Forbidden History - The Mystery Viking Mass Execution of Ridgeway Hill

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

The Viking Age began in 793 with the attack on Lindisfarne--or did it? Evidence indicates Scandanavian explorers and traders had been active in Europe for decades before suddenly adopting the new strategy which brought fear to Europe. Cast List: Eric Meyers: Narrator Tim Sutherland: Host / Archaeologist Raili Allmäe: Osteologist, Tallinn University John Haywood: Historian and Author Marge Konsa: Archaeologist, University of Tartu Louise Loe: Project Manager, Oxford Archaeology Jüri Peets: Archaeologist, Tallinn University Neil Price: Archaeologist, Uppsala University Dave Score: Head of Field Research, Oxford Archaeology Steve Wallis: Archaeological Director, Dorset District Administration Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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On a cold hillside beneath the sky, sea winds at their backs. Fire, horror, and fear. A shallow grave, waiting where for a thousand years they'll lie. Now teeth and bone tell the stories of soul. of men long dead and a long way from home. It's almost as if these people have been butchered. The mortal remains together in death. We did have complete bodies, minus the heads of course.

Their secrets lost to the world. Got the impression of very messy botched attempts at removing their heads. Uncovered at last, the secret Viking grave of Ridgeway Hill. Hill. From the late 8th to mid-11th centuries, the Scandinavian peoples burst from their frontiers, almost wherever the seas could take them. On this episode of Forbidden History, through archaeology, we can now explore the world of Viking life by understanding the realm of the Viking dead. The landscape of Britain is a blanket beneath which many secrets lie, Archaeology shines alight into this darkness by planned expeditions and surveys,

but usually the greatest secrets are revealed completely by chance, given up one by one like cards dealt at random. This was very much the case one day in Dorset on the English South Coast. In June 2009, the road between Dorchester and the Port of Weymouth was undergoing huge renovation. The high ground that the road crossed, roughly halfway between the two towns, is called the Ridgeway. It was on this hill that a grim find was made. The whole area had been carefully monitored for many months by archaeologists working with the construction company. Yet, as so often, the chance find happened just off the map.

It was just outside the area yet surveyed by the archaeologists that could be a lot. construction workers made the discovery. Bones and skulls meant the construction stopped. The archaeologists moved in, and people across the world were transfixed by what emerged. The skeletons of dozens of individuals buried together. This was no carefully made grave. The bodies that appeared had been thrown in. They were heaped on one another in disarray.

Worse, each one had been. been beheaded. The skulls were found together piled at one end of the pit. When it was eventually revealed that the finds were from the Viking Age, archaeologists were compelled because nothing like it had been found before. It looked like an execution. When I first heard about the Ridgeway Hill discoveries, I was quite excited because we have very, very few mass graves from the Viking Age. And graves of that kind tend to be tend to reflect a particular event. It can be plague, some kind of famine, it can be the result of a battle, or as Ridgeway Hill

turned out to be the result of a mass execution. The evidence was all there. There was little doubt to archaeologists about how the men had died. Normally as archaeologists, what we find in the archaeological record are accidental things, things that people have dropped, things that have just built up. over time. So when you find the result of a deliberate action, in this case a horrible one, killing lots of people, it's an opportunity to get inside the events and the motivations of the time. Another archaeologist was intrigued too. Tim Sutherland from the University of York in England.

He's had his own experience of a mass grave from the Middle Ages. But that was from the Battle of Tautton in the 1460s, the late Mediades, the late Mediades, evil time. Before Ridgeway Hill, no one had seen a mass grave on this scale in the Viking Age. So now Tim wants to find out more. It's going to be a journey as he attempts to uncover all there is to know about the excavation and the story of this amazing archaeological discovery. Investigating the records of the excavation, he'll unearth the remains. A classical archaeological detective story. It leads him first to understand the area in which the find and its story all took place

in Dorset. Archaeologist Steve Wallace of Dorset County Council was on site during the excavation. Well I can see why it's a sort of an important place right between Waymouth and Dorchester. Yeah, absolutely. But there's something's in the way now, isn't it? The landscape changed a bit, I presume. Yes, I mean, you might complain there's rather a large road in the way, but that was how we got to find the Vikings.

