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One chop and a head could be parted from its body. But executions did not always go so smoothly: the axe was not always sharp enough, the executioner was not always sober enough, and sometimes the condemned moved their head with terrible consequences. Meeting such an end means, though, that those sentenced to death by decapitation usually preserve traces of the punishment on their skeletons. Examples known from the archaeological record can include heads that were removed by a bladed instrument, before being placed beside the shoulder or between the legs of the deceased. In some cases, skulls were also pierced by a hole, revealing that these heads were hung up on a nail or hook for public viewing, presenting a macabre warning of the fate awaiting those who perpetrated the darkest deeds or relapsed too often into petty crime.
Just as the bodies of the deceased can preserve traces of their treatment, so too the places where their end was administered often reveal evidence of their former role. Several such formal execution sites have been excavated in Sweden, while the skeletons of roughly 130-150 of the condemned have been found and studied. Here, we will delve into some of the archaeological and osteological information forthcoming from this work, and see how the findings compare with the surviving historical sources. The results present a powerful and sometimes graphic sense of the realities of capital punishment in Sweden over some seven centuries.
Punishment before prisons
In Sweden, there were numerous crimes that could lead to individuals receiving the death penalty during the Middle Ages. This was in part because incarceration was rarely an option, as there were simply not enough prisons available for them to be widely used for punishment. Instead, the prison space that did exist was mainly intended to hold individuals who were either awaiting trial or had been convicted and were yet to receive their punishment. In Sweden, castles, fortresses, and the basements of public buildings were often used as makeshift prisons for this purpose. Elsewhere in Europe, the most notable exception to the general rule that justice in the Middle Ages did not routinely involve incarceration seems to be Italy, where the historian Guy Geltner has argued that prisons were sufficiently plentiful for prisoners to be detained for short sentences after they were convicted.
The law in Sweden during the medieval period – and for some centuries afterwards – generally ensured that most first offenders (though not murderers) would receive a warning, a fine, or banishment from the parish. It was only if they returned from their exile or committed new crimes that the punishment became more severe. After the second or third transgression, there was no hope of leniency. Instead, the individual was sentenced to the harshest penalty of all: death.
Hanging and beheading were the most common methods of administering the death penalty in medieval Sweden. The earliest judicial hangings made use of trees, with the rope looped around a sufficiently study bough. Later, though, this approach was superseded by the availability of custom-built gallows. These instruments of death could rise several storeys high, allowing the condemned to be hanged at different levels: execution at the highest level was judged to bring the most shame. This carefully considered choreography of punishment is a reminder that these executions were public events that served as ceremonies of atonement, where spectators could throng in their thousands.
While hangings would be conducted at a formal public execution site, beheading with a sword or axe could also take place in a town square. Provision was made for various other methods of execution in Sweden, including being buried alive and burned at the stake. The former penalty, for example, can be found within King Magnus Eriksson’s landslag, or ‘Country Law’, which was drawn up in the 14th century. This specified that male thieves would be hanged, while their female counterparts should be buried alive. There remains some uncertainty, though, about whether this particular sanction was ever used.
For some crimes, death was not the only punishment. Instead, the condemned received an additional penalty prior to execution, such as being ‘broken on the wheel’. This brutal punishment involved tying the convicted to a wagon wheel and then beating them with a rod. According to both formal records and eye-witness accounts, it was common for the bodies of these individuals to be exhibited for public view after their execution as well. The intention was to add dishonour and disgrace to the penalties, while also using the corpses as a warning to others. One method of displaying these bodies was to lay them on a wheel that was supported on an upright pole.
Regardless of the precise method of execution, or the treatment meted out before or after death, the corpses of the condemned would ultimately be buried at the execution site by the executioner and his assistants. Interment at such places was not just reserved for those on the receiving end of criminal justice, though, as suicides, too, could be brought to formal execution sites for burial.
A neck vertebra showing chop marks that were most likely made by a sword.
Hundreds of execution sites
In total, 542 places of public execution are known in Sweden, with the greatest concentrations occurring in the most densely built-up areas. Some of these sites have been destroyed over time, while others are marked with memorials and signs. Although only a handful of examples have been excavated, it is clear that examining them sheds light on numerous subjects, including how the law was applied in practice. Archaeological attention has revealed funeral customs, too, that stray beyond the conventional ones.
Here, we will focus on the results of work at two sites. They are both located in south-east Sweden in the county of Östergötland. The first site lies in the outskirts of the town of Vadstena, which was founded in the late 14th century. The second site occupies a similar setting, in the outskirts of the town of Skänninge, just 15km from Vadstena. The town is one of the oldest in Sweden and was already an important city in the 13th century. Both execution sites lay barely a kilometre from the town boundaries, beside a main road, on a low hill rising from the surrounding plains.
The periods when executed individuals were buried at these sites vary. At Skänninge, the site was used on numerous occasions, with breaks in between. In total, though, it was a venue for executions over a period of around 500 years: the earliest took place sometime between 1030 and 1200, while the latest occurred c.1630. In Vadstena, the execution site was in use for a couple of centuries from c.1400 to 1650. The only apparent trace of the gallows that once stood there was a large post-hole, which probably reveals where a timber device once stood. Indeed, the only surviving standing gallows in Sweden are at Visby, on the island of Gotland, where they were built largely of stone.
Surviving written sources indicate that the bodies of the executed were often treated in ways that were less than respectful. In a departure from the traditional rites, the deceased were neither cleaned nor sprinkled with holy water, while prayers were not offered at their funeral. Instead, the bodies were simply stripped of their clothing and tipped into a pit. According to folklore, one exception to the rule that the deceased’s possessions were removed prior to burial concerns the case of suicides. These corpses were reputedly a source of real fear, and so their clothing and belongings would be left alone.
