a mob.
25:18Whereas our bones from the Ridgeway site appear to have been killed in a much more orderly fashion, perhaps even
25:26an execution.
25:30Most of the skeletons from the Dorset Ridgeway have just one wound, the beheading.
25:37It's very different to the multiple injuries of those killed in the Oxford massacre.
25:43But do the Dorset bones reveal any more about the way they died?
25:52It's just going in there.
25:55This is the second cervical vertebrae, so from around about here.
26:02Mm.
26:03And part of that bone has something called an odontoid, which is a little peg-shaped area of bone.
26:09Mm.
26:10You can see here it has been sliced.
26:13Clean through.
26:13Clean through.
26:14Mm.
26:15It's a very, very good example of a clean cup.
26:19This tiny clue could speak volumes about how they died.
26:24Do you have any indication of what angle they were being decapitated from?
26:29It would appear that the majority are from the front.
26:32So they were facing their executioner?
26:34They were facing their executioner, yes.
26:43And were all of the executions executed so cleanly?
26:47The majority, yes.
26:50There are a small number of examples where maybe two or three blows have been inflicted.
27:02This has probably occurred where the first blow to the vertebrae hasn't been sufficient to kill the individual, remove the
27:10head.
27:11Evidence shows the weapon used was brutally efficient.
27:14That's the left, the left ear hole.
27:17Mm-hmm.
27:17Now, this area here, which has been removed, again, you can see, very, very clean cut.
27:23Mm-hmm.
27:23This is the mastoid process, which is the knobbly bit just behind your ear hole.
27:30Now, that's one of the thickest parts of the skull.
27:34Mm-hmm.
27:34And the blade has sliced completely and very cleanly through that part of the skull.
27:43Most of the skeletons in the pit show just one cut to the throat, and they must have been alive
27:50at the moment of beheading.
27:54Knowing what the murder weapon was and how it was wielded may provide the key to why they were killed.
28:02Brit turns to weapons expert Gordon Summers.
28:06We now know that they were alive when they were beheaded.
28:09So it's the beheading itself that killed them.
28:11What would they have used?
28:12Had you told me that the beheading was post-mortem, then I would have said it was an axe.
28:18You've got a corpse on the ground, just like you might cut a log.
28:21The axe is the tool to use.
28:23That has got considerable weight.
28:26That would shatter the vertebrae.
28:27So I think it's reasonable to assume that an axe wasn't the weapon of choice.
28:31What does that leave us with?
28:33The prime candidate for this act is the sword.
28:37This is a very prized weapon of the period, both for Vikings and Anglo-Saxons.
28:41To the outside edges of that are forged, hardened steel, steel capable of taking a very fearsome edge.
28:48It's a weapon that is handed down through the generations.
28:53Mm-hmm.
28:57A neck of lamb is going to help demonstrate the devastating power of the Anglo-Saxon sword.
29:08Wow, it hasn't completely come off, but you can really get a sense of how deep that cut is, can't
29:13you?
29:15There's no shattering in that vertebrae at all.
29:19It has gone completely through that vertebrae.
29:21What's holding it on is the muscles at the back.
29:28Clean cuts on the skeleton are only half the story.
29:31So this is quite extraordinary.
29:33What would it have meant to these Vikings to die by the sword, looking their killer in the eye?
29:39To use a sword against somebody showing that degree of bravery is perversely showing them a considerable degree of respect.
29:47They are warriors being killed by a warrior's weapon and being allowed to exhibit the qualities of a warrior so
29:54valued at the time.
29:57So who were these brave men, who had the courage to look their killers in the eye?
30:04An ancient Viking saga bears a striking resemblance to the events on the Dorset Ridgeway.
30:10It's about a particularly fearsome group, the Joms Viking.
30:16Though the historic accuracy of these texts is debated, they provide an insight into the world the Vikings inhabited.
30:23What's very curious is that we have a description in the Jomsvikinge saga,
30:29which seems to tell of an execution very similar to the type that we see at the mass grave in
30:36the Dorset Ridgeway.
30:37This saga details a battle which happened in Norway, at which Vikings were taken prisoner and executed by another group
30:46of Vikings.
30:47The Jomsvikinge saga is written in Old Norse, and it tells us,
31:00The Earl ordered men to go after them, to take them prisoner.
31:06The Vikings put up no resistance.
31:11The 70 of them were brought ashore, and the Earl had them all tied to one piece of rope.
