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Human sacrifice in Viking Age Britain and Ireland
journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-20, 06:37 authored by Shane McLeodHuman sacrifice, as part of pre-Christian religious rites, is one of a number of violent attributes commonly associated with the Vikings both in post-Viking Age medieval written and visual sources and in popular imagination, the latter perhaps best exemplified by the 'blood eagle' as performed on Jarl Borg and King AElle of Northumbria in the popular television show Vikings. But is there any unequivocal contemporary evidence for human sacrifice? This paper will briefly discuss the problems of interpreting the evidence for human sacrifice, before concentrating on the evidence from Britain and Ireland. Despite the silence of contemporary insular written sources, it is found that there is one certain and other probable examples of human sacrifices in the archaeological records of England, Scotland, the Isle of Man, and Ireland. Amongst the probable examples is a new suggestion that human sacrifice occurred at Whithorn, the site of a Northumbrian bishopric and monastery, but now in southern Scotland. Discussion of Whithorn will be the focus of the article. The evidence for human sacrifice will be briefly discussed with regard to the active practice of Norse religious beliefs in Britain, and in the Scandinavian acculturation to indigenous practices, including Christianity, in the ninth and tenth centuries CE.
History
Publication title
Journal of the Australian Early Medieval AssociationVolume
14Pagination
71-88ISSN
1449-9320Department/School
School of HumanitiesPublisher
Australian Early Medieval Association Inc.Place of publication
AustraliaRights statement
Copyright 2018 The Author and Australian Early Medieval AssociationRepository Status
- Restricted