Accompanied graves with grave goods constitute another important body of evidence. Some 24 such cemetery and individual sites are known from the island. They range from chance finds, especially from existing churchyards most usually weapons, which are possibly derived from flat graves or barrows.
However, there is evidence for burials under mounds or barrows, e.g. from Jurby churchyard and barrows were certainly constructed at around the time of burial on prominent, elevated sites close to the coast especially in the northern plain, but also from elsewhere. Hints of re-use of ancient burial sites come from the burial of a horse and Viking sword in the neolithic tomb popularly known as King Orry's Grave.
At Ballateare for example the burial of a man aged 20 - 25 was placed in a wooden coffin or burial chamber in a grave pit. He was dressed in a cloak fastened with an Irish bronze ring pin and a sword, 3 spears, a knife and a shield boss accompanied him.
The sword and one of the spearheads were inlaid with silver and copper alloy, a technique best paralleled in Norway.
Burnt animal bones were found near the surface of the mound which was carefully constructed of turf obtained away from the immediate area of the barrow. In the mound was the skull of a woman aged 20 - 30 years. The back had been sliced off suggesting perhaps a sacrificial ritual, perhaps of one of the lord’s slaves sacrificed at the time of the burial.
A male burial at Cronk Mooar was also placed in a wooden burial chamber within a pit dug into recently ploughed land with a similar range of grave goods, but including a mount made from a rare book clasp of Hiberno- Saxon type. And at Knoc y Doonee a similar burial laid in a boat was accompanied in addition to the weapons by a hammer, tongs, iron cauldron, horse harness and fishing line weight. Here the mound appears to have been coated with white stones, perhaps to make it stand out on the top of the ridge.
The richness and variety of the grave goods generally are perhaps best paralleled in the Western Isles. The connections with that area are apparent in other material from the island. On the other hand the close links with the Norwegian homeland have suggested to David Wilson that these represent a generation of wealthy young men who were born in Norway, not a second or later generation, originating in settlements in Scotland or elsewhere.
Altogether in this north-west area some 13 barrows are known, though not all have been investigated. Their distribution is not haphazard. There are administrative and land boundaries in Man recorded for the first time in the 16th century. Each parish is divided into treens, which are made up of holdings of estates called quarterlands. These were primary units of land, indivisible, constituting units of inheritance. They are between 20 - 60 hectares, that is averaging 36 ha in size. The thirteen barrows are distributed one to each of the 11 quarterlands in Jurby parish, with only two quarterlands having two barrows each. Mathematically, following Fletcher and Reilly's work: 'Viking Settlers in Man; some simulation experiments' in P. Davey (ed.) 1978 Man and Environment in the Isle of Man BAR 393, the spacing cannot be random. Therefore the barrows were constructed by people who knew the quarterland boundaries, or the boundaries were laid down at the same time as the barrows were built.
Take the prominent position of the barrows, the wealthy grave goods, Wilson's Norwegian connection and together perhaps we have an assertion of landholding here and an assertion of power. Are the churchyard burials telling us the same thing - pagan warriors ritually asserting their power over Christians and over the land? There are other explanations as we shall see later.
If we take one more burial - at Balladoole - near the southern end of the island, here a boat burial was placed within an existing native Christian cemetery of stone lined cist graves.
The graves were considerably disturbed by the insertion of the boat burial and skeletons, some still with hand and feet bones articulated when moved. Once again a male body was placed in a boat some11m in length. Unsually in this burial weapons were absent, but horse harness mounts, stirrups and spurs were found. There were also the slight remains of a possible female burial in the earth and stone mound which covered the burial. The site had seen long use with bronze age burials, an iron age enclosure as well as the Christian cemetery with a possible chapel, prior to the boat burial.
Was this a Scandinavian recognising a ritual site of significance and continuing its use? A Scandinavian recognising and being influenced by Christianity in line perhaps with burials in cemeteries elsewhere on the island? Was this a deliberate act of desecration to demonstrate the power of the newcomers and their pagan religion? Is it again part of the process of land taking, young males coming on to the island as new lords, taking over existing centres and carving out estates for themselves or taking over existing estates?
When were these processes taking place? The grave goods indicate the likeliest date is between about 850 and 950, though they could be slightly earlier perhaps. For the size of the island, there are also a large number of burial sites. The whole of England, for example, has only about the same number of sites.
The evidence from Man has some parallels with Scotland as we have seen, but in one crucial respect it is different. There is no clear Scandinavian female accompanied grave on Man. There are none of the pairs of oval brooches which are such a feature in Scotland. The cemetery north of the later cathedral on St. Patrick's Isle, Peel consisting of cist, coffined and simple dug graves seems to have started in the 7th or 8th century and was well established by the Viking Age. There were probably chapels associated with it, though these have not been found. Seven burials of men women and children with grave goods have been found in the cemetery, not as a separate group but fitting into the planned layout. One female grave lined with some sandstone was unusual, because normally these graves were lined with Manx slate. She was buried with a cooking spit, 2 knives, shears, a bone comb, workbox with needles, feather pillow, pendant and a necklace of glass, amber and jet beads.
The burial was special in the variety and wealth of its grave goods and the nature of the grave, but there is no certainty that she was of Scandinavian extraction. One of the other graves nearby had a coin of Edmund, king of England 939 - 946 and we might claim that these burials do fit best towards the end of the dating sequence - in the second half of the 10th century. Since there are no clear female Scandinavian burials, are we justified in claiming that the new Scandinavian landowners took native wives with all the opportunities that might afford for the respective communities to influence each other?
There was already a tradition of carving in the Manx slate prior to the arrival of the Vikings.
