Forbidden History - Vikings: The Ghost Ships of Saaremaa

Episode Date: March 31, 2026

In this episode of Forbidden History, we are joined by battlefield archaeologist Tim Sutherland, who investigates one of the most extraordinary Viking discoveries ever made. A specialist in conflict archaeology and the forensic analysis of mass graves, Tim has spent decades uncovering the physical evidence of warfare left behind in the soil. Now he travels to the remote shores of Estonia, where two ancient ship burials are rewriting everything we thought we knew about Viking culture. Cast List: Eric Meyers: Narrator Tim Sutherland: Host Raili Allmäe: Osteo-Archaeologist, University of Tallinn John Haywood: Historian and Writer Marge Konsa: Archaeologist, University of Tartu Jüri Peets: Archaeologist, University of Tallinn Neil Price: Historian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. We're an independent podcast, and advertisements help keep us going. Ads are automatically placed and not specifically chosen or endorsed by us, unless read by me the host. Thanks for supporting the show. A hostile shore, a freezing sky. Over salt-bleached dunes, the sentinels watch out to sea. The fallen. The long-forgotten. The nature of that burial is like nothing we've ever seen.

A mission, sacrifice unremembered, ships of the dead on their final voyages. I can think of worse places to spend eternity in. Beyond the boundaries of the Viking world. If you find something very special, it's a history changed like this. And the ones who went before, left to history in the Viking burial ships of Estonia. From the late 8th to the mid-11th centuries, the Scandinavian peoples burst from their frontiers

almost wherever the seas could take them. Now we can explore the world of Viking life by understanding the realm of the Viking dead through archaeology. History tells us, the Viking Age began with the traumatic events in Northeast Britain in AD 790. AD 793. Scandinavian ships were not unknown around the coasts of England. They were maybe a welcome site, bringing trade goods and news from across the North Sea. But when a famous Christian

monastery was suddenly sacked, that all changed. Shockwaves rippled through not just Britain, but across the whole Christian world. So a page turned, and a new period began. But did the Viking Age really begin like this so abruptly? The classic start of the Viking Age has usually been taken to be the radon Lindisfan in 793. But that's a very artificial way of viewing what at the time obviously was just life. We invented the Viking Age, no one woke up and said, blind me the Viking Age tomorrow. Well, perhaps not overnight. The change occurred over just a few decades in the late 700s.

The few records we have show a steady increase in rating. Up until the 800s, the upsurge is so great that we define it as a new age of the Vikings. But as so often with history, the edges of these ages are blurred. Scandinavians didn't just appear out of the blue, like a previously unknown culture. Evidence in archaeology and literature, epic poems like Beowulf, suggest Scandinavian influence in Western Europe and elsewhere centuries before the year 793. It's clear that Scandinavians are visiting England, visiting the West, long, long before the Viking Age.

What is changing there is that these familiar people are coming with violence rather than with goods to trade. The question is why? There's not one specific answer that explains why Scandinavians started to move out into the wider world. wider world. As ever, with human history, it was a confluence of push and pull factors. Above all, when we think of Vikings, we think of their raids for loot and plunder. But in the early ages, they didn't have a coin economy as such. It wasn't about the cash itself, but what it could get you back home. The Vikings are not just the people in those long ships. There are a whole

culture back in Scandinavia. The raiders are part of that. They're part of a way of life. And the reason they're doing the raiding connects to that way of life. It may be that they're trying to improve their social prospects back home, to buy a farm, to be able to afford to get married, things like that. Some of those people are going abroad and trying to change their fortunes. Some of the people are fueling that process at home with the proceeds of what they bring back from abroad. In 2008, an archaeological discovery reinforced the idea that these migrations had been going on long before the Viking Age with startling new evidence.