It was where the top of the ridge was cut through for the new road that the grave was first found. The site couldn't be avoided. The whole area was due to be dug away. So it was on a little island, a promontory sort of out into what was a major construction site? Yes, yes. It was found quite early. on in the digging of this cutting and then it was managed well enough so that the

archaeologists could continue recording for a couple of months while the road construction went on and it produces its own problems don't it I mean a massive construction like this and any archaeology that's sort of in the way yeah produces its own anomalies and its own problems and of course that's one of the things that as archaeologists we've got to deal with and a credit to the the person who first found it and reported it the machine driver who's first found bone and had been told if you find bones reported and so he did what he was supposed to do. And if it hadn't been for that one person, we might have lost it completely.

Or it would have been severely damaged. Yes, I think the best you would have found that someone might have noticed some bone being tipped on the site somewhere else on the scheme, you know, which is next to useless. There was nothing at first to link the site with the Viking age. And it was easy to assume that it dated to many years before the 8th to the 11th century, as we normally think of the Vikings. This was because in this part of Dorset, there's a rich heritage of Neolithic Iron Age and Roman archaeological sites. It is a monumental landscape, and it's easy to see why at first everyone thought the Ridgeway Hill grave was most likely from the Iron Age.

Just a few miles from Ridgeway Hill, Maiden Castle is one of the largest prehistoric earthworks in the whole country. Maulbury Rings in Dorchester was originally a Neolithic construction, but it's not sure for what purpose, defense or gatherings. It's an example at least at what remains of the area's ancient landscape. I think what most people probably don't realize is this is an incredibly old monument, isn't it? Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I think a lot of people locally know it's a room an amphitheatre, but the fact there's a Neolithic Henge and then the later, the Civil War fought here. So he's got quite a history and, you know, more recent stuff as well, the fact that people were executed here more recent times. Oh, right. Political rebels were condemned there,

and at least one murderer was burned at the stake. But this was in the 17th century, relatively recent times. Whoever the Ridgeway Hill victims were, maybe they too had been condemned here, or somewhere similar in this Iron Age landscape. And the massive monuments, I mean locally, you know, to other places, this would be like the most significant thing in the landscape. The job of excavating the grave fell to Oxford archaeology, who were already involved with the watching brief on the site as part of the long-term project to create the Weymouth Relief Road. Dave Score was the project manager responsible for the watching brief, as well as the major excavation of the grave pit itself, which was soon to unfold. Like everyone else, Dave and his team at first theorized that the skeletons most likely dated to ancient times.

This was long before any radiocarbon dating had been done. We thought that it was almost certainly Iron Age to start with. There were no finds to give away the date. It was just a feeling based on the context. We had a prehistoric landscape around us. And of course it's on a ridge, which is a classic route way for them. And it's on a ridge. basically a prehistoric routeway.

This routeway, the Ridgeway, had been used since time immemorial, before modern roads people kept to the high ground in order to travel those long distances. It was quicker and safer than the surrounding lowlands. At Ridgeway Hill, the North and South roads crossed the ancient Ridgeway at right angles, just as its predecessor the Roman Road did. It was a giant X in the landscape, but no one had ever suspected it might mark something until its discovery. So when did you first hear about this? Can you remember your reaction when you first heard that something like this had turned up?

I can actually. I was in my office and I got a call from my project officer on site, just a fairly routine call to start with, basically just to let me know that they'd found something on the watching brief. So my guys had been basically watching the machine. it had pulled a strip and some bones had come out. So they'd stopped the machine, and they were just letting me know, basically, they were pausing the machine, and they were having a little investigation to see what was going on, and that was it. An hour later, Dave got another call.

The archaeologists had cleaned around the area and confirmed that it wasn't just scattered bones in the topsoil, but at least one in-situ burial. I let the client know. There might be a sort of a day or so delay. we just needed to tidy it up and excavate it properly and left my guys to get on with it. And I got a call an hour later saying that they've got two skulls poking out right next to each other. That's fine, yeah, brilliant, excellent.

It's not too bad. Not too bad. It's going to be interesting. It's going to be worth the time. So basically they carried on and then an hour later I got another call to say that they had five skulls, at which point it was very interesting. And then by the end of the day, I think the count was up to eight or nine skulls, something like that. Again, the skulls weren't scattered. It looked like they've been buried together at the same time, which could only mean one thing.