31:20Thorkalira then proceeded to cut off their heads.
31:30The Vikings said,
31:57Here we have a Viking who wants to look death in the eyes.
32:01He wants to look his executioner in his eyes.
32:05He wants to die a brave death.
32:12Perhaps what we're seeing here is a repeat of this execution ritual on English soil.
32:18Can the skeletons reveal an even closer tie between the Jomsvikinge saga and the events on the Ridgeway?
32:27Angela's found some remarkable clues.
32:32I'm very, very, very excited.
32:35These are the front teeth.
32:37These are the first incisors.
32:39Now, what is interesting here is the fact that both of these teeth have grooves.
32:46They've been filed.
32:48Right.
32:48There are a number of really quite fine lines.
32:52And do you find this kind of dental modification anywhere else?
32:56As far as I know, there are no other examples of this in the UK, certainly, to date.
33:03There are a small number of examples known from Scandinavia.
33:08So, the fact that we've got the first example of this in the UK, in a Viking context, is extremely
33:16exciting.
33:17It's remarkable.
33:18There has been one school of thought which thinks that some of these grooves might have been filled with either
33:22a coloured paste
33:24or some kind of modification to make them even more apparent in the mouth.
33:29This profound and unique discovery provides a crucial link to a description of the most famous Jomsviking warrior of all.
33:40One clue to this teeth filing phenomenon that we see in the mass grave may come from a very high
33:48status individual from Viking times, King Harold Bluetooth.
33:56Perhaps what they're referring to is the fact that he filed his tooth and filled it with a blue colouration.
34:03Medieval sources claim Harold Bluetooth founded the Jomsviking, one of the most feared bands of Viking mercenaries, professional warriors who
34:13would fight for anyone for money.
34:15The filed teeth of some of the men in the pit could link them to the Jomsviking mercenaries.
34:23With this new clue, Brit returns to the Anglo-Saxon chronicle to search for incidents involving such warriors for hire.
34:32From 980 until the year 1000, we see an increasing number of Viking raids and also battles being fought between
34:39the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings.
34:44There was great hostility in the land of the English race.
34:48The Viking ships burned and raided everywhere.
34:53The Anglo-Saxon chronicle tells us King Ethelred paid enormous sums of money to the Vikings to put an end
35:00to their attacks.
35:01And to stop this great terror which they wrought along the seacoast, it was decided to pay off the Danish
35:09men.
35:13This payment was 10,000 pounds.
35:18That's over 75 million US dollars in today's money.
35:22It had little effect.
35:25So, Ethelred changed tack.
35:27He offered Viking crews gold and silver to switch sides and fight for him instead as mercenaries.
35:37He was hiring Vikings to fight off other Viking bands and we particularly hear of one Viking mercenary called Palig.
35:47Palig and his mercenary crews were paid by Ethelred to protect his kingdom.
35:52But as the Anglo-Saxon chronicle records, he betrayed the king.
35:58These are soldiers who will fight on behalf of the lord who's willing to pay them the most.
36:04But these mercenaries are quite fickle and they will often switch their allegiance to whichever lord is willing to pay
36:10them more.
36:12Palig deserted King Ethelred.
36:15Despite the gifts of gold and silver that he had given him, and he joined the Vikings with all the
36:22ships he could muster.
36:28The evidence points to the bodies in the pit being Viking mercenaries.
36:36They may have paid the ultimate price for their treachery.
36:49But one mystery still remains.
36:55Why was an exposed hilltop location chosen as an execution site?
37:03Brit is taking landscape archaeologist Alex Langlands to the crime scene.
37:11Are you nervous, Brit?
37:12About flying?
37:13No, no, no. I know you are, though. You're all right. You'll be all right.
37:16I'm terrified. I'm just hoping once we get up there we get to see some fantastic things and it'll take
37:22my mind off this.
37:28The landscape really comes alive from up here, doesn't it?
37:31Yes, it really does.
37:33To the south of us we can already start to see Portland.
37:36Because it is here that the Viking period really starts in England, isn't it?
37:40I mean, right there, that's where we have the first raid in 789.
37:44That's right, and that's what's so tantalizing about where you've got your execution cemetery.
37:49Yeah.
37:51Now this is the site of our execution here.
37:56It's at this location, this really important crossroads.
38:00We've got Dorchester to the north, we've got our beach to the south.
38:04Okay, you've got the Roman road connecting them, but they'd also be using the ridgeway as well.
