To Valhalla by horseback? : horse burial in Scandinavia during the Viking Age

Abstract

Horse burial probably served several of the ideological functions. Indeed, if we take a cursory glance at horse burials in the archaeological record, it is clear from their marked variation that diverse rationales would have underlain them. Horses are found in both men’s and women’s graves, in both inhumation and cremation burials and in both flat ground and mound burials. In many instances their skeletons have been found fully intact in the grave, while on a more than few occasions they have been found decapitated. Simply stated, a monolithic rule for a horse burial during the Viking Age did not exist. Despite this, a few major trends present themselves in the archaeology. The most eye-catching of these trends is that of horses inhumed in ship burials. Horses and ships are regularly paired in the physical record, with roots reaching back to Bronze Age rock art, and appear together in the grave with exceptional frequency. Another trend that comes to light is the 10th century horseman burials which show up primarily in Denmark. These graves characteristically contain rich riding equipment that seems to reflect the emergence of a new type of political/military elite in Scandinavia. The last major group of horse burials I will discuss involves the well-known chamber-graves at Birka. These show a high degree of homogeneity, suggesting a well-organized military presence in the early Viking town. Of the archaeological analysis, the three above topics will receive the stallion’s share of the focus. To offer a more complete picture of the practice, however, I will do a case study on a particularly intriguing grave-find from Arninge in Sweden and, a bit further on, bring the horse burial evidence from Lindholm Høje in northern Denmark into our discussion as well.