Who was the man in the well?

“Remarkable historical find at Sverresborg. Skeleton at the bottom of the old well. Could it be the Baglers’ victim, thrown into the well in 1197, as the saga claims?”

This was the headline in *Adresseavisen* on December 2, 1938.The manager of Sverresborg Folk Museum, Sigurd Tiller, and architect and self-taught archaeologist Gerhard Fischer found the skeleton while investigating the castle ruins. Three doctors were called in to confirm it was indeed a human skeleton. Despite the uproar caused by the discovery, Tiller was cautious with the press.

“Thorough and lengthy investigations are required before science can provide definitive insights into the find’s true significance.”

Forgotten for 80 years

In this, Tiller proved more correct than anyone anticipated. Now, however, science has uncovered details about the well man that even the reserved Tiller would have found astonishing. We’ll get back to that.

In 1939, the investigation of the well continued, and in June, Gerhard Fischer confidently told Adresseavisen: “Yes, the Birkebeiner in the well is genuine!” But World War II abruptly halted the excavation. After the war, the skeleton remained in the well, seemingly forgotten.

It would take almost 80 years before anyone again sought answers to the mystery of the man in the well. We’ll return to those answers shortly, but first, a brief historical look back.

• You might also like: You’re looking at one of the oldest pieces of cloth in the world

The Baglers and the Birkebeiners

King Sigurd Jorsalfare’s death in 1130 ignited a struggle for the Norwegian throne, lasting on and off for a hundred years, commonly called the Civil War Era. Sverre Sigurdsson was one of the contenders for the throne, and Sverre’s Saga recounts his path to the crown and his reign.

The contenders had support from various groups of nobles, warriors, and rebels, the most famous being the Birkebeiners (which translates as Birchlegs) and the Baglers.

The Birkebeiner were based in Trøndelag, loyal to King Sverre, while the Baglers, led by Bishop Nikolas Arnesson, were based in Viken (the Oslofjord area) and advocated for the church’s political and economic interests in Norway.

The Baglers attack Sverresborg

In 1197, the Baglers attacked Sverre’s men at Sverresborg fortress in Nidaros. The saga recounts how the Baglers coerced the fortress steward, Torstein Kugad, to leave a door unlocked. They surprised the men in the fortress during supper and raided the place. Although the inhabitants’ lives were spared, as Torstein Kugad had negotiated, a significant event followed:

“The Baglers took all the valuables in the fortress, burned down all the buildings, then threw a dead man headfirst into the well, covering it with stones until it was full.”

The Norwegian royal sagas are often full of propaganda and exaggerations, but Sverre’s Saga was written relatively soon after these events, making it a closer-to-reality account than other sagas.

It’s therefore no surprise that Gerhard Fischer confidently referred to the skeleton from Sverresborg as “the Birkebeiner,” covered with stones at the bottom of the well.

• You might also like: Viking raiders stole this box. But the real surprise is what they did with it.

A powerful experience

In the 2000s, Fischer’s discovery resurfaced, and in 2014 and 2016, the Directorate for Cultural Heritage, in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), initiated a new investigation of the well.

Apart from a few photos and some sketches, documentation from the 1938 excavation was lost, leaving archaeologists uncertain about where to dig or whether the skeleton had even survived the intervening decades. The practical challenges were immense.

“It was muddy, slippery, and deep, and the small opening was filled with large stones we had to lift out one by one,” said Anna Petersén, an archaeologist at NIKU who led the excavation.

“I think we all were operating on adrenalin from the beginning to the end,” she said.

Expectations were running high when one Friday afternoon, someone shouted something about bones.

Deep down, hidden under large stones and mud, lay the skeleton, in better condition than anyone had dared to hope.

“It’s one of the most powerful experiences I’ve had as an archaeologist,” Petersén said. “To see the remains of a person thrown into the bottom of a well. We dig in cemeteries and it is not unusual that we are digging up human remains, which all have a life and a history. But this man has a special story.”

Not just any stone

The archaeologists did not enter the excavation intending to verify the saga’s story. But as they examined the skeleton, several elements fit the tale. It was confirmed that the bones belonged to a single person, a man. Carbon-14 dating showed he lived in the late 1100s.

“I would say it’s highly likely this is the man from the saga, not only based on dating but also because everything matches the written account: Not only is his body in a well under large stones, but the stones are also from the same period as the skeleton,” Petersén said.

“We can determine whether a long time has passed between the body ending up in the well and the stones getting there – and in this case there is no real difference in time. It seems to be one and the same incident,” she said.

Nor was it just any stone that covered the corpse. Some of the stones were finely cut soapstone –taken from the fortress complex – with many architectural elements made by professional craftsmen. The stones were from window sills, door jambs and stone stairs, with absolutely no signs of wear and tear – which testifies that Sverresborg was what real estate agents today would call “very exclusive” and “a rare opportunity”.

Again, the newspapers were full of reports that the Birkebeiner from 1197 had been found.

