800-Year-Old Story of Guy Thrown in Well Proven True by Archaeologists

In a frankly unbelievable turn of events, a team of archaeologists in Norway have identified a man thrown into a well 827 years ago as the exact same individual described in an Old Norse saga.

The approximately 40-year-old individual was referenced in the Sverris Saga, an 800-year-old text that describes a military raid in 1197. The history notes that, during the raid, a dead man was thrown into a well. The research team now believes the story may actually refer to remains discovered in southern Norway nearly a century ago. Furthermore, the man seems to be from a region of Norway with high levels of inbreeding, and his body may have been tossed into the well as a form of biological warfare.

The team’s study—published today in Cell—showcases the remarkable precision of DNA testing and the utility of multidisciplinary research. In this case, the team used genomic analysis to better understand the identity of the so-called “Well-man” and radiocarbon dating to certify the approximate age of the remains, which were first discovered in 1938 in a well on the site of Sverresborg Castle.

“The man thrown into the well in Sverris Saga was completely anonymous—literally nothing was known about him from the text except that he was a man and that he was dead,” said study co-author Michael Martin, the study’s senior author and a researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim, in an email to Gizmodo. “The genomic data added some more details—now we can describe something about how he actually looked, and that his ancestry traces from a completely different region of Norway.”

The notion that the bones in the well belonged to the individual referenced in the Sverris Saga was first suggested when the remains were first discovered, but genetic testing didn’t exist in 1938. DNA’s structure wasn’t even determined until the 1950s. But in recent decades, advances in recovering ancient DNA (or aDNA) directly from remains have provided a bevy of insights into population genetics, paleoenvironments, and even personal life histories. In 2014, co-author Anna Petersén, an archaeologist at the Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage research in Oslo, returned to the site to complete the excavation. By 2016, all of the well-man’s bones and teeth were excavated.

As noted in the 182-verse saga, the man was dead when he was tossed in the well, which was then filled with boulders. The body remained there for nearly eight centuries, until it was found in the 1938 excavation.

The one-for-one identification was made thanks to analyses of ancient DNA extracted from the dead man’s teeth. The man’s genome indicated he had blue eyes, fair skin, and blond or light-brown hair.

The team was even able to zero-in on the approximate origin of his ancestors: the modern-day county of Vest-Agder in southern Norway. Sverresborg Castle—the ruins of it, at least—is in central Norway. The unique genetics of the southern Norwegians compared to those in other parts of the country was known historically, but the genome of the Well-man showed the genetic drift already existed 800 years ago.

The radiocarbon dating of the man’s bones—specifically, ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the bones—yielded an age of 940, give or take thirty years.

“Animals who eat a marine-based diet have older carbon in their bodies, and the resulting radiocarbon dates need to be adjusted according to how much of the carbon is derived from a marine diet,” Martin said. “After we estimated that 20% of his diet came from marine sources, and then applied a corresponding correction, the radiocarbon date fit well with the expected date of the castle raid.”

Correcting for the effect gave the team a revised date range of 1153 to 1277 CE, with the Sverresborg castle raid in 1197 CE falling neatly within that range.

The team has eyes on other historic Norwegians for future studies. Saint Olaf, Martin noted in a Cell release, is supposed to be buried somewhere in Trondheim Cathedral. If the venerated Norwegian were found, it would provide a unique opportunity to trace the genetic history of a saint.