A mass grave. And at that point, we really realized that we'd got something that was quite unusual. It was looking interesting. So at that point, we sort of flagged up that it would probably take a little bit longer than a few days. The archaeologists on site kept going, and they kept on reporting the skull count as it steadily rose. By the middle of the next day, we had a whole pile of skulls emerging until we had sort of 20 to 25, I think, actually exposed. The next step was to clean the area around the skulls. The archaeologists soon were able to define a pit, roughly five to seven meters in diameter.

The skulls were piled on its edge, and in the grave itself all the bones were emerging. Just what had gone on. It makes your mind raised, doesn't it? Of course it does. Of course it does, because it looks like you've got a pile of skulls, but they're on the edge of a big pit, and you can see you've got other bones in that pit as well. Dave was now certain that he had a major archaeological story unfolding on his watch. He needed backup from Oxford Archaeology, and he needed backup from Oxford Archaeology,

and he needed time from the developer to carry out what was looking like would be a complex excavation. So we did have to take a pause at that point and get extra people to the site. We had to have it fenced off. People we were working for set up a security cabin. So we had to get from some infrastructure because it was clear we were going to be spending more than two or three days quickly excavating a couple of barrels. We were going to be there for a little while and it was going to be something that was going to have to be done properly. Dorset County Council realized straight away the importance of the find,

and a plan was made for construction to continue all around the site, while the excavation team carried out their task of retrieving the skeletons. There we were on our little pyramid of chalk, with the construction going on all around us, a nice little fenced revetment around us, looking out across all these sort of diggers working, and actually able to work on this pit. So in terms of archaeology, it was a perfect,

scenario. The plan worked and the successful dig lasted several months. I mean you're very fortunate in a situation like that when there is massive construction. We were very, very lucky that the council who were the ultimate client and the people building the road had been so good and we're so enthusiastic about it anyway. It helps when the archaeology is obviously at a really high level. Everyone gets it. By the digs conclusion, 52 skulls had been recovered and 55 skeletons. Some of them are now displayed in Dorset County Museum. What happens after a major excavation like Ridgeway Hill?

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County Museum's archive. Most of the material excavated from sites across Dorset over the past 200 or so years is preserved here. It's an incredible source of primary material, including the Ridgeway Hill files. These are identifiable to any archaeology, so it's a site archive, and we've got the notebooks, obviously everybody, every archaeology should have their own notebook, and they're the thoughts and stages and processes of everything you do on everyday work. And here we've got some of the initial thoughts and concepts and the work that was undertaken at the very time that they found the mass grave. Now that's fantastic because this is the archaeology of the archaeologists. Usually the material is stored away and is hardly ever looked at again.

But for an archaeologist trying to understand what happened during an excavation, they're invaluable. These are the sort of rough images, the sketches, the notes, the thoughts. And people never see that side of it. And so it's fascinating. And this is the nitty gritty, basically. There's information from all the bones that were recovered. But as to why the men were beheaded and buried like this, there were still many questions unanswered.

Not only it seemed did the individuals go to the grave without their heads, but also with little else. We were very conscious that we had an amazing find. in terms of the burials, but we didn't have anything else to go with them. We had no fines, there was no evidence of any clothing, no toggles, no ties. There were no artifacts, no jewelry, no bracelets, but there was nothing really to tell what age they were. To try to find out, while the excavation was still in progress, samples of bone were taken

from some of the skeletons and sent off for initial radiocarbon dating. It would put to the test the commonly held theory that everyone had so far, that the skeletons were from the Iron Age. It was, I think, about the fifth or sixth week of the excavation before we got those dates back. And when they came back, of course, that was a shocker. That was surprising. You're not in the Roman period.

You're not in the early age period. You're significantly later. The Saxon period, exactly. So we're sort of late 10th century-ish. So immediately it's a completely different context. The end of the 10th or the start of the 11th century, The date was at least a thousand years later than anyone had been expecting. Dave and the team had to completely rethink.

