Salme
Learn more about the graves at Salme
Book cover: The Salme Ship Burials: Two Eighth-Century Mass Graves on Saaremaa Island, Estonia Fieldwork and Catalogue. The image links to a flier with information on the results
Download information on the publication of the Salme boatgraves Pdf, 727 kB.
Between 2008 and 2012, an extraordinary pair of graves was excavated at Salme on the island of Saaremaa off the Estonian coast: the remains of what appears to be a Scandinavian raiding party, buried in two ships on the seashore where they came to grief at the very start of the Viking Age. These finds arguably represent the most significant Viking discovery of the last hundred years. Crucially, it has been possible to identify the origin of the Salme raiders: strontium isotope analyses of their teeth show that they most likely came from Swedish Uppland, with a considerable probability that they actually were the people either from Valsgärde itself or from nearby power centres.
The Salme burials dates to around 750, in other words exactly at the critical time when the Vendel Period shades into the Viking Age. It may be that the supposed social shift that comes with the Viking expansion is in fact simply the external projection of processes that had long been underway inside Scandinavia, and one of our tasks in the project is to critically probe and perhaps dismantle this Vendel-Viking border.
The discoveries at Salme present us with an unprecedented opportunity to examine the specific culture behind the very first raids, and to do so from a Swedish perspective. Crucially, the Salme expedition, whatever it really was, occurred nearly half a century before the classic beginning of the Viking Age, the famous raid on the monastery at Lindisfarne in 793. This implies that the origins of raiding might well lie within the Baltic sphere, with a focus on the east, not looking westwards as the traditional models would have it. This is actually what we should expect, and is also supported by later written sources, hard though they are to interpret with confidence. Metaphorically speaking, the Salme men were some of the 'first Vikings' and provide a great opportunity to more deeply explore these issues.
As part of the Viking Phenomenon project we have been happy to be able to provide substantial funding support to the Estonian team working on the Salme finds, led by Dr Jüri Peets at Tallinn University. His team of three researchers, together with Marge Konsa from Tartu University, will bring the Salme project to completion.
One of the primary project outputs will thus be the final publication not only of the Valsgärde cemetery excavations but also of the Salme boat burials. Combining Valsgärde and Salme, we have the unique opportunity to reveal the world of the first Vikings, at 'home' and 'away', in a project of a kind never before attempted.