Researchers discover there was an overseas trade supplying horses for sacrifices during the late Viking age

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Researchers discover there was an overseas trade supplying horses for sacrifices during the late Viking age

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Map of potential outlier horse origins. Credit: Science Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.ado3529

Prehistoric communities from Iceland to the

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sacrificed horses as part of their ******** rites. These Baltic tribes, known as the

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, sacrificed horses longer than anywhere else in Europe, up until the 14th century. Christians despised this practice, however, and it quickly fell out of favor once a community converted to Christianity.

Archaeologists have studied Baltic sacrificial deposits for nearly 200 years. Two characteristics

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—that stallions were exclusively sacrificed, and that the Balts sourced their horses from the local

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population, commonly known as “forest” or “wild” horses.

However, our team’s

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challenges these “facts” about the last horse sacrifices in Europe. It shows that about a third of sacrificial horses were, in fact, mares—and surprisingly, that some horses began their life in ********** Scandinavia and ended up across the Baltic Sea as sacrificial victims.

The Balts were a loose group of tribes that spoke a language related to modern Lithuanian and Latvian. The Romans called them Aestii, and traded with them for amber. The Balts were illiterate, but we have snippets written about them by outsiders such as the travelers and traders

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.

The Balts were proficient horse riders who used equipment like bridles, saddles and stirrups. The 11th-century ******* historian

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wrote that Balt elites drank fermented mare’s milk and ate horse flesh.

The horse sacrifices were always public rituals that involved the whole community. Offering pits may have included multiple or single complete horses or partial animals, with or without their riding equipment. While the horses were commonly put in a crouched position or ***** down on one side, in one noteworthy case in what is now northern Poland, a horse was *******

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. We also know from archaeological analysis that some were ******* alive with their legs tied, or covered with heavy stones to stop them bucking out of the offering pit.

The deposition of partial animals would have been a particularly *******, macabre public spectacle, involving decapitation, flaying, and halving or quartering of horses. While horses were often ******* separately from humans, some were *******

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a spread of cremated human bone and ash.

Why horses, though?

It’s important to note that other animals weren’t spared when it came to Baltic sacrifices. We have

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from cows, sheep and goats, dogs, birds, fish and even a domesticated cat excavated from these tribal cemeteries.

But horse sacrifices were the most common and seemingly the most important, probably due to their spiritual, social and economic significance to the Balts.

Medieval travelers who visited these people wrote that horses were an important part of ******** ceremonies for elite members of society. In the late ninth century, Wulfstan

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elaborate, daylong horse races in which the winners received the deceased’s property. The 14th-century chronicler Peter von Dusburg

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horses being run to the point of no longer being able to stand and dying.

To learn more about why specific horses were chosen to be sacrificed, we sampled teeth from 80 horses ******* in eastern Baltic cemeteries from around AD100 to 1300 for strontium isotope and genetic analysis.

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can tell us whether horses were raised in the same general area as where they were *******, because the adage “you are what you eat” is true on a molecular level.

The chemical element

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varies from place to place based on local geology, and plants incorporate soil strontium. When horses eat plants, that strontium is incorporated into their bones and teeth.

Tooth enamel mineralizes just once while teeth develop, and does not change. So, by measuring strontium isotope ratios in teeth and comparing them with the burial environment, archaeologists can tell if horses were raised locally or brought from elsewhere.

For genetic **** determination, horses are just like humans. Males have an X and Y chromosome, whereas females have two X chromosomes.

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tests which **** chromosomes are present in each sample.

Our strontium results show that at least three of the horses were from central Sweden or Finland—probably brought in by boat across the Baltic Sea from up to 1,000 miles (1500km) away. All date from the 11th to the 13th centuries, which means this increase in mobility began in the latter part of the Viking age and continued after.

Our second major finding was that genetics confirmed that up to a third of the horses sacrificed across all periods were mares, contrary to the previously accepted wisdom that only stallions were sacrificed.

People were well connected during and after the Viking age. Trade between neighbors continued, regardless of religion. One of the imported horses was even ******* with a trader’s weight. Scholars always knew that material goods and slaves were transported along vibrant, far-reaching Viking trade routes. Our findings confirm that horses were as well.

While the exact meaning of these rituals ******** mysterious, the **** of the horse wasn’t central to the rite nor the reason a horse was chosen. More likely, the determining factor was the high prestige value of an imported animal.

Nonetheless, the fact that these horses were brought from ********** lands and sacrificed in an ostentatiously pagan fashion may represent a powerful act of resistance and resilience by the Balts.

Provided by
The Conversation

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Researchers discover there was an overseas trade supplying horses for sacrifices during the late Viking age (2024, August 14)
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