You immediately start thinking about, you know, the Viking raiding that's going on during that period, the unrest that's happening, and that's suddenly the context that we're thrown in. So, you know, are they Anglo-Saxons that have been killed by Viking raiders? Are they Viking raiders who have been caught on the beach and marched up there to be excellent? executed, you know, what's going on. Britain at this time was in a period of great change. Over 200 years, Scandinavian incomers had gone from Viking traders and raiders to settlers and farmers.

Britain was divided into the kingdoms of the English, Mercia, Northumbria, Wessex, and the Kingdom of the Danes, with its capital, York, Yorkvik. This was known as the Dane Law. Much of the time, an uneasy live-and-let-live attitude pervaded. But tensions often spilled over into bitter conflict. How did all this relate to the bodies in the pits? The links with the Vikings in this part of Britain have a unique place in the historical record.

From the side of the grave on Ridgeway Hill, the Isle of Portland is clearly visible, and it was here that the first known Scandinavian raid of the Viking Age took place. But these events were 200 years before the men in the grave had died. Why then were they buried where they were, and how had they died? Their bones hold some of the answers. The skeletons are stored carefully just a few miles from where they were discovered. We always knew that we had something extraordinary and highly unusual, but it wasn't until we examined the skeletons in detail that

A very ugly and chilling picture emerged about these individuals and how they'd met their fate. That, to be quite honest with you, it took us slightly by surprise because we've seen a lot of trauma, but nothing quite like this. Louise Lowe is an osteologist, trained in the excavation and analysis of human skeletal remains. Archaeologists like Tim rely on specialists like Louise when they're excavating graves. Louise headed up the burials team at Ridgeway Hill. Her job was to assess each of the individual skeletons as they emerged. She was highly experienced, yet it still left a strong impression on her.

So can you explain what all this is about? Yeah, of course. The skeleton that we've got laid out here is an individual who's about 20 to 30 years of age. Most of the individuals were younger than that, sort of. of 18 to 25. One of the youngest was about 14 years. And then there were one or two older ones sort of in their 40s and 50s.

All the skeletons are male, broadly of active or fighting age. It seems obvious with hindsight how the men died. Louise had to remain scientific in her analysis, keeping to the facts. The most obvious trauma marks were those inflicted while the men were beheaded.

Each was individual, leaving different signatures on the bones. This individual's had his head removed with quite a neat incision to the top of the neck, indicating that some of them had perhaps had their necks hyper-extended to remove their heads. Maybe they'd been forced to kneel down in front of their executioner. Each man may have met his fate in a slightly different manner to the next, as evidenced by a few single, clean-cut marks. clean-cut marks, but that isn't the typical picture Louise found. Most skeletons showed much more brutal trauma, far less neat or clean wounds.

Some of them are actually quite messy, quite sort of botched attempts at decapitation. Maybe their executioners weren't very experienced, maybe they were hurried. Quite a lot of examples we've got where the cut has been delivered low down, cutting into the shoulder blade. Some have come and cut through to the backs of the mandibles. It's taken the bone off cleanly right the way through. A big piece of it. And we do have examples where it's come through

and cut the front of the jaw off. There's evidence, too, of the sheer visceral impact of the blows on the victims. We've got the jaws from two individuals. out here and they're examples of where the blade has come in and actually cut through the teeth in some cases. It's cleanly cut off the crown of this molar tooth. And in this individual, the tooth has fractured longitudinally down its length. We think that this sort of thing was occurring because of the sheer force of the blow,

causing forced occlusion of the teeth as the blow is delivered to the next. to the neck region. So the shock of the impact on the teeth has actually fractured. Causing them to fracture, yes. So, yeah, another example of just how brutal these decapitations were. The fragments are still associated with it, aren't they? I mean, sometimes you think, oh well, you've chopped the tooth off. The tooth would just fall out.

But the tooth was found with that individual, which suggests at very least he had his mouth closed after he died, and therefore the tooth stayed in his mouth. It's actually quite chilling to think that they were probably held there by bits of sinewy soft tissue. Maybe the tooth was held in place because the type of trauma,

this sort of hacking trauma, you're hacking into the neck. You're not cutting cleanly through. So bits of tissue are being dislodged and just sort of enabling, remove bits of teeth to sort of rest there. Whether the wounds in were clean or frenzied, the removal of the heads of the men must have been a horror to behold.

