Visit at the Historic Museum

Yesterday, I was visiting the Historic Museum in Stockholm to watch the Viking exibition and also to have a closer look into when the experts was collecting and rebuilding a skull digged up in the 1873ish by a careful archeologist in Birka/Björkö. The found was not only a skull, but a small girl in the age of 5-6. The archeologist decided back then not to dig up bone by bone, but instead lift the full coffin up together with the soil. The piece itself weighs around 150kg.

Work in progress

A few pieces from the facial area

Other skulls where used as reference

The Birka-girl has been very well preserved, much better than any of the other skeletons buried around her. One of the experts meant that just this particular spot she was buried in was the reason for that. In the other graves with similar burial methods, the skeleton was more or less completely disolved.

The girl had gotten a rarely performed chest burial and was not cremated, which otherwise was the most common way to bury people in her era. This could mean that she was from a family up high in the hierarchy, getting a very valuable burial like this one, or that she came from a different religion or geographical area where this was more of a tradition. She might as well have been buried during the later time of the viking age when christianity was known and influenced other religions.

She was buried with her clothes, jewelry and basic tools - knife and a needleholder. This points towards that she was not longer concidered as a human still in the childstate, but that she has started to learn some kind of craft, sewing. Learning a craft was back then one of the first steps into the adult world.

A needleholder. The one in the grave is from bone.

The brooch photographed in the grave.

The jewelry she was wearing was a necklace with pearls in glass, silver and goldcoated. She also had a round brooch in bronze that was goaldcoated. This could mean that she still was wearing her child clothes, that usually was buttoned together with only a brooch, or that she came from a different part of the world where this was a fashion. The experts explained that in southern Denmark and north part of Germany many burial founds has been made where the person has been wearing only a brooch instead of the common 2 oval brooches that are more commonly related to during the viking era.

The more common oval brooches.

Before the excavation of the skull pieces from the grave she was known to have worn a necklace of 20 pearls, but since wednesday the archeologists has found another 30 pearls in her grave around the ribs and under some of the skull pieces. The necklace was probably one with many strands and not all worn on a single strand.

The work with building her skull together will end up in a full scale model with face and clothes and will be finished in October/November 2011.