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hubie [soylentnews.org] writes:

"They took a dead man and cast him into the well, and then filled it up with stones" [sciencealert.com]

So declares the 800-year-old Norse Sverris Saga [rootaction.net], an accounting of the rise and reign of King Sverre Sigurdsson [wikipedia.org], who went on to rule Norway from 1184 until his death in 1202 CE.

Now, thanks to the efforts of a team of scientists from Scandinavia, Iceland, and Ireland, we have direct, tangible evidence that the Well Man really existed – in the form of bones, freshly analyzed, discovered at the bottom of the very well described.

The Well Man is barely a throwaway line describing a conflict that took place in 1197 CE – a corpse thrown into a castle well by an invading force, probably to make any water therein undrinkable by decaying in it. But that throwaway line has suddenly become one of the most significant in the saga – by being the first incident in such a document ever to be linked to real, historical remains.

[...] "This is the first time that a person described in these historical texts has actually been found," Martin says. "There are a lot of these medieval and ancient remains all around Europe, and they're increasingly being studied using genomic methods."

[...] The event was a stealth attack carried out by the Roman Catholic enemies of King Sverre (known as Baglers, or Bagal [wiktionary.org], for the crosiers carried by bishops). While he wintered elsewhere, the Baglers invaded his castle in his absence.

"Thorstein Kugad accepted service with the Bagals, and went with them," the saga reads [rootaction.net]. "The Bagals seized all the property in the castle, and then they burnt every building of it. They took a dead man and cast him into the well, and then filled it up with stones. Before they left the castle they called upon the townsmen to break down all the stone walls; and before they marched from the town they burnt all the King's long-ships. After this they returned to the Uplands, well pleased with the booty they had gained in their journey."

According to the saga, the Baglers spared the people within, leaving them nothing but their clothes – but fresh corpses don't fall from the sky, and it's plausible that the event wasn't completely bloodless. The Well Man may even have been a Bagler himself, slain by the castle's defenders.

"The text is not absolutely correct – what we have seen is that the reality is much more complex than the text," explains archaeologist Anna Petersén of the Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage Research.

The research also demonstrates the power of a comprehensive genomic database, strong historical records, and how the two can be united to unveil the secrets of the past.

Journal Reference: iScience, Ellegaard et al.: "Corroborating written history with ancient DNA: the case of the Well-man described in an Old Norse saga" https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(24)02301-0 [cell.com]

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