According to Sverre’s saga, in 1197 the Baglers threw a dead man into the well at Sverresborg, with the intention of poisoning the Birkebeiners’ drinking water. Analysis of a skeleton found in the well at Sverresborg in 2016 now sheds new light on the dramatic story from King Sverre’s saga.
In 2016, a skeleton (first discovered in 1938) was retrieved from the well in Sverresborg. Researchers now know how old the man was, what he looked like and where in Norway he was from.
New DNA analysis
An interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), the NTNU University Museum and others has resulted in a scientific article published in the journal iScience. The article places the skeleton discovery in a cultural-historical context, and presents methods and results from DNA analysis.
-It’s not often you get the opportunity to compare physical remains from archaeological excavations with specific characters from sagas.
So says Anna Petersén. She was NIKU’s project manager for the excavations of the skeleton in 2014 and 2016 and co-author of the article that is now out.
Read more about the man in the well and the findings in the article on NIKU’s website: The man in the well at Sverresborg was blond, blue-eyed and from Agder – Norsk institutt for kulturminneforskning
