This edited volume presents twelve papers (in addition to an introduction and foreword) that discuss the topic of human sacrifice in Scandinavian prehistory, mainly exploring archaeological evidence and, to a lesser extent, textual sources. The volume is well-illustrated, including colour plates, and there are few typographical errors. The individual papers are generally well-written and provide much food for thought. The contributions partly come from a conference held in 2018 at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. While offering new angles on existing evidence and presenting new results, the volume is especially valuable for the themes and future avenues of research that are opened up by the various papers on the challenging and often controversial topic of human sacrifice.
The introduction offers an overview of archaeological data and evidence from written sources in southern Scandinavia that might indicate human sacrifice, from the Neolithic period to the Viking Age. This evidence is quite scattered and extremely varied, but examples relate especially to human remains from bogs and burial contexts. The overview serves as a very useful archaeological and social background for the rest of the volume. The introduction itself forms the basis of a diachronic network analysis used to examine tendencies in human sacrificial practices over time. It also opens up themes that run through many or all of the chapters, including those of definition, archaeological identification, and value.
Crucially, the introduction starts with a definition of human sacrifice. This is a key question for all the papers: What exactly is human sacrifice? And, given that most of the papers focus on archaeological evidence, how do we go about identifying human sacrifice archaeologically? The question itself is straightforward, but answers are not. Those offered in previous research are not only incredibly varied, but they also work on different levels. The long history of scholarship on this topic from disciplines such as history, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, classics, archaeology, and religious studies has suggested definitions related primarily to function. For example, Edward Burnett Tylor understood sacrifice as a form of gift-giving, Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss understood the sacrificial victim as a mediator to facilitate communication with the divine, William Robertson Smith and Emile Durkheim emphasized the social aspect of sacrifice and the associated bonding that occurs through ritual and feasting, and René Girard similarly focused on group participation and the role of the victim as a scapegoat (selected readings of these and many more with comments and introductions have usefully been collected in Carter, Reference Carter2003; original reading can be found in Tylor, Reference Tylor1871; Hubert and Mauss, Reference Hubert1964; Robertson Smith, Reference Robertson Smith2002; Durkheim, Reference Durkheim1968; Girard, Reference Girard and Freccero1986).
Such social and psychological functions are notoriously difficult to identify archaeologically, but methods have been developed to do exactly this, partly within the sub-discipline of cognitive archaeology, but more recently also within new materialism and sensory archaeology. It is, therefore, crucial to be transparent and clear on the criteria used to identify sacrifice archaeologically, and in order to outline such criteria, at least a working definition is needed. The definition given in the introduction is taken from Bruce Lincoln’s work (Lincoln, Reference Lincoln1991). It is a pity that this excellent starting point has not been followed throughout the volume, with all the chapters working from this same definition or clearly positioning themselves in relation to it. This would have ensured greater coherence and enhanced the level of discussion among individual chapters. A similar exercise could have been carried out in terms of the identification of human sacrifice archaeologically, where either the criteria agreed upon by the contributors or those offered by other scholarship (e.g. Schwartz, Reference Schwartz, Porter and Schwartz2012: 9–15; Recht, Reference Recht2019: 5) could have been tested.
A very useful concept drawn from the definition given in the introduction is that of a logic to the ritual, a ‘sacrificial logic’. Several chapters refer back to this concept that closely relates to the idea of the respective value of humans and other entities. Sacrifice is often perceived as irrational due to its apparent ‘wastefulness’ and what might even be considered meaningless violence. However, sacrificial rituals do have a logic to them, the problem is rather that we are not always able to identify, understand, or accept the logic. Discrepancies in logical systems might be related to different value systems and ontologies. As noted in the concluding remarks of chapter 1, ‘A central question regarding human sacrifices relates to the value of a human life … In some communities a human may have been considered to have the same value as an animal or a specific object, while in other societies human life was valued in relation to a specific deity or some other exceptional unit of comparison’ (Sørensen and Nielsen, p. 9). Most of the papers work on the more or less explicit assumption that humans are valued higher than any other entity, be it other animals, plants, inanimate objects, or symbols. This also seems to be implied in the title of the book (‘Darkest of Days…’). However, such an assumption may hamper our understanding and interpretation of the presented contexts, and several of the papers do challenge this inherent anthropocentrism. The concept of ‘sacrificial logic’ is useful precisely because it allows for an acknowledgment of other lines of reasoning than what we might be most familiar with within the context of the modern Global North.