38:09So you've got this really important crossroads, probably one of the most important crossroads in the county, actually.
38:15Right.
38:18Here's our ridgeway here, just down here.
38:24Now this would have come into being in the prehistoric period, but of course by the time we get to
38:29our period, you know, it's forming a major highway.
38:32All along the ridgeway are ancient burial mounds, known as barrows.
38:38Look at that barrow there.
38:40Spectacular.
38:41And they're peppered all along this ridgeway.
38:43Obviously these barrows are predating the Saxon period.
38:47How would they have been interpreted and viewed by the people at that time?
38:50They still had a ritual significance.
38:53Right.
38:53It's just that that significance is changing in a more Christianized landscape, and they're becoming associated more with sinister, demonic
39:02and devious aspects of society.
39:05You know, if you're going to kill someone who's committed crimes against this kingdom, what you're going to want to
39:11do is you're going to want to kill them in a place that's going to take that death and, if
39:15you like, magnify it a thousand times.
39:17So to kill someone on or near one of these barrows would have been very profound, actually, for both the
39:24Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings at the time.
39:28Standing at the execution site, Alex thinks there's another reason why 54 skeletons and 51 heads were discovered right here.
39:37This is a highly, highly visible place.
39:40You know, from where we're stood now, we can see the island of Portland, we can see Weymouth, we can
39:45see Dorchester as well.
39:46And all that traffic using the road there, they would have known there's that execution site.
39:52Now, if you've got heads missing, we often get referred to in documents concerning the landscape, we get reference to
39:59Shefford-Stocken, which means heads on stakes.
40:02Right.
40:02So if you've got missing heads...
40:03We are missing some heads.
40:04You're thinking that they might have taken those heads and put them on stakes to make it visible as people
40:09came up over that roadway.
40:10Absolutely.
40:15This is a statement, not just to passing Vikings and other raiders.
40:21This is also a statement to the local people.
40:23It's the king saying, look, I'm in charge here.
40:34Here we have a piece of English history which had been completely forgotten for a thousand years, and suddenly we've
40:45been able to piece it back together.
40:54A vivid picture of a dark episode emerges.
40:58It's clear from the skeletal evidence that these people were probably not killed during the battle.
41:04And therefore it's almost certain that they were ambushed.
41:20Outnumbered, surrounded, and disarmed, the men who were ambushed were led from the site of their ambush to a very
41:27significant site, the Ridgeway, on the crossroads between a major Roman road and the Ridgeway line itself.
41:41The Vikings were led by their captors up the Ridgeway to a site next to a burial mound with its
41:48dark pagan associations.
41:53Fifty-four dead bodies in the pit.
41:56This number must be significant.
41:59We know that Viking longships at this time could carry a crew of 60 men quite easily.
42:05So perhaps what we're looking at is a crew from a ship.
42:12The skeletons backed this up.
42:15The head of the hip bone was smaller than the head of the shoulder bone.
42:21Several of the skeletons had well-developed upper bodies.
42:26And that's consistent with the physique that one would expect of a rower.
42:34These men were a band of brothers who would have lived together and fought together.
42:40And the skeletons held another clue to how they died.
42:47One expects to see people beheaded from behind.
42:51But here we have a very unusual case.
42:53These men were beheaded from the front.
42:57Vikings went into battle looking for honor and glory.
43:01These men wanted to show that they weren't afraid to look their executioners in the eye.
43:06They wanted to die with their honor intact.
43:14At the turn of the first millennium, the Jons Viking saga would have been known throughout the Viking world.
43:22Perhaps what we're seeing here is a group of men who wanted to emulate the deaths of these great Viking
43:28heroes from the sagas.
43:31Not only did these men live together and fight together, they went to their deaths together.
43:55Ultimately, the mass execution was in vain.
43:59Anglo-Saxon England was doomed.
44:03King Æthelred's kingdom collapsed and Vikings took over the whole of England.
44:12The beheaded Vikings lay in the shallow grave for a thousand years.
44:18Only now can their story be told.
44:29A brand new tomorrow can scanning the victims of a legendary volcanic eruption tell us more about Pompeii's final hours.
44:36John Sargent and an expert team look for new evidence that Sunday at 9.
44:40Next, Fight Night Live, Bella Tour from Birmingham.
44:43The Packinicar is coming towards the fluence of Red Dead.
44:43Next, Fight Night Live, conservatively, the Federico's late-它的 1987, come over andאת Globally, it is probably relevant.
Comments