However, it would eventually turn out that the skeleton had more secrets to reveal.

• You might also like: What medieval skeletons tell us about modern day pandemics

Almost the entire skeleton found

In 2016, the entire skeleton was lifted from the well, or nearly all of it. Parts of the face and left side were missing, but the rest was well-preserved enough to reveal much about the well man’s life.

“He was in his late 30s when he died. He had a robust build, a masculine face, and was likely between 1.75 and 1.8 meters tall—quite tall for his time,” said Hanne Ekstrøm Jordahl, an osteoarchaeologist at NIKU.

Struck in the head

In fact, Jordahl’s investigations also revealed a possible cause of death. On the left side of the neck bone, she found a head injury: a small crater, where you can see that there has been a partial hole through the skull.

“Presumably the injury occurred when he was clubbed in the head with a blunt object. I have conferred with a pathologist at St. Olav’s Hospital, and he did not think the injury was fatal, although it probably knocked him unconscious,” Jordahl said.

However, when she examined the inside of the skull, she found small pits and furrows, a sign of brain aneurysms.

“The head injury at the neck bone may hav caused these blood vessels to rupture, which led to a brain haemorrhage. If that had happened, the head injury may have been an indirect cause of death,”  Jordahl said.

She also found a coating called pleural plaque on the inside of the ribs.

“It’s something we often see today in connection with certain diseases associated with dust, for example from inhaling asbestos. This has led to theories that he may have been a stonemason or something similar,” says Jordahl.

Attempts were also made to carry out DNA analyses of the skeleton, without success. At least initially.

A hellish puzzle

“It must be possible,” thought Martin Ellegaard when he heard about the man in the well. He had just started a PhD in population genetics and archaeological DNA at the NTNU University Museum.

He decided to do DNA analyses of the well man, as part of his doctoral work. After the first attempt to extract DNA, he thought: “This is never going to work. But, damn it, I won’t give up.”

“I spent a year in the laboratory: tried again and again and again, with different methods. In the end, I obtained DNA which, without comparison, is the worst thing I have ever worked with,” Ellegaard said.

“You can imagine that you have a puzzle of one million pieces, where 10,000 pieces are missing. It was hell to put together,” he said.

But Martin still managed it. That’s why we now know that the man in the well was blue-eyed with fair skin and blond or light brown hair. Perhaps not very surprising, since we’re in Scandinavia.

Surprising origins

What was surprising, however, was the well man’s geographical origin.

Although Sverre’s saga does not identify the man in any way, he has been referred to as a Birkebeiner. That’s not unreasonable, given that he was thrown into a well at Sverresborg by Baglers. And even though political opinions are not preserved in the DNA, the assumption has always been that he was from an area of mid-Norway called Trøndelag.

“What we see in the analyses is actually a bit the opposite. They show that he is, quite unequivocally, from Agder. That is to say, he is most similar to the population group that is in Agder right now,” says Ellegaard.

Agder is an area in southernmost Norway, southwest of Oslo.

Although the well man’s DNA has been compared with people living today, we can still be sure that he was from Agder. Ellegaard’s analyses also revealed that the population structure in Norway has been very stable over the past 800 years.

“This means that there has been far less immigration to Norway in the last 800 years than there has been earlier in history,” Ellegaard said.

“From other studies we know, for example, that 1,000 years ago there were far more migrants in Norway than there are now. Then Norwegians looked more different. Black hair and darker skin were more common than today. Light skin and blue eyes are actually a fairly new phenomenon in Norway,” he said.

Undoubtedly from Agder

The reason why the well man is so unequivocally from Agder is that the population structure there has been even more stable than elsewhere in Norway. It’s also quite nice in southern Norway – perhaps that’s the reason why people just stayed and started families?

But for whatever reason, the well man came north. He went to Trondheim and Sverresborg, and ended his days in a well – and in a royal saga. Maybe he was one of Sverre’s men, maybe he was a stonemason who worked at the castle, maybe he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

A rare opportunity to see the skeleton yourself

“We still have a hundred questions about who this man was. What we do know is that he lived in Trondheim during one of the most dramatic periods in Norwegian history,” said Petersén.

“It’s not totally unusual that there are parallels between archaeological finds and written sources. But it’s very, very rare that you can connect an individual – a human being – to a historical event in the way that we have been able to here,” said Petersén .

Currently,  NTNU’s University Museum is hosting an exhibition about the man in the well.

References: Ellegaard et al. Corroborating written history with ancient DNA: The case of the Well-man described in an Old Norse saga, iScience, 2024. DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.111076

Petersén, A. Påvisningsundersøkelse av menneskelige levninger i brønn på det middelalderske borganlegget Sverresborg i Trondheim TA 2014/21. Sverresborg borgruin, Trondheim kommune, Trøndelag (Exploratory investigation of human remains in a well at the medieval fortress Sverresborg in Trondheim TA 2014/21. Sverresborg castle ruins, Trondheim municipality, Trøndelag), Report from NIKU, 2023.