Of course, you're separating the head from the rest of the body, and so in the bits that are being separated, they would have pulled the bits and pieces of the body apart, like bits of the spine apart and bits of flesh, and of course they would drop off. It's almost as if these people had been butchered. Butchery, maybe. But did this leave any clues as to the type of weapon used to inflict the trauma? Is it sharp enough to be something like a sword or is it relatively blunt or something like a big heavy weapon like an axe or something? That's interesting actually. We thought quite a lot about the weapon that had been used.

And although we can't rule out the use of an axe or a knife, most of the wounds are consistent with a long heavy blade. And that is actually quite significant because the use of the sword would have been highly symbolic, and that might suggest that these executions have been performed by decree of higher authority, perhaps some sort of judicial execution. In the late 900s and early 1000s, most common criminals were executed by hanging. Death by the sword, when an example of ultimate power and justice had to be made for all to see, was reserved for relatively few crimes.

traitors captured enemy soldiers and Viking raiders. Can we have any clue as to who these men were or why they were executed? We have around 50 executed individuals. I mean, you could say there's still a slight question mark over that, but we're pretty confident to say it's an execution. I would go with that. So we didn't know at that time who they were. So, of course, we could speculate all the different scenarios of Anglo-Saxon's

in Viking Raiders or Viking Raiders executing Anglo-Saxons. There's also the thing that happens during this period is it was quite common for treaties to be formed with the exchange of hostages, for example. So they could have been executed hostages, where the hostages had been left, and then people hadn't kept their side of the bargain, and then they have this execution. There is one other event which might hold relevance. The Saxon King, Ethelred, was so exasperated by conflict with the Vythelan. Dane Law, that he ordered all Scandinavians living in Britain, even peaceful settlers, to be killed.

It was known as the Massacre of St. Bryce's Day. Evidence has been found elsewhere that might fit with this, but it's more haphazard, involving a broad range of people, including women and children. Ridgeway Hill is all male, and seems more regimented than the chaos of civilian massacre. Using sources from the time, Dave and his team speculated on possible explanations. One of two people have put forward the idea that it wasn't so much a massacre of, or might not have been so much a massacre of the civilian population, but it could have been Etherard's idea to get rid of his Viking mercenaries who had working for him,

who he decided he no longer needed, which actually I would say that's possible. that's possible. It's certainly possible that that could be the case. However, it's also possible that it could be a boatload of Viking raiders who have been captured. It could be possible that the Vikings have taken over the area and are marching all the male population from Weymouth up to the hill and executing them. The fact that it was actually, it happens in that location, though, which is the location you would think of for the Anglo-Saxon judicial process, would lead you down the road of thinking it's Anglo-Saxon. doing the executing.

They had bodies reliably dated and had established cause of death. Yet still there was no clear indication from history the men were traitors, prisoners of war, or Vikings from overseas. But there was another process that in this case would hopefully settle this aspect of the mystery. We were then very keen to find out where they'd come from. So we had the isotope ratios analyzed. analyzed and these were taken from their teeth which reflects the childhood geographic origins of the individuals but we also took them from their bones

from their ribs and their femur and these represent where the individuals had spent the latter part of their lives the fema's very broadly reflecting middle life and and the ribs broadly reflecting most recently before their deaths the preliminary isotope result showed that the individuals might have come from a variety of origins, possibly Northern Europe. One individual seems to have originated from as far north as the Arctic Circle. They'd spent their lives moving around a great deal, but not in each other's company. They'd had very

different migratory histories, if you like. The other thing that the isotope work showed is that they hadn't been in the British Isles for very long before they died. A group of individuals from different origins, widely spread across at least Northern Europe and probably beyond, certainly foreigners to British shores. It was a fascinating result for Dave and his team. The results came back very positive and almost just too good to be true and confirmed that they were of Scandinavian origin. So they were Vikings. To a man. I think also the interesting thing about the context is it's challenging our ideas of what is traditionally considered to be a Viking warrior. And if these individuals had been, for example, mercenaries and so on, they don't fulfill the image that we have of a typical Viking warrior.

And clearly this is showing that they were coming from diverse places that we hadn't really perhaps contemplated before. Foreign men and boys who had neither grown up in Britain nor had been there very long. But this still didn't answer whether they were captured or ransom fighters, soldiers as opposed to sailors. This time, it wasn't evidence that was an indicator. It was the lack of it.

