Viking Dig Reports

Page 9 of 10

• 1. Anglesey
• 2. Repton
• 3. Orkney
• 4. Kaupang
• 5. Scar
• 6. Roskilde ships
• 7. Tarbat
• 8. Westray
• 9. Hadstock Church
• 10. Find out more
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Hadstock Church

On St Brice's Day (13 November) 1002 the mass killing of Danes was ordered by the English King Ethelred. It was his reaction to the news that there was a Danish conspiracy to assassinate him. But is there any other evidence that Viking settlers in Britain were subjected to harsh treatment?

The village of Hadstock, Essex, has a local legend which suggests that they might have been. The wooden door of the local church is thought to date back to Saxon times, and like many church doors would have been covered in leather. In 1791 a small piece of what looked like leather was found under the iron fittings of the door. It found its way to the Saffron Walden Museum, where analysis suggested it had a more gruesome origin. A label from 1883 tells the story of the piece of skin, suggesting that it once belonged to a Dane, a sacrilegious Viking, killed for stealing from the church. He was flayed and his skin mounted on the door as a warning.

But was this local legend really true? Ancient DNA expert Alan Cooper of Oxford University decided to put it to the test. He was allowed to remove one tiny part of the ancient skin, no more than one centimetre square. He took it back to the lab, hoping he would be able to find some surviving DNA in the tiny sample.

Alan did manage to extract identifiable DNA from the sample. But when he compared it with known DNA, the results suggested that the flayed Dane was no more than a grizzly legend after all. The skin, ancient though it was, had once belonged to a cow. It was no more than an ordinary leather covering on Hadstock church door after all.

View a short movie about the investigation into the Hadstock Viking.

Modem | ISDN

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Published: 2001-10-01