A ritual site with sacrificial wells from the Viking Age at Trelleborg, Denmark

The promontory facing Storebaelt with the well-known circular Viking Age military fortress of Trelleborg erected by Harold Bluetooth in AD 980/981 seems to have been an important ceremonial space prior to the erection of the fortress and contemporary with a nearby high status settlement dated to the seventh to the eleventh century. This study presents new cross-disciplinary investigations focusing on three sacrificial well-like structures (47, 50 and 121) from the pre-Christian Viking Age at Trelleborg. Two of the sacrificial wells (47 and 121) included the only skeletal remains of four children hitherto recovered from Danish Viking Age wells. The strontium isotope results of the four children point to local provenance. However, the results of each well seem to pair up in a systematic way pointing to that the children might come from two different key surrounding areas at Trelleborg. Furthermore, the three wells contained animal remains of primarily domestic livestock partly representing consumption waste ...