From burial grounds to churchyards

The first churchyards in Scandinavia represented a break with a memorial tradition going back for several hundred – in some cases several thousand – years. For generations, social relationships had been inscribed in the landscape by means of the close physical proximity of graves, monuments and settlements. When people abandoned the ancient tradition represented by their forefathers’ burial grounds, and instead began burying their dead in consecrated ground, this was one of the most fundamental shifts that can be discerned in the archaeological source material.

The researchers in the project will be examining this far-reaching change process using biomolecular analyses of human skeletons from late Viking era graves on the Baltic island of Gotland. The aim is to trace and understand the role played by individual life stories, kinship and social communities in the creation of new burial customs.

The advent of Christianity in Scandinavia has mainly been studied as a top-down process, the terms of which were dictated by kings and the elite. But we know little about the way that Christianity was introduced in areas without a dominant central power, as on Gotland. The religious transition on the island was a protracted change process, marked by striking variation and creativity in burial practices.

Even after churchyards had been established, many people who died on the island were buried in both ancient and more recently established burial grounds. This social divide in death persisted for many decades before, finally, all those who had been baptized were laid to rest in consecrated ground.

The purpose of the project is to study the response of local communities to religious and cultural change. Who was chosen for burial in new and old burial sites? Who were the people who embraced new ideas or, alternatively, rejected them in favor of the old ways? And how are we to understand the relationship between these groups?

The study centers on the “churchyard finds”, which are the oldest churchyard graves on Gotland. They consist of east-west lying graves in which the dead were buried in their clothing with clasps and jewelry typical of the Viking era. A large number of graves and finds have been discovered since the late 19th century. They have often been found when new graves are dug, and also during archaeological excavations.

Unlike the collections of artifacts, which have been studied in detail, the osteological material has remained largely untouched in storage at museums. Although the final result of Christianization is well known, the spotlight has seldom been on the generations of people who carried out these revolutionary changes. The osteological material from the oldest churchyards on Gotland offers a unique opportunity to carry out an in-depth study of these people based on their remains.

The project will use a range of innovative but increasingly established analytical techniques to extract data on the diet, mobility and kin relations of people whose remains have been found. More specifically, the project involves analyses of stable isotopes of carbon, nitrogen and strontium to ascertain diet and mobility during life, and also aDNA to trace genetic links between people buried within and between different burial sites. This will enable the project to deepen our understanding of the role played by human relationships in the religious transition on Gotland.