It was the chance find of a grave, with Viking artifacts, and a ship, a Viking long ship. But this find wasn't in Scandinavia. We know the land now as Estonia, Salme, on the island of Sarema, off the Estonian coast. It was almost too good to be true. The skeletons and artifacts here seemed, for the most part, very well preserved. Vikings buried with their swords, with the remains of their vessel. News of the discovery spread around the world. Archaeologists like Tim Sutherland were instant.

captivated. It's boys' own stuff. It's Vikings. It's ships. You've got Viking warriors. You've got Viking swords. Finding all these things in one location, just below the surface, just ready to be uncovered. It's almost the stuff of dreams.

Tim's traveled to Estonia to find out for himself about the finds, and the archaeological project to recover them. He'll attempt to discover more about the individuals who were buried there centuries ago. Boat burials are one of the icons of the Viking Age, and the centuries before. They're rare and always important archaeologically, and this one certainly stood out from other excavated examples. I'm interested in ship burials anyway, so I was excited about that. I think the thing that caught everyone's attention was the number of bodies on board. Before the first boat, the smaller one was discovered, I think the largest number of bodies

Buried at the same time in a boat was four. At Selma there were seven bodies. In itself, the most ever found in a ship burial. And later, that number would increase. This was just the beginning. It's truly astonishing. The nature of that burial is like nothing we've ever seen. Geology and soil always affect archaeology,

especially in the preservation of bone and artifacts. At Salma, the boat itself had completely disappeared. At first, the archaeologists had no idea that there had been a ship there. It was only when they discovered patterns of small iron finds. Some of these ship's rivets are among the artifacts from the display in Estonia's capital, Tallinn. I mean, if you look at the ship's rivets or the nails, the piece of iron that held the boards together, they're in fantastic condition. you can actually see the heads of the river where they've been hammered over.

You can see where the nail has been put through a washer and that's been hammered over. And the condition is amazing, considering they're a thousand years old. We've been looking for our heads in a field in France, half of the age of these, and we can't find any trace of them, and they might have just disappeared in the acidic soil. The Salmead dig was in sandy soil near the shoreline with low acidity. The timbers and all organics apart from most of the bone had gone. But like the rivets, the other metal finds were well preserved. Many of these artifacts, some richly adorned with precious metals, were very similar to

finds from Sweden in the Viking Age. But this was around 150 miles east of Sweden. Nothing like this had ever been found before. What was going on? This was how Salma began to change perceptions of this part of the world in the Viking Age. both archaeologists and historians. John Haywood is a historian and writer. He travels and lectures widely in Scandinavia and the far north.

It's through archaeological finds that you begin to be able to place Vikings in places that we didn't know they were and in many cases at times that we didn't know they were there. there. When the Salma finds were carbon-dated, this is exactly what happened. The artifacts and bones couldn't have been from the accepted Viking age. This is a find of a, basically a burial, two ships full of Viking warriors that dates from around about the middle of the 8th century. And that is about getting on for half a century before we conventionally think about, the Viking Age even having begun. The finds dated to approximately 750 or even as early as 700 AD.

Vikings before the Viking Age. The Baltic Sea is a kind of Mediterranean of the North. It's enclosed by North Germany and Poland, as well as Scandinavia and the Baltic countries. We think of the Viking Age beginning as Scandinavians came westwards towards Britain. But it It made just as much sense for them to head eastwards. To us looking at the Baltic, the far side of the Baltic, it seems like it may have been the edge of the world. Certainly if you were living in England or Francia, the Baltic was probably even slightly over the edge of the world.

There is a scarcity of written records from this time. Most of the sagas that give us some understanding, at least, of Scandinavian culture, are from several hundred years after the Viking Age ended. So Viking history in the Baltic and elsewhere is driven very much by archaeological finds like Salme. And it seems there was a lot more going on than was previously suspected. I think one of the things that the Salma find is really telling us is that there is a whole world of interaction in the East, in the Baltic. This is not unknown territory for the Scandinavians. Tim traveled to see the site for himself.