Both ogam- and Latin- inscribed memorial- or grave-stones survive from perhaps as early as the 5th century. Rectangular cross slabs had developed by the 9th century. The crucifixion scene on an altar front from the Calf of Man shows clear Irish influence.
Scandinavian influence is seen in the Norse runic inscriptions and in art styles, suggesting that the Norse became patrons of such sculpture. Bearing in mind that the only tradition of stone carving in Scandinavia prior to Viking contact with western Europe were the 8th century picture stones on Gotland, with their shallow incised linear designs without inscriptions. Dating is difficult but the Scandinavian series can hardly be earlier than the 10th century and although detailed work still needs to be done on these sculptures the dating bracket is likely to be c 930 - 1020 i.e. a relatively short episode of carving.
Gautr's cross at Kirk Michael (101, 74 - these numbers refer to the two different numbering systems for sculptures on the island) has a runic inscription on its edge and front with Borre ring-chain style paralleled in Scandinavia itself, but found all round the Irish Sea and in England and therefore such art styles might have come from other Scandinavian areas of the British isles.
However, Wilson and others have pointed out the figural tradition on the Manx crosses (Kirk Michael 123 - woman in long gown) and in particular the Mammen style, uncommon in the British Isles, on the Braddan crosses, which could be a direct link with the homelands. Compare the evidence of the inlaid swords from the burials. The 31 runestones from Man - the largest collection by far from anywhere in the British Isles - have suggested to Ray Page direct links with the homelands too.
Gautr does seem to have been responsible for a number of stones on Man. Some of the earliest are his work and he seems to have flourished between about 930 - 950. A runic inscription at Andreas says "Gaut made this, son of Bjorn from Kolli" which some have taken to be a reference to the island of Coll in the Western Isles. His other claim, on Michael 101, “Gaut made this and all in Man" is extravagant, though several crosses are in his style. His name and that of his father imply Scandinavians. The rest of the inscription: Melbrigdi, son of Athalian the smith erected this cross for his sin .... soul, but Gaut made it and all in Man." invites the intriguing possibility of a Scandinavian sculptor working for a Celtic patron. Indeed about a quarter of the personal names on the Manx crosses are Celtic. What we don't know is how far natives took Norse names or vice-versa.
We do seem to have evidence here of intermingling of the populations, as Sue Margeson has suggested. She sees the mixing of pagan and Christian elements on the crosses as well as a mixture of Celtic and Scandinavian influences. She rejects the idea of confrontation between the Christian and pagan gods. One formal element always present is that the carving is on Christian crosses. Ray Page reminds us also that although the runic texts are in Norse it is sometimes a bastard dialect which suggests a mixed language community. Wealthy families will have commissioned these memorials and hunting scenes and rows of animals suggest status and wealth.
The place-name evidence is hampered by the lack of early written forms and by the degree of Gaelicisation which has gone on since the 13th century. Scandinavian place-names do occur throughout the island, there is no clustering in one area and they are in the majority. No Celtic river name has survived, all are Scandinavian. Stathir occurs about a dozen times and was probably a generic used for small settlements - many remain farmsteads today.
Some 28 names in by occur, showing a Danish element in the population and some 13 of these are combined with personal names which occur also in the Danelaw. Fellows-Jensen suggests that these were settlers coming into Man from England in the late ninth or early 10th century, though she does not exclude the possibility of later formations in the 11th or even 12th centuries.
The density of names does suggest colonisation on some scale. Name forming plus other evidence implies considerable Scandinavian influence on Man, perhaps more than can be accounted for by the arrival of a relatively few leaders, whether they came in as mercenaries (suggested by Basil Megaw) as landtakers, or whether moving in peaceably as David Wilson has suggested. Did the initial activities open the way for a greater colonisation, as represented by the place-names and the effects on the language?
During the period of the Norse kings, especially from Godfred Crovan, 1079, we begin to see St. Patrick’s Isle, Peel developing as a major political and ecclesiastical centre. It was at the finest natural harbour in Man . A stone rampart excavated on the south side of the island was probably 12th century in date and already on site were an 11th century church and round tower. The cathedral is 13th - 14th century.
The island was also the stronghold of the King of Norway, Magnus Barelegs, when he came to assert his authority in 1098, but on his death in Ireland in 1102, Godfred Crovan’s line was restored
Tynwald Hill, where the Manx Assembly meets once a year, may have its origins in a thing vollr or meeting place for freemen, known from the later Viking Age in Iceland and Norway. Thing names are recorded also for example in Orkney main island, Shetland, and in Easter Ross on the Scottish mainland. The mound may be in origin prehistoric and certainly other prehistoric monuments are known in the immediate area and might hint of continuity of ritual. The site is central to the island, in the fertile east - west valley between Douglas and Peel, which may be significant.
Its origin probably goes back to the mound or Thingvollr, a meeting place for all freemen. Land and boundary disputes were probably settled there in front of witnesses. They were not used for major political or military decisions. Thingvollrs are known from the homeland and from place-name and topographical evidence in the British Isles. Dingwall in western Scotland is in origin a Thingvollr site and a large mound to the south of Dublin, removed in the 18th century is thought to be another. Modern features on the site obscure the original arrangement, but it is suspected that the area was a centre of ritual in the Bronze Age and the origin of the mound itself may be a Bronze Age burial mound, re-used by the Vikings. It is is a central position in the island, in the valley between Douglas and Peel.
Questions for you to think about
- What were the main features of Viking pagan graves on Man?
- Explain the survival and numbers of stone sculptures on Man.
- Why has Man yielded large numbers of runic inscriptions?
Quiz
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