The Sverris Saga tells the old Norse story of King Sverre Sigurdsson, his rise to power, and his rule over Norway from 1184 to 1202 AD. One anecdote in the book speaks of a dead man who was cast into a well before it was filled with stones. Hundreds of years later, researchers think they have discovered the remains of this nameless Well Man.
He is only mentioned in one line of the saga but is now one of its most famous characters. This is the first time that actual remains have been linked to a Norse saga. Researchers discovered the bones decades ago, in 1938, in a well at Sverresborg Castle — the well described in the saga.
At the time, the technology to fully analyze the bones and identify the individual did not exist. Now, a joint team from Scandinavia, Iceland, and Ireland has carried out genomic analysis, radiocarbon dating, isotope analysis, and gene sequencing of the skeleton.
The team extracted DNA from the leg bone and cranium. “We were very frustrated to find that it was almost entirely bacterial DNA,” said co-author of the new study, Michael Martin. Most of the human DNA was severely degraded. Everything changed when they got some teeth from the lower mandible. The root of one tooth held enough DNA that they could sequence the man’s genome.
Timeline fits
The team has been piecing together information about the mysterious Well Man for six years. When he died, Well Man was between 30 and 40 years old and had blue eyes and blonde hair. His genetics trace back to Vest-Agder, a southern county of Norway. Isotopes of carbon and nitrogen suggest a seafood-rich diet.
Crucially, he died approximately 900 years ago. This timeline fits perfectly with the story of the invasion of Sverresborg Castle in the Sverris Saga.
The tale recounts that in 1197 AD, the archbishop’s fighters invaded the castle when the king was not there. They did not kill anyone but burned down all the houses and destroyed the castle and all of the king’s longships. Then the archbishop’s men took a dead man and threw him into the well before filling it with stones. Co-author Anna Petersen said most scholars think the man was either important to the king in some way or they were trying to poison the castle’s water supply.
No one will ever truly know what happened. They do know that the man was dead before he was thrown into the well. How he died is a mystery. Though the saga says no one was killed during the invasion, that might not be the case.
“The text is not absolutely correct,” said Petersen. “What we have seen is that the reality is much more complex than the text.”
Martin agreed. “The sagas,” he pointed out, “are a mix of historical fact, storytelling, political propaganda, and Old Norse religion.”