What made this archaeological find so rare?
Just that the bodies were disposed of without being first stripped of their armor? If that was a result of hot weather causing the bodies to decompose -in Scandinavia- surly this happened elsewhere.
So is it more a matter of finding mass graves or that this burial was truly unique?
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>The naked bodies fell like puppets with their strings cut, limbs akimbo, jumbled and tumbled together in a gruesome confraternity, appalling in its mimicry of intimacy. They would lie together, lost, unnamed, and unremembered, until the pits were uncovered in 1905 and each skeleton was examined to determine the likely cause of its death. Those without marks on their bones—the majority—were killed by lethal flesh wounds, mainly spear and sword thrusts to the abdomen. Four hundred fifty-six wounds spoke of being struck by cutting weapons such as swords and axes. Piercing weapons such as arrows, spears, and the macelike “morning star,” a ball studded with metal spikes and attached to a handle, accounted for 126 wounds. One skull shows evidence of multiple hits. In its base it has three bodkin-tipped arrowheads lodged in a neat cluster. Was the man trying to flee? Or had he turned his back in an instinctive response to a hail of arrows? In addition, though, as a testament to the ferocity of a medieval battlefield, he was also struck twice toward the back of his head with devastating blows from a war hammer that left its telltale square imprint in his shattered skull. The destructive power of medieval weaponry is seen everywhere at Visby, but particularly in the cuts to the legs, where in more than one case a single sword or ax blow had severed both legs in one tremendous scything swipe.
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What happened to that poor fellow?
I think that's the one mentioned in this.
>These men died spilling their guts in the mud for a battle in a war nobody even remembers
>They never even got a proper burial
I wonder how many of these kinds of wounds are caused by friendlys or even by ones own weapon. In a battle I'd imagine there's a lot of collateral damage when swinging a blade around.
christ it's like a scene out of hell
Real world battles actually don't work like hollywood movies might tell you, believe it or not but people didn't split up into induvidual melees and swing their weapons wildly.
Not many I would think. They'd have to be a real spaz to slice themselves open or accidentally slash a friendly.
The battle was pretty much a one sided slaughter.
It happened on occasion.
>Plutarch relates that in the great press of bodies in Pyrrhus’s phalanx during the battle of Árgos in 272 BCE many were killed by “friendly fire”—accidental blows from comrades.
Though "friendly" trampling and suffocation is much more common, most famously at Agincourt.
>cuts to major arteries
>19
>17
>16
>1
>6
>5
I think was pretty fucking dead the second his femoral artery was completely severed, I bet the other wounds were caused by people making sure the bodies were dead after the battle.
Geologic conditions allowed them to be well-preserved. Skeletons are actually not permanent at all, and can degrade massively within one human lifetime.
Because the the Visby collection was so massive, we can learn quite a lot about the makeup of medieval armies, or at least the makeup of 14th-century Danish war victims.
Perhaps most importantly, we know exactly what kinds of armor and weapons would have been used, providing light on questions of armaments' shelf life. Specifically, the grave suggests that armor went out of style about as quickly as cars do today. Despite the high price of armor, most soldiers had very recent equipment.
>The destructive power of medieval weaponry is seen everywhere at Visby, but particularly in the cuts to the legs, where in more than one case a single sword or ax blow had severed both legs in one tremendous scything swipe.
Or some pissed off German merc hacked away at him while he was on the ground.
Weird how humans are part mineral.
Spoiler alert: all of your components are minerals.
I think you mean minerals are part human
All muscles, organs, and cells are composed completely of minerals, rather than just relying on minerals? Interesting.
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We're talking about them now. Billions are totally forgotten along with everything they ever cared about.
>Nobody remembers Iohannes the Miller who sheltered his neighbor after his kiln burned down
The special thing about the Battle of Visby is that the fallen where just tossed into mass graves and left there until the modern day. Normally the corpses would have been stripped of their armor and weapons because that shit is expensive. Imagine today if a soldier is killed, do we bury him with his body armor, night vision goggles, assault rifle and 1000 rounds of ammunition? No way. So normal behaviour would be to strip the corpses, take all their fancy stuff like swords and armor vests, and probably give them proper burials but for whatever reason that didn't happen at Visby. So now we can see what armor and weapons they wore in combat.
Is there any theory as to why they weren't looted?
The victors were too busy chasing fleeing troops to loot them initially.
After that, nobody wants to strip a body that has literally had a full day to bloat in the summer heat.
they simply smelled too disgusting
I suspect that some peasants were probably forced to dig the pit and bury the bodies. I have to wonder if they refrained from looting the corpses partially because your average peasant probably wasn't used to that sort of thing, and may have had some religious reason not to.
But this must have been true for many battles, why would Visby be such a unique exception?
Nah, it wasn't. Most battles ended with some cavalry going after fleeing troops(to take prisoners, mind you) and everybody else looting and burying shit.
Here they didn't want to take any prisoners so they went with whole army to kill all survivors because they were otherwise impossible to identify - they would just get back to their farms and think "oh, if I'm going to rebel again, I'll just flee in the right moment and get free pass anyway".
I've thought this too. I mean on one hand I'm sure that rotting carcasses of your countrymen weren't the most appealing places to loot, but at the same time the amount of scrap metal from the battle alone would have been incredibly valuable. They've found well crafted suits of armor and purses filled to the brim with gold coins, so there most have been something that deterred pesants from looting just a little bit, right?
Maybe the mercs/soldiers told them that they weren't allowed to take anything or they'd get fucked up?
But that makes me wonder why they didn't just order the peasants to strip the bodies so they could take the loot themselves.
