Researchers say skeleton retrieved from well is likely to be that of man ‘cast headfirst’ into it by besiegers of castle
Radiocarbon dating of bone from the skeleton found the age of the remains was consistent with the year of attack on Sverrsborg castle recounted in the saga.Radiocarbon dating of bone from the skeleton found the age of the remains was consistent with the year of attack on Sverrsborg castle recounted in the saga.In 1197, an ancient saga records that a body was flung into a well by the besiegers of Sverresborg castle outside Nidaros, now the central Norwegian city of Trondheim.
The Sverris saga relates the life of the ambitious Norwegian king Sverre Sigurdsson, who rose to power in the late 12th century during a period of political instability and civil war that continued for decades after his death in 1202. The besieging forces, known as Baglers from the Norse word for “bishop’s wand”, entered the castle through a secret door while its defenders, known as Birkebeiner or “birch legs”, supposedly because they wore birch bark on their legs, were eating.
In 2014 and 2016, researchers led by Petersén resumed the excavation and, beneath further mounds of rubbish dumped down the well by the Nazi forces, managed to partially exhume the remains, identifying a male aged between 30 and 40. Radiocarbon dating of bone from the skeleton “produced a conventional radiocarbon age of 940, plus or minus 30 years”, they said in their paper – consistent with the date of the Baglers’ attack on Sverrisborg castle as described in the Sverris saga.
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