for himself. Guiding him is one of Estonia's most experienced archaeologists and the man who led the excavation team, Yuri Piz. The region in Viking times and before must have been remote, a wilderness. Yuri was used to excavating in the area, so he was given the task by the Estonian Heritage Board. And since I have been working for over 20 years in Sarema, I'm on several expeditions, as I knew the surroundings of the local people and the employees in the museum, it was rather natural that the task was sent over to me. This part of Estonia is still sparsely populated. It's hardly changed in centuries. Back in the 8th century, there were probably no roads here at all, and

just as back then, the rest of the journey is by sea to Sarima island. The coastline around Salmeh is flat and featureless, with miles of dunes, inlets and islands. It's a haven for wildlife. When unexpected burials are discovered in this part of the world, particularly mass graves, it's usually assumed that they're far from ancient. The area was heavily fought over in both world wars. In 1944, Nazi German forces pursued by the Russian Red Army retreated through Salme, possibly right over the grave site. Leaving many dead from both sides, most are buried in the island's war cemeteries, but many still lie in unmarked graves. Under the Soviet Union, Sarimah then became a restricted area,

closed even to most Estonians until 1989. So when construction workers unearthed the bones, people assumed that At first they were the remains of 20th century soldiers. But Yuri and the team of archaeologists he put together soon got to work and found otherwise. A colleague of URIES at the University of Tallinn, Riley Alme, is an osteo archaeologist. Actually Yuri Beds called me and asked that Riley, please come with me. They have found something in Saraman. and please come with me. There are human skeletal remains.

We didn't know that the skeleton remains are in the ship, actually buried in the ship. It was beneath the upper layers of skeletons and artifacts that the iron rivets were found. Like the others, Marga Konsea from the University of Tartou was surprised to find that it was a boat grave. They're known in Scandinavia, Britain and Western Europe, but none had ever been found before in Estonia.

I think the first difficulty what we had, we didn't know how to excavate the boat. It was first boat, a prehistoric boat in Estonia. It is not very scientific, but we started Googling how to excavate a boat burial. Marge and the team adapted to the task and carefully recovered hundreds of rivets, accurately recording their positions. So they were able to bring the lines of the long, disappeared boat back to life. All the while, there was the pressure

not to hold up construction work too long. The archaeologists also found themselves under pressure of a different kind throughout the excavations, mainly due to the site's location. As well as the main road, it was right by a school building. Hundreds of people visited us, and they asked questions and jury was very polite and always explaining and discussing and all the things. First, it was a little bit disturbing and I haven't used to do my job like some rock star or celebrity.

Maybe it sometimes was a little bit difficult even because we have photos when we have nearly 100 people watching what we are doing. The school's teachers incorporated the dig and the history of the period into their lessons. I have not seen such interest and respect towards archaeological site like in Salma. The constant interest throughout the dig paid off when the archaeologists were able to show some of their fascinating results. When the excavation was complete, it created a vision of how the burial must have appeared at the time. The grave contained the seven skeletons. They were inside a wooden boat, a small craft with maybe six or eight ores,

possibly a mast and sail. There were also personal items, such as small knives and combs, and the skeletons of dogs, hunting birds and fish. Almost a decade later, the approximate site of Salme I is now marked by a sculpture.

It's the usual piece of sculpture, but it's there so that people know what was here. It looks like a Viking ship, it's a modern piece of sculpture. While Marga and the others were working on Salme One, as if one Viking mass grave wasn't enough, another was found. It was construction again that revealed the find. And such was the interest in the Salma One boat that a driver stopped immediately the moment his digger revealed more bones.

The Estonian Heritage Board were great to be a driver, grateful that another precious archaeological context could now also be saved. This find, Salme II, seemed even more exciting than the first. It was just 40 yards south of Salme I. There were skeletons and many more artifacts, including swords. Again, there were many rivets. So Yuri's team now knew they had two ship graves on their hands. And this was much.

bigger than the first. Salme too looked like a warship. There were the same knives and combs and other personal items as before, yet this ship was different. It carried a cargo, so far unique to archaeology. More and more skeletons were found within the hull. 41 individuals. All males. Among, beneath and around them were the remains of shields, knives, and swords. No one had seen anything like it. The men had been deliberately laid to rest inside the boat. The archaeologists could only wonder at the rituals that must