Corroborating written history with ancient DNA: The case of the Well-man described in an Old Norse saga

Martin R Ellegaard; S Sunna Ebenesersdóttir; Kristjan H S Moore; Anna Petersén; Åshild J Vågene; Vanessa C Bieker; Sean D Denham; Gianpiero L Cavalleri; Edmund Gilbert; Thomas Werge; Thomas F Hansen; Ingrid Kockum; Lars Alfredsson; Tomas Olsson; Eivind Hovig; M Thomas P Gilbert; Kári Stefánsson; Hans K Stenøien; Agnar Helgason; Michael D Martin

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2024.111076

Corroborating written history with ancient DNA: The case of the Well-man described in an Old Norse saga

iScience. 2024 Oct 25;27(11):111076. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.111076. eCollection 2024 Nov 15.

Authors

Martin R Ellegaard^{1

2}, S Sunna Ebenesersdóttir³, Kristjan H S Moore³, Anna Petersén⁴, Åshild J Vågene², Vanessa C Bieker¹, Sean D Denham⁵, Gianpiero L Cavalleri^{6

7}, Edmund Gilbert^{6

7}, Thomas Werge^{8

9

10

11}, Thomas F Hansen^{10

12

13}, Ingrid Kockum^{14

15}, Lars Alfredsson¹⁶, Tomas Olsson^{14

15}, Eivind Hovig^{17

18}, M Thomas P Gilbert^{1

2}, Kári Stefánsson¹⁹, Hans K Stenøien¹, Agnar Helgason^{3

19}, Michael D Martin¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Natural History, NTNU University Museum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.
² Section for Hologenomics, Globe Institute, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
³ deCODE genetics/AMGEN, Inc., Reykjavik, Iceland.
⁴ Department of Archaeology, Norwegian Institute of Cultural Heritage Research, Trondheim, Norway.
⁵ Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway.
⁶ School of Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland.
⁷ FutureNeuro SFI Research Centre, Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, Dublin, Ireland.
⁸ The Lundbeck Foundation Initiative for Integrative Psychiatric Research, iPSYCH, Aarhus, Denmark.
⁹ GLOBE Institute, Center for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹⁰ Institute of Biological Psychiatry, MHC Sct. Hans, Mental Health Services Copenhagen, Roskilde, Denmark.
¹¹ Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹² Danish Headache Center, Department of Neurology, Rigshospitalet-Glostrup, Glostrup, Denmark.
¹³ Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research, Translational Disease Systems Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.
¹⁴ Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
¹⁵ Center for Molecular Medicine, Stockholm, Sweden.
¹⁶ Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden.
¹⁷ Centre for Bioinformatics, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway.
¹⁸ Department of Tumor Biology, Institute for Cancer Research, Oslo University Hospital, Oslo, Norway.
¹⁹ Department of Anthropology, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland.

Abstract

The potential of ancient DNA analyses to provide independent sources of information about events in the historical record remains to be demonstrated. Here we apply palaeogenomic analysis to human remains excavated from a medieval well at the ruins of Sverresborg Castle in central Norway. In Sverris Saga, the Old Norse saga of King Sverre Sigurdsson, one passage details a 1197-CE raid on the castle and mentions a dead man thrown into the well. Radiocarbon dating supports that these are that individual's remains. We sequenced the Well-man's nuclear genome to 3.4× and compared it to Scandinavian populations, revealing he was closely related to inhabitants of southern Norway. This was surprising because King Sverre's defeated army was assumed to be recruited from parts of central Norway, whereas the raiders were from the south. The findings also indicate that the unique genetic drift seen in present-day southern Norwegians already existed 800 years ago.

Keywords: Archeology; History; Paleobiology; Paleogenetics.