After the introduction, all the papers have a clear abstract accompanied by keywords. I do not want to repeat the summaries of the chapters here, rather I will elaborate on selected examples and key aspects, such as definition, archaeological identification and value, as well as themes such as types of human sacrifice, ontologies, curation, and human-environment interaction.
Already in chapter 1, by Lasse Sørensen and Poul Otto Nielsen, the challenges of defining and identifying human sacrifice archaeologically are pointed out. In a case study on evidence of human sacrifice, especially as it is represented in burials, this is combined with an important concern with scholarly assumptions about the period under study. Hence the title of this chapter (‘Noble hunter-gatherers and “cruel” farmers’), reflecting a general tendency to present Mesolithic societies as more peaceful and Neolithic societies as more violent. The point is well-made and does not just apply to research on southern Scandinavia. It is part of a broader trend and desire to understand correlations between the emergence of complex (read: hierarchical) societies, violence (including religious violence), and fluctuations or increase in inequality (for a recent example from archaeology, see Leppard & Murray, Reference Leppard and Murray2023). Interestingly, Sørensen and Nielsen suggest that we should consider including what they interpret as possible cases of infanticide and mercy killings in our understanding of human sacrifice. As such cases are not typically categorised as sacrifice, the first chapter thus also offers the first challenge to defining sacrifice.
In two other chapters, we see the close connections between human sacrifice and judicial acts. Because both human sacrifice and official executions often follow structured ritual or ritual-like patterns, they are not always easily differentiated—it could even be argued that perhaps they should not be understood as two separate phenomena, and that an execution is a form of sacrifice. Chapters 10 (Bo Jensen) and 11 (Mads D. Jessen and Jesper Olsen) both discuss the occurrence of decapitated skeletons in the Viking Age. Jensen explores the dissonance of text and archaeology, including a catalogue of examples of decapitations from burial contexts and, in conjunction with an analysis of written evidence, where decapitation is not the usual means of sacrifice, concludes that decapitation represents a political act, ‘a judicial ritual, a way of killing enemies’ (p. 98), rather than a religious one. It is a testament to the complexity of the material that the text-based study of Klas Wikström af Edholm (chapter 12) reaches a somewhat different conclusion in that he interprets the killing of enemies as documented in skaldic poetry (originally court poems written to honour kings) as reflecting human sacrifice.
Jessen and Olsen instead present a case study of two decapitated skeletons from Tissø on Zealand. These were not formal burials; rather, they are interpreted as important physical markers, and their execution a political display of power. The interpretation of these violent and ritual acts as political is something that has also been suggested for some Scandinavian and German bog bodies (van der Sanden, Reference van der Sanden1996: 169–70), and several of the Irish bog bodies have been interpreted as territorial markers (e.g. Kelly, Reference Kelly and Ralph2012). The distinction between ritual/officially sanctioned executions and (religious) sacrifice assumes a clear separation between authority and religion (or state and church, as we would say today), but it is worth asking if such a separation can meaningfully be applied to the Viking Age or earlier periods of Scandinavian history.
Thinking further about the identification of human sacrifice and its possible pitfalls, the chapter by Niels Lynnerup and Pauline Asingh (chapter 5) is a good example of how taphonomy, find circumstances, and the methods of modern scholarship can impact interpretation. Based on recent scientific examination of selected bog bodies, they demonstrate how some of the arguments previously used in support of violent and sacrificial deaths are based on aspects related to, for example, taphonomic processes in the bog, rather than premortem or perimortem actions.
Chapter 2, by Matthew J. Walsh and Samantha S. Reiter, moves to the Bronze Age, but follows up on the theme of associating sacrifice with hierarchical societies, and makes use of the concept of sacrificial logic. They explore burials with possible ‘attendant’ sacrifice. Perhaps the most widespread type of human sacrifice globally and diachronically is some version of attendant sacrifice, also sometimes called retainer sacrifice. It is usually understood as the sacrifice (killing) of one or more humans in relation to the death of a high status individual, with the remains placed in or near the tomb as part of the grave offerings, presumably to serve in the afterlife as they had in life. There are many examples of this practice from around the world, including Egypt, Mesopotamia, China and Mesoamerica. The examples given in this chapter consist primarily of the inhumation of an adult individual, mostly female, with the cremated remains of one or more children. One possible interpretation here is indeed that these could represent attendant sacrifice, as argued by the authors. However, the fact that they were cremated (unusual for the period, and not typical elsewhere in the world, where an effort is often made to display such victims as if they were servants) and that they were children does not immediately suggest servants, but perhaps other meanings are at play here, related to the role of children and/or fire.
