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An archaeologist's flaming-arrow experiments argue against the Viking cremation at sea
Live Science asked three researchers for evidence that Vikings lit funeral boats adrift with flaming arrows. The archaeological record cannot answer the question, so the case rests on written accounts and on one archaeologist's burn tests.
The Scientist · Science desk
What happened
- Live Science put the fiery-arrow funeral boat question to Howard Williams, Erin McGuire and Matthias Toplak, and all three doubted that Vikings burned funeral boats set adrift at sea.
- McGuire, an anthropology professor at the University of Victoria, said that from an archaeological standpoint there is no evidence for the motif.
- She said the record does hold ships and parts of ships that were burnt during funerary practices while still on land, then buried after being burned.
- In the account of the 10th-century traveler Ahmad ibn Fadlan there is no flaming arrow: the boat sat on land and a chief mourner lit it.
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Why it matters
- constraint McGuire's point that an arrow-lit fire cannot be told from an ordinary one means the excavation record is unable to decide this question in either direction, however many burnt ships are dug up.
- decision Citing archaeology as proof the practice never happened means citing a test that cannot be run, because the number of Viking Age shipwrecks with human remains available to examine is zero.
- precedent The archer is the element later retellings added to an older story of ships set adrift and set alight, so tracing its origin is work for the history of film and television.
The image holds two questions. Whether a burning ship ever drifted at sea with a body aboard is work for excavation. Testing whether such a fire could cremate anyone takes a controlled burn.
Excavation has very little to work with. Shipwrecks "with human remains are very, very rare globally," Erin McGuire said. "It takes particular kinds of environmental conditions for them to be preserved and I know of none from the Viking Age." [6] Howard Williams said such "practices would leave little trace, and they are unverified by archaeological sources." [3]
The ground does contain fire on land. The ninth-century Myklebust ship was burned during a funeral and then buried in a mound in Norway, and it was built for a rich person, possibly a king [8]. Vikings were skilled seafarers and cremated their dead frequently [20].
Ahmad ibn Fadlan, a 10th-century Arab traveler, went to the Volga River in what is now Russia and spent time with Viking groups there, and his written account of a chieftain placed on a burning boat is the closest historical evidence anyone has for the ritual [9].
Matthias Toplak, who heads the archaeology department at the Viking Museum Haithabu in Germany, told Live Science in an email: "Personally, I consider cremation at sea using a ship set alight from the shore with flaming arrows to be rather unrealistic." [15] Effective cremation needs a fire burning at high temperature for several hours, he said, and "At sea, the ship would probably sink before the body had been sufficiently cremated." [17] He also raised the danger of a burning, drifting hull being pushed by wind or current into other ships or harbour facilities [18]. McGuire put the navigation problem her own way: "if you send a burning boat out onto the water, how do you stop it from drifting ashore with rather grisly contents?" [19]
The drifting, burning ship is not itself a modern invention. Williams said medieval literature gives "rare references to boats/ships involved in funerals over water." [11] In "Beowulf," the Danish king Scyld Scefing is placed on a ship that drifts off to sea [12]. In Snorri Sturluson's 13th-century "Heimskringla," Williams said, the sea-king Haki was set adrift and set alight so that his body burned with those of his slain retinue, and in another Sturluson story "the god Baldr is set adrift and his ship set alight by his brother Thor." [13] McGuire said Baldr's funeral is the scene that inspired J.R.R. Tolkien to write a similar one into The Lord of the Rings [14]. The archer arrives with the screen versions: the 1958 film "The Vikings," the History Channel series "Vikings," and fantasy shows such as "Game of Thrones" [2].
What to watch
- A Viking Age shipwreck preserving human remains would give researchers the first site at which the sea-cremation question could actually be tested.
- Published ignition rates and burn temperatures from Toplak's arrow and cremation trials would move the practical argument from expert judgment to measurement.
- An illustration or text showing an archer firing at a funeral boat before the 1958 film would date the screen motif to something older.