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Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. We didn't see any evidence of healed trauma that suggested that they'd been in some kind of form a conflict, which you might expect if you're dealing with a group of warriors, and that was noticeably absent. Veteran soldiers, or at least individuals who had been in conflict before, often exhibit healed wounds on their bones. The whole story of Ridgeway Hill made the archaeologists consider the wider context. What was happening in Britain around the end of the 10th and the beginning of the 11th century.

The point about a find like this is that it basically changes the way that we look about the Viking Anglo-Saxon interaction on the South Coast. It just brings to life what you read about in history books and you see in sort of fictional movies about Vikings and Anglo-Saxons

and raiding going on. It just brings that whole thing to life and you've got an event which you can now document and you can speculate about what's going on. And I think that really does change the way that we actually think about it and I think that's what archaeology does. It brings things to life, it brings

reality to history and I think it's an amazing, amazing discovery. Was this an isolated incident? A large group of men, likely raiders, or at least boat crew, put to death close to the coast. With more than two centuries of coastal raiding in the Viking Age as we now know it, it seems unlikely that this was the only time in execution like this ever happened. From the archaeology and the analysis, a vision forms of what might have happened here. A group of men, from their teens to their 40s and 50s, led up here from capture on the coast,

or perhaps trial or prison at Dorchester. Either way, they almost certainly use the old Roman road. The Roman road crested the ridge between two ancient, burial mounds. And it also forms a sort of a natural arena. People could be sitting on each hill looking down into it, in which case, it's quite a spectacular place in more ways than one, really. And in terms of attracting people, if you've built something like a fire on the top of

this hill and everybody from Dorchester and Weymouth and all around can see where you are supposed to meet, where this event was going to take place. Of course, in that respect, it's perfect. A distinct location. A meeting place, the junction of a road and an ancient trackway, a boundary between parishes marked by ancient burial mounds all across Britain in Christian Saxon times. Such places were used for execution. Perhaps the killing of captured Vikings was a welcomed site.

People probably had quite humdrum lives, they were in great fear of the Vikings, and so this would have been some sort of celebration in a fire, so it was a very good idea for, not only for guiding people in, but as part of, yeah, what must have been a celebration in a way. If, you know, you can use the phrase celebration to describe the sight of 50-odd people having their heads hacked off. Punishment of the condemned extended to the next world. Victims were buried not in Christian churchland, but here in the ancient burial ground, perhaps as pagan Vikings. Whether a celebration or a subjugation, whatever the men's origin, whatever the men's crimes,

whatever happened here, is likely to remain a mystery. Ridgeway Hill, I have to say, is still a puzzle. We don't know why this was done. Clearly, the locals were annoyed with somebody, a group of people who did not come from there. Is it a group of Viking raiders who get captured and meet a nasty end? Is it some kind of reprisal? Is it a political act?

We just don't know. Personally, I try not to speculate about those things that we simply can't know at the moment. It's possible that there will be some new discovery that sheds more light on it. But I prefer to see it as an indication of the kinds of things that were probably going on all over the place in violent times. This was a troubled period of English history. Social tensions are running high. This is the kind of thing that can happen. The coast and headlands around Britain

might yet conceal more evidence of these violent times. Other graves on other coastland hills. But the blanket of the landscape has descended again, and the same sea beyond remains a silent witness. It's interesting to think that this is where some of the early Viking raids took place on Portland. And of course a couple hundred years later, this is where our individuals ended up losing their lives. Whatever we understand by the word Viking, whether it's a raider or whether it's a thief basically who's come from across the sea, they were still individuals and they came here, presumably, to better themselves one way or another.

I think scientifically when we analysed, when we analysed, When we analyze the bones of people, sometimes it's hard to imagine. Or sometimes it's easy to forget really that these were real people. And so we're trying to pull out the information, the data. But basically these were real people. They came from across the sea, they landed on these shores. They were potentially raiding or whatever they were doing this landscape. But this is where they died.

And it's not difficult to imagine that they looked out across the sea just before they died. And this was the last thing they saw. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, don't forget to leave a comment below and feel free to leave us a rating or review. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners like you. Thanks for listening. Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets?

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