The perception of human sacrifice as the ultimate and most valuable sacrifice is discussed in detail by Pernille Pantmann in chapter 3. This ultimate sacrifice is most commonly of a complete or nearly complete body, and here Pantmann analyses the occurrence of single, or what she calls Loose Human Bones (LHB), in a variety of contexts. The contexts, often ignored in studies of human sacrifice and bog bodies, suggest that human bones, and by extension human bodies or body parts, were not always of the highest value. In this paper, we see the first explicit challenge to anthropocentric approaches and a call for a flatter ontology, inspired by posthumanist approaches, including the so-called ‘animal turn’. This challenge is further elaborated in chapter 8, where Christina Fredengren examines the ‘figurations’ of sacrifice, taking into consideration the constellations of humans, other animals, landscape/environment, violence, transformation, and becoming. Similarly, in chapter 9, Matthew J. Walsh, Pernille Pantmann and Marianne Moen explore the entanglement of ‘white’ stones in ritual acts, with the suggestion that one of the roles of these enigmatic finds might be that of substitutes for humans as a sacrifice. While this function is difficult to substantiate (as acknowledged by the authors), the chapter demonstrates the importance of including something as seemingly mundane as small stones in the overall analysis of sacrificial practices and their broader context.
Using the case of the bog body of the Haraldskær Woman, Mads Ravn (chapter 7) provides another example of a study of human-environment interaction, in particular in relation to wetlands as liminal and dangerous places (see, however, the comments in chapter 3, questioning this aspect of bogs and other wetlands). In chapter 4, Ulla Mannering also disputes the primacy of human remains in sacrificial practices by analysing an additional element: that of textiles. Clothes have traditionally received limited attention in archaeological studies, and for the bog bodies, this is exacerbated by many bodies found apparently naked. However, in recent decades, textile studies, including those of Mannering herself, have greatly expanded our knowledge of past societies. In this chapter, the value of clothing as sacrifice or part of a sacrifice is evaluated and contextualised. The de-centring of the human in these studies thus offers a deeper and more nuanced view of the role of sacrifice in prehistoric societies. These approaches, where the human body or the archaeological remains of the human body is analyzed within its meshwork of relations, place human sacrifice in its broader context, archaeologically, socially, ideologically, and ontologically.
Another theme that is implicit in most of the chapters of this volume and perhaps worth exploring more in the future is that of curation, in the sense of careful placement and display, with special attention to location and configuration. That is, in many of the examples given throughout the papers, it is noticeable 1) that human remains are always part of a meshwork that includes, for example, nonhuman animals, plants, other objects, space (e.g. a burial), the local environment (e.g. a bog, a burial ground or a boundary), and the social context, and 2) that the physical remains are not randomly placed, but rather subject to deliberate choices in their treatment, relations, and display. Such choices are clear in the burials mentioned in chapter 2 (Walsh and Reiter), with the combination of inhumed and cremated remains, in the strategically placed decapitated skeletons in Tissø discussed by Jessen and Olsen in chapter 11, and perhaps most intriguingly, in the many ‘loose’ bones discussed by Pantmann in chapter 3. A particularly layered case is also presented in chapter 6 by Sidsel Wåhlin: in Svennum bog in Denmark, six human skulls had been intentionally placed in an area used for sacrificial deposits. These skulls were not only carefully selected, but had also been deposited at a later phase, and had possibly been on display, given their final deposition on top of regrowth of the peat.
The reviewed volume is clearly focused on examples and discussions of human sacrifice as they appear in southern Scandinavia, and all the chapters offer valuable contributions to this theme. As a future avenue of research, it would be interesting to situate these cases and the various approaches in the broader context of human sacrifice globally and diachronically—certainly some ‘types’ of sacrifice recur, so shared patterns might be detected in terms of the social structures in which human sacrifices have taken place. Another exciting recent edited volume, coming from some of the same group of scholars, promises to do this, and to examine in more depth the topics of definition and identification (Walsh et al., Reference Walsh, O’Neill, Moen and Gullbekk2024).
In conclusion, the volume is a great contribution to the topic of human sacrifice in the archaeology of southern Scandinavia, and to some extent to the theoretical debates about the definition and archaeological identification of human sacrifice elsewhere and in other periods of history.
