Headless Vikings the “most exciting & disturbing” archaeological discoveries in Britain in recent years

Headless Vikings the “most exciting & disturbing” archaeological discoveries in Britain in recent years

Oxford Archaeology said the results suggested the burial took place at the time of, or shortly after, the men’s execution which had probably been performed at the graveside.© Oxford Archaeology source
Fifty beheaded young men found in a burial pit at a 2012 Olympics building site were probably executed Vikings.

About 50 skeletons were found in an old quarry pit at Ridgeway Hill, in Dorset, in 2009, during the construction of the Weymouth relief road. All had been decapitated – their bodies were thrown into shallow graves with their heads piled up to one side.

The individuals are thought to have been executed at the graveside and stripped of their clothes, with defence wounds on their hands, arms and skulls and injuries to their necks and shoulders suggesting a bloodbath in which several blows were required to remove each head.

The Ridgeway Hill Viking burial pit at Ridgeway Hill near Weymouth, Dorset, was a mass grave of 54 skeletons and 51 heads of Scandinavian men executed some time between AD 910 and 1030.

The men are believed to have been Vikings executed by local Anglo-Saxons. The dismembered skeletons were discovered by archaeologists in June 2009, and their identity and approximate ages were later confirmed by forensic analyses.

Although the immediate circumstances of the deaths is unknown, the event occurred at a time of conflict between the native Anglo-Saxons and Viking invaders, and it has been suggested that the Vikings had been captured during an attempted raid into Anglo-Saxon territory.