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120 The Viking Age in Denmark

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Platę XVI Pagc with illustration of an English manuscript from thc carly eleventh ćentury showing King Knud (Canutc) and quccn at Winchester

Chapter 6

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE BURIALS

A. Viking Agegraves

The type and content of the Viking Age graves in Denmark tell us in symbolic language much about the social position of individuals. Often the person himself is no longer present, usually because the skeleton has decayed; furthermore, a number of cemeteries are composed of cremations. Nevertheless in sonie cases it has been possible, as mentioned above, to study sex ratios and age profiles, and we have noted that the number of women in the towns, and especially in the fortresses, is Iow compared with the number of men, while the two sexes are equal in the rural cemeteries.

In terrns of the types of grave, the cremations, sometimes in urns, but usually surviving as a patch in the ground of burned bones and ashes, disappear with the tenth cen tury, this bcing clearly a pagan rite.¹ Most cremations are from Jylland. To the south-west cemeteries of urn-graves occur, while to the north of the Limfjord inlet we have cemeteries of cremation patches, covered by smali barrows of various shapes and often set in a stonc framc or surrounded by stone-settings shaped, for instance, in ship form. The burial goods, as expected, are few, but the cremations do not seem to be any poorer than the average Viking Age inhumation, if we omit the number of tenth-century graves which are particularly richly furnished (Fig. 30). Most of the cremations on the Ris Fattiggard cemetery in northemmost Jylland, for instance, hołd zero to two artefaets. The burials with a few artefacts, however, morę often contain nails from a wooden coffin, showing a correlation betwcen a modest, and sccmingly fortuitous, furnishing and the quality of the Container of the body. The usual grave-goods in the village cemeteries and other graves are knives, petty jewellery and native pots, but evcn these may be lacking, as in the cemetery of inhumations on the Trelleborg fortress, where only a few burials have