The Sverris saga describes how castle invaders “took a dead man and cast him unto the well, and then filled it up with stones”, in what may have been an early act of biological warfare – and now researchers believe they have found the skeleton of the man in question
By James Woodford
25 October 2024
The complete skeletal remains of the “Well Man”
Age Hojem, NTNU University Museum
A Norwegian saga written more than 800 years ago describes how a dead man was thrown into a castle well – and now, researchers believe they have identified the remains of this man.
The Sverris saga is an 182-verse Old Norse text that records the exploits of King Sverre Sigurdsson, who rose to power in the second half of the 12th century AD. One part says that a rival clan who attacked Sverresborg castle, near Trondheim, Norway, “took a dead man and cast him unto the well, and then filled it up with stones”.
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The well was inside the castle’s ramparts and was the community’s only permanent water source. It has been speculated that the man thrown into the well in the saga may have had a disease and putting him there was an early act of biological warfare.
In 1938, a medieval well in the ruins of Sverresborg castle was partly drained and a skeleton was found beneath rubble and boulders at the bottom. While it was widely believed that the skeleton, referred to as Well Man, was the remains of the individual mentioned in the saga, it wasn’t possible to confirm this at the time.
Now, Anna Petersén at the Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage Research in Oslo and her colleagues have used radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis of a tooth from the body to show that the date range the man was alive is consistent with the raid on the castle. While not definitive proof that the man was the one mentioned in the saga, the “circumstantial evidence is consistent with this conclusion”, says Perersén.