Slowly, trowelful by trowelful, a 12-person team of investigators is excavating the scene of a gruesome mass murder on Öland, an island several miles off the coast of Sweden. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Even 1500 years later, there are persistent stories locally about Sandby Borg being a dark and dangerous place. "In houses where the roof turf did not collapse as a result of fire, the bodies would have been left to decompose unburied where they lay, until the houses eventually caved in," the archaeologists wrote. And since only 9 percent of the site has been excavated so far, plenty of yet-to-be-discovered artifacts could shed light on these puzzles, said study co-author Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay, an archaeologist at Kalmar County Museum in Sweden. Photograph: Sebastian Jakobsson 
 
 Scattered among treasures including Roman gold coins, silver gilt jewellery, silver hair ornaments, intricate glass beads and cowrie shells from the Mediterranean, the archaeologists even found scraps of the last meals, including half a herring still lying by a hearth, and cooking pots where they were last set down until crushed by the collapsing roof. “It’s possible there was an agreement amongst the women—‘if something happens to me, here’s where you’ll find it,’” Victor says. In one house an old man was smashed on the skull so that he fell into the fire in the open hearth, where his body was charred to the bone. A child’s leg bone was also found not far from the older man, as though more evidence were needed that this had been no ordinary day. Even today, the island can be a strange, forbidding place. Archaeological excavations and chance finds have turned up hundreds of Roman coins, bronze statues, glass beads, and vessels dating to the first four centuries A.D., when Öland had extensive contact with the Roman Empire. Ölanders had long brought their wages back to the windswept Baltic island in the form of Roman solidi, gold coins commonly issued in the late empire. The island has rich archaeology including foundations of more than 1000 stone houses, thousands of cemeteries and graves, and at least 15 ringforts – of which only Sandby Borg seems to have come to such a gruesome end in the turbulent decades when the Western Roman Empire collapsed and local tribes vied for power. Sandby borg is one of at least 15 forts found on the island that date back to the same time. Archaeological evidence suggests that Öland’s social harmony collapsed along with its economy. Eketorp had been occupied for centuries, from around the same time Sandby Borg was built, to well into the Middle Ages. "The assault on Sandby borg may have been the result of subsequent power struggles on the island, at a time when the political map and power structures were being rewritten across the European continent,” the archaeologists wrote. Nothing happened after this massacre.” Though speculating on how and why the massacre took place is captivating, the event itself is perhaps less important to archaeologists than its suddenness. The killers seem to have left the bodies of their victims where they fell, and then departed, never to return.
– "In most cases where human remains have been found in connection with … scenes of brutal violence, the bodies have been buried in mass graves. This is not the case at Sandby borg," write the authors of a new study published in the journal Antiquity. The Swedish site, found on the island of Öland in the Baltic Sea, was a once-thriving village that in the mid-fifth century was wiped out by attackers—who left the bodies to decompose where they fell. The Guardian reports that after excavations over three years, just 10% of Sandby borg, located within the walls of a ring fort, has been uncovered. Archaeologists had been warned treasure seekers were messing with the site, and for good reason: Roman gold coins, silver hair pieces, and glass beads have been found, likely left behind because they were hidden, and "no one lived who knew of them and could recover them," archaeologist Ludvig Papmehl-Dufay tells Live Science. But the more noteworthy finds were those of a more gruesome nature. Papmehl-Dufay says no oral or written history of the massacre survived, but the 26 bodies thus far uncovered do tell a tale. The archaeologists believe there were a "large number" of attackers who struck "simultaneously in several houses, and that several of the victims were not in a position to defend themselves." In one case, the remains of an elderly man were found with a smashed skull and charred pelvic bones, likely the result of him falling into an open fire after taking the blow to the head. Papmehl-Dufay says the island was home to at least 15 forts (Archaeology.com notes "borg" means "fort") at the time, and speculates that "another elite group on the island, possibly connected to another fort," may have been behind the attack. (Archaeologists say they found proof of a massacre on Dutch soil by Julius Caesar.)