Brothers in Arms: provenancing metal war gear from the first Viking Raid to the East

In the period around 750 CE, a fleet of Viking war ships set sail across the Baltic. They were ambushed and part of the war party was slain.

Their remains have been found in the form of two ship burials with 40 male warriors, buried on the Island of Saaremaa in modern day Estonia. Four of them, we now know to be brothers. Dubbed the First Vikings, the fallen warriors and their ships represent the first Viking Raid.

The time capsule of 40 warriors accompanied by a wealth of war gear in the form of weaponry and decorative adournments, represents a unique and unparalleled opportunity for material culture studies in medieval archaeology.MetRa is a pioneering research project aimed at equipping early researcher Ragnar Saage with the advanced analytical skills necessary to investigate and establish the origins of both the iron weapons and the copper-alloy decorative elements of the war band.

This will be achieved using state of the art metal provenancing methods in archaeological science.

The material investigation aims to complement results from previous research on the burial from strontium isotopes and aDNA analysis.

The project will not only shed light on organisation and in-group identity of a single war band (i.e. issued war gear vs individual armament), but it presents an unprecedented opportunity to examine and interrogate material culture armaments across a single family, four brothers in arms and their relative.

Can commonalities and/or differences in weapon and decoration origins nuance our understanding of the make-up of the Viking war band? Do the four brothers and their relative share weapons from the same smith?

Or do their war goods paint a more complex picture of mobility of Norse warriors and their attainment of weapons and adournments in a martial society?

The results may reshape our understanding of the earliest Viking raids, as well as improve our understanding on the logistics and organisation of such an event.