Archeology students excavate a mass Viking grave—a literal giant inside

Here’s what you’ll learn as you read this story:

• Cambridge University archeology graduates were on a training dig when they discovered a mass grave three miles outside the city.

• Dated to the ninth century AD, a time when the Vikings ruled the region, the grave contained the remains of at least 10 different young men.

• One set of remains belonged to a man who was considered a giant in his time.

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A team of students from the University of Cambridge made a huge discovery, figuratively and literally, while digging three miles outside the city during training. The excavations seemed unexpected at first, but that changed with the discovery of mass burials in the ninth century.

Based on the number of skulls found in the remains, the archaeological team concluded that the burial pit at Wandlebury contained the remains of at least 10 people. The most remarkable person found in the pit was a man whose height, 6 feet 5 inches, was so far above the average for his time that he was considered a giant. Adding to the intrigue, Vishal had a surgically bored hole in his skull.

“Before we discovered the first remains, our best find was a 1960s Smarties lid,” archeology graduate student Olivia Courtney said in a statement. “I had never come across human remains while digging, and I was amazed at how close yet distant these people felt. We were only separated by a few years, but over a thousand years in time.”

The location on the outskirts of Cambridge was once a frontier battleground during the late eighth-century conflict between King Offa and the Saxon-ruled Kingdom of Mercia, which controlled the area under the neighboring kingdom of East Anglia. Around 874, the Viking Great Army sacked the city, and Cambridgeshire was later incorporated into the Viking-ruled kingdom of East Anglia.

The burial pit was probably the result of that conflict, as all the remains in it were of young men. The mass grave was a mixture of complete and fragmented remains, including a skull with no apparent body, a pile of feet, and four complete skeletons. Some remains were also found in positions suggesting that they had been tied together. Experts believe that the young people were thrown into the pit without ceremony, possibly after a battle or a mass death.

“Vishal” was between 17 and 24 years old, face down in the ditch. In those days, a man standing at an average height of only 5 feet 6 inches was considered extraordinary. An inch-diameter hole in his skull indicates a trepanation procedure, which was believed to relieve migraines and seizures.

“The individual may have had a tumor affecting the pituitary gland and producing excessive amounts of growth hormone,” Trish Beers, curator of the university’s Duckworth Collection, said in a statement. “We can see this in the long shafts of their arm bones and unique features elsewhere in the skeleton. Such a condition in the brain would have increased pressure on the skull, which may have tried to relieve the cause of the headache. Not uncommon with headaches today.”

Some of the men had signs of battle injuries, including one with a cut on his jaw, indicating that he had been beheaded. As the parts were thrown haphazardly into the pit, including ribs, a pelvis and legs placed together on top of the corpse, this suggests that the burial followed some form of mass execution.

“Those buried may have received corporal punishment, and that may have connected Wandlebury as a sacred or famous meeting place,” said Oscar Aldred of the university. “It may be that some of the dismembered body parts were first displayed as trophies and then collected and buried with the executed or otherwise killed.”

However, apart from signs of severed heads, there is not much evidence that body parts were severed. Eldred therefore concluded that they may have “literally fallen” from the dissolution when they entered the pit. “Cambridgeshire was a borderland between Mercia and East Anglia, and there were constant wars between the Saxons and the Vikings as they battled over the territory over many decades,” Eldred said. “We suspect that the pit may be related to these conflicts.”

Radiocarbon dating links the bones to the ninth century, but no additional artifacts were found in the pit to help narrow down the date range. Historic England plans to carry out a new geophysical survey of the area to find out more about the burial. The Cambridge team will go on to work on bone analysis, including ancient DNA and isotopic work, to investigate health, kinship and ancestral relationships. The team may try “refitting” the remains to see if they can piece them back together to get a more accurate count of the people buried.

“I didn’t expect to find anything like this while digging through the student training,” said Grace Grandfield, a Cambridge graduate of the literally gigantic find. “It was a startling contrast to the peaceful site of Wandlebury.”

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