Visby was a home of wealthy merchants. Valdemar and his army taxed the shit out of the town after they won the battle. So i can understand why they would not loot the corpses, the gold they got from Valdemar after he practically robbed the merchants of Visby was probably more enticing than scavenging purses from mutilated peasants.
That's funny because the merchants were loyalists, they didn't want to let fleeing rebels in so there would be a siege rather than slaughter.
Fucking cucks, those merchants.
Makes sense. Hauling around armor and shit so you can sell it is a pain. There'd be little incentive to do it if you knew you were going to make beaucoup bucks off some good ole fashioned extortion.
They are loyal only to the gold.
Going back to reread volume 1 of this book it does seem like most bodies were looted and stripped. ~1,200 remains and only ~20 sets of armor found across 3 mass graves, with the armor finds coming mostly from only one. More mysteriously, though, is the armor and equipment thrown in separately, including some of the mail coifs and all of the gauntlets, for they still had value.
>1200 remains and only 20 sets of armor
Have you taken into account that most of the peasants probably wore no armor at all?
Because finding a grave tied to a specific person or event, from so long ago, is amazingly rare. We know exactly when the battle of Visby was and therefore can date everything in the grave to that date, the armour, the weapons, the people, everything, in the context that it was all involved in the battle.
Still have value, but are also covered in rapidly festering blood, brain matter and shit.
Or maybe they had to leave the area in a hurry, for one reason or another before stripping the last 20.
>in a hurry
This is essentially what the book says.
Ok his post was very misinforming. 1200 corpses, that's the total from all the massgraves from the battle (Not counting the battle at Mästerby a few days prior.) 20 sets of armor, that's the amount of complete, preserved armored plate jackets found in those graves, like in this picture here: The force that was beaten in the battle, and essentially massacred, was a peasant levy and not professional soldiers and the majority probably wore no armor, at best maybe a mail coif and a wooden shield. The danish army consisted of veteran mercenarys from Europe and they took very few losses.
>I take my knowledge from Medieval 2
Even in early middle ages it was required from peasants to buy themselves a helmet in case of conscription
I don't know what "Medieval 2" is.
There was no universal law that applied to all medieval peasants. The gutnish yeomen army were not conscripted by a lord, they fought for their independance. The swedish king did not send any aid but the gutnar wanted rather to remain under his jurisdiction than surrender to the danes so they decided to rally and fight. And i bet they were probably spurred on by the wealthy men of Visby who didn't want to part with their precious shekels.
Was it customary to take coins into combat? To barter for your own ransom?
it's more common sense. There was a fairly sizable chance your baggage train would be looted so it's not a great idea to leave all your valuables there, and if you were killed in battle you wouldn't be needing the coins anyway
That image represents blows to the limbs of many skeletons, not just one man
I visited this museum just two days ago. I can highly recommend going there if you ever go to Sweden. They have some very interesting Late Medieval altar shrines and church art stuff like that as well. But being Sweden its a bit tainted with PC/SJW shit.
IIRC we have no preserved law books from Gotland describing what arms and armour you had to own.
Not all of the armored men had coats of plates, user. From what I understand, quite a few hauberks were found as well.
Its more like you just don't want to lose your fucking money.
He died.
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Seems like there would be safer alternatives, knowing theres a good chance youll die and it'd be taken anyway
Sometimes the coins weren't for currency at all
>oh yulia
Impressive.
Has this been done before? Surely there are more medieval battelfields scattered over Europe. Why aren't there more musea that show these battle wounds. Or to set the question different why weren't these men proper burried but taken apart and displayed?
Some of them were probably already taken apart, or they already fell apart thanks to their hasty burial.
There aren't more museums like this because battles were just a minute part of our entire history. Besides: they would get repetitive.
"What happened here?"
"A battle... thousands died."
"What battle is this?"
"[insert name here] and it was really brutal. Men hacked at each other, they died atop one another, and in a few years are forgotten."
You only need one or two to truly understand that warfare, in any age, is fucking brutal and involves human beings going against their better selves to sink into a level no better than mere beasts.
Not trying to be an edgefag or talk deep, just saying that a medieval soldier would tell you the same thing a modern soldier would: "war is hell"
yes and if peasants was forced to dig graves they may have known some of the killed and feelt it would be wrong to take thier stuff eaven id they are dead
There are battlefields especially but they're pretty big and there isn't enough funds to allow archaeologists to dig up all of ever one searching for mass graves. The ones found at Towton were discovered by accident.
Occasionally they find remains with battle injuries in regular grave contexts though.
Finding remains with battle wounds is somewhat common, and only so much can be discerned from bare skeletons. Finding equipment is almost unheard of, especially iron as it turns to rust. For example the only known Roman shields were found buried in an abandoned settlement in the Syrian desert.
This is my understanding of Visby, or at least what some hobby Viking-historian told me:
>Fully equipped Danish army marches on Visby
>The defenders panic and decide to attack next day. Because they lack equipment, they just use all the old and strange equipment that was lying around in the city
>The defenders with their outdated equipment get butchered.
>Because the equipment is so shitty, the Danes don't take it, but just bury everyone with their stuff.
>Nowadays people think the Visby finds represent authentic armor of the time, but in really it was outdated and exotic armor
>Lamellar armor was never a thing
That's fuckin metal...
I've literally never heard anyone make a claim that the armor found at Visby was standard armor at the time. Everyone is aware that it was a peasant levy, with absolutely no training and barebones weapons and armor, if any. The armor that was found was probably either old shit that the smiths and whatnot had lying around or cobbled together stuff on short notice.
From this book. It's pretty fuckin metal.
>mega.nz
Thanks, u r da Best.
