THE END OF A LIFE

 THE END OF A LIFE 

Olaf has finally reached the age of 45. His lifespan as a Viking was short because he faced poor nutrition, overworked, and diseases. Olaf died of an infection due to his poor dental health. He would be honored through a Viking burial due to his status as an important leader in the Nottingham community.  

Through inhumation, Olaf was buried with the clothes he died with. He was buried with his weapons, some gaming pieces, as well as a personal comb that he can take to the afterlife. His family buried Olaf with an old ship he had since his time in the Great Heathen Army. He laid on the boat while two horses laid next to him. As his family practices Christianity, they did not think it was well worth sacrificing one of their slaves to die with Olaf. 

The Funeral of a Viking (1893)  by Frank Dicksee


However, he was buried with jewelry that had crossed on them, to signify his faith in Christianity. Halfdan, Olaf's oldest son, was in charge of the funeral arrangement as the funeral ritual held on for days. The family celebrated Olaf's life through feasting, drinking, and singing. 

On the seventh day of Olaf's death, his children celebrated through ritual drinking. Halfdan would drink the funeral ale to rightfully claim his inheritance. 

Centuries later, Olaf's grave will be dug up by archaeologists in the twenty-first century. Through his bones and through modern genetic testing, they found that he was from Denmark. His diet consisted of a lot of seafood and flax seeds. Examining his bones, they saw that his wrist was injured due to overwork and possibly his swordsmanship. From the burial site alone, they assumed he was a Viking warrior through his grave goods and saw that he was a respected member of society. Through modern reconstruction by Olaf's facial features, scholars have found that he may have looked like this: 

credit: created by Brandon Molina through Artbreeder


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Bibliography

 Primary Sources The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle . Trans. Dorothy Whitelock, David C. Douglas, and Susie I. Tucker. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1961. The Annals of Ulster . Edited by Pádraig Bambury and Stephen Beechinor. CELT: Corpus of Electronic Texts. https://celt.ucc.ie//published/T100001A/index.html.  Grammaticus, Saxo. Gesta Danorum: The History of the Danes . Edited by Karsten Friis-Jensen. Translated by Peter Fisher. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2015.  The War of Gaedhill with the Gaill or The Invasion of Ireland by the Danes and Other Norsemen . Orkneyinga Saga: The History of the Earls of Orkney . Secondary Sources  Ables, Richard. "English Logistics and Military Administration 871-1066: the Impact of The Viking Wars," in Military Aspects of Scandinavian Society in a European Perspective, AD 1-1300, 1997. Retrieved from https://deremilitari.org/2013/07/english-logistics-and-military-administration-871-1066-the-impact-of-the-viking-wars/.  Bidd...
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Introduction

This assignment was created by Brandon Molina for HIST 101: Western Civilization I at Northern Virginia Community College. The purpose of the assignment is to create an imaginary primary source in the use of a travel journal. For this project, the focus is on the Viking Age, specifically in Anglo-Saxon England.  The project is centered around the idea of the use of saga as Viking mainly used oral traditions to pass down stories. Vikings were not illiterate per se, they did know how to use runes. They did not write as much in a way to save the information until after the introduction to Christianity and the Roman alphabet (see Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age, p. 180). Olaf's story is passed down through his children and eventually written down to preserve the family story. 
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TROUBLEMAKER FROM DENMARK

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