Subscribe now for full access and no adverts
REVIEW BY MARIANNE HEM ERIKSEN
Human sacrifice constitutes a perennially fascinating topic for scholars and general audiences alike. It is also a research area where the risk of leaning into sensationalism and exoticisation can be relatively high. In the Darkest of Days avoids these pitfalls. Springing from a Norwegian Research Council-funded project, the book is the outcome of a seminar in 2018 and brings together Scandinavian scholars working on different prehistoric periods.
The volume consists of a foreword by Rane Willerslev, an introduction, and 12 contributions focused on southern Scandinavia, ranging from Mesolithic hunter-gatherer societies to motifs of human sacrifice in medieval poetry. The introduction sets out a conceptual framing of the volume. It rightly points out that this is a regional review approaching sacrifice in broad strokes, and proceeds with a chronological and geographical survey of potential evidence for human sacrifice. The introduction argues – perhaps somewhat surprisingly, given the eclectic nature of the evidence – for a ‘congruent, possibly even coherent’ cultural transmission of human sacrifice from Funnel Beaker groups and the potential influx of Corded Ware/Yamnaya groups in the Neolithic onwards, though acknowledging shifts in ‘sacrificial traditions’. This discussion draws on evolutionary approaches and argues that human sacrifice is generally a response to external crises.
The chapters are organised chronologically, and their exact focus naturally varies, as does the nature of the evidence. Archaeological evidence includes double or multiple burial from various periods of prehistory, decapitation burials, and skaldic poetry. Unsurprisingly for anyone who knows the Scandinavian material, multiple chapters centre on bog bodies. As in other parts of Northern Europe, these enigmatic remains placed in wetlands and waters offer central evidence of bodies treated, perhaps, differently in Scandinavian prehistory, some of which display traces of violence.
Particularly valuable for this reader are the chapters highlighting the anthropocentrism that has led to bog bodies receiving the most scholarly attention, at the cost of other forms of material culture, such as textiles and pots containing food also deposited in wetlands and bogs. Fredengren’s chapter taking a feminist, post-humanist approach provides the most innovative refiguration of the bog bodies to my mind, with implications far beyond the bog body material itself. Other chapters draw on more conventional but thought-provoking conceptual frameworks, including fertility symbolism and fertility rites, and the aforementioned evolutionary framing of the introduction. The connections between fertility, sexuality, gender, and violence remain an undercurrent through some of the contributions, and it would have been interesting to see how the editors and authors see the connections between these phenomena. No matter your theoretical persuasion, there is much to discuss in the varied interpretations.
By choosing as the point of departure a gathering of scholars to explore human sacrifice, this book has perhaps ended up with a somewhat tautological rhetoric where one will indeed find indications of human sacrifice. To my mind, it could have been valuable to see some lines of argument unpacked further. For instance, I would be keen on a more extensive discussion of the suggestion of large-scale enslavement and forced mobility among Neolithic populations, as this turns on its head the idea of this period as fairly egalitarian; or further unpacking of the contention that Bronze Age burials, including one inhumation and one cremation, are indicators that the cremated body constituted a human sacrifice. Several chapters centre questions of terminology – what do we mean by ‘sacrifice’ and ‘offering’? – and the volume could have benefited from a coda comparing and contrasting the approaches and terminologies used, and how these relate to a broader global, conceptual discourse on human sacrifice. Overall, the strong Scandinavian focus of the volume is both a strength and weakness – with some notable exceptions, many chapters are embedded first and foremost in a regional discourse. However, the volume is a solid primer on this topic in a specific area of the world.
Overall, the book is a welcome addition to the steadily growing literature on deathways, osteobiographies, and the politics of bodies in Scandinavian prehistory (although it is not necessarily framed as such), with varied case studies and new approaches.
In the Darkest of Days: exploring human sacrifice and value in southern Scandinavian prehistory
Matthew J Walsh, Sean O'Neill, and Lasse Sørensen (eds)
Oxbow, £38
ISBN 978-1789258592