Hanged or beheaded
Study of the skeletons found associated with executions sites reveals that they are mainly men, with about 10% of the analysed material representing women. The majority were still young when they died, although some had reached middle age. The men were mostly well-built, and several were above average height for the era. There is no indication that they were malnourished, but a few individuals display traces of old, healed wounds that may well bear witness to involvement in earlier fights.
It is difficult to determine exactly how many individuals were hanged relative to those who were beheaded, as some skeletons were damaged or mixed up when new bodies were put in the same pit. That said, it appears that hanging was the most common method of execution for men. Despite the historical evidence indicating that women should not be hanged, it is clear from the archaeological evidence that this did sometimes happen. Even so, study of the skeletons suggests that more women were beheaded than hanged.
Examining the skeletons of those who were beheaded starkly illustrates the difficulties that this method of execution could present. The findings confirm written accounts of executioners having to make several chops before a head came off. Some skeletons preserve evidence of two or three blows to the vertebrae in the neck. Others display cuts through the mouth or lower jaw, although whether these were a product of a drunk executioner, a convict who moved, or both, cannot be certain. It is frequently unclear, too, whether an axe or sword was used to carry out the sentence, but the osteologist Tony Waldron has proposed that the use of an axe typically results in greater fragmentation of the bone around a cut.
Verifying that an individual was hanged is difficult, as this method of execution rarely left traces on the vertebrae before the 19th century. Initially, when hanging was done from a tree or a custom-built gallows, the condemned faced slow suffocation rather than a quick death. It was only after public executions were abolished in England during the 19th century that demands grew for hanging to result in instant death. In 1866, the Irish scientist Samuel Haughton proposed that this could be achieved by taking into account the height and weight of the individual, as well as carefully positioning the rope, in order for the fall from the gallows to break their neck. The method was first used in England in 1872. As all of the skeletons being studied here were executed prior to this, we would not expect to encounter fractures of the neck vertebrae. Instead, signs that an individual had been hanged included indications that their arms have been bound behind the back, and their head lying at an unusual angle.
Treatment of a body
A couple of graves at Skänninge stood out because of their small size. In these cases, the pits were too compact to accommodate a body easily, and so the corpses had been folded to make them fit. One example of this treatment included a body that had been placed in a particularly strange position. Although the skeleton was poorly preserved, it is clear that the thigh and lower legs of the deceased had become detached from the remainder of the body before or during burial. One possibility is that this was a product of the convict having been ‘broken on the wheel’ prior to execution. Elsewhere, candidates for such treatment are rare, as are traces of corpses bearing marks suggestive of public display. One exception, though, comes from Vadstena, where a large iron hook was found still inside a skull.
Surviving accounts state that the clothes of a convict would be taken by the hangman as part of his salary. It seems likely, though, that the executioner did not always want those garments worn closest to the deceased’s body. At some sites archaeologists have found skeletons associated with metal hook-and-loop fittings. These would have been attached to garments, suggesting that the deceased were still partly clothed when they were buried. One woman from the execution site at Skänninge, though, was buried with a particularly large number of personal possessions. These included hook- and-loop fittings, as well as a belt buckle, a finger-ring on her right hand, glass and metal buttons, and traces of both textiles and leather. The cluster of buttons lay below her left knee, which is consistent with them belonging to a purse that was attached to a sash or belt. One object that was out of place was the iron belt buckle, which lay just below the deceased’s neck. Given the willingness to leave this woman’s belongings alone, it cannot be excluded that her presence at the site was a consequence of suicide rather than execution.
It is well known from ethnological sources that fear of an executed person’s ghost or reanimated remains could be widespread, with a variety of precautions available to prevent a convict’s corpse from rising. One probable example of this occurred at Skänninge, where substantial stones were placed over part of the body, in order to hold it down. Other methods include binding together the feet of a corpse, or driving down wooden stakes or other sharp objects. Written sources mention that placing the executed person’s head out of reach would also prevent a corpse from rising. This may have been in the minds of the burial teams at several execution sites, where heads were often placed between the legs of a corpse.
‘If she returns to the parish, she will be beheaded’
Trial records preserved in the town hall of Vadstena reveal that criminals could themselves be on the receiving end of illegal acts. One example concerns a woman called Karin, who stood trial in the early 17th century. The judgements against her involved repeated cases of adultery. During her life, she was convicted of theft and adultery a number of times, and ended up in wild fights as well. Episodes of violence also included being beaten by a man on several occasions, while during a trial in 1601 she accused another man of using excessive force against her. Karin, like many women criminals in that era, was ultimately banished from the parish. Her verdict ends with the words ‘if she returns to the parish, she will be beheaded’. That is the last we hear of Karin in the records, and her eventual fate is not known.
What we know of Karin’s story chimes with the remains of a woman found at the Vadstena execution site. Her skeleton bears traces of what could be signs of violent abuse, including a fracture to the front of her right, upper arm. This injury corresponds precisely to those that today sometimes represent defensive wounds sustained in cases of assault. According to radiocarbon analysis, it seems that this woman lived about a century before Karin. Although the dating rules out a direct link with her, Karin’s story provides a powerful example of a ‘criminal woman’ in the early 1600s – someone who operated outside the establishment and was herself a victim of violence.
Past and present
Although the death penalty still exists in many countries around the world, the study of capital punishment in Sweden is entirely concerned with the past. In Europe more generally, the Italian Cesare Beccaria from the Duchy of Milan started to fight against the death penalty in 1764. The first state to prohibit capital punishment was the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1786. In Sweden, the death penalty was abolished during peacetime in 1921, with its use during war subsequently outlawed in 1973.
All images: courtesy of Caroline Arcini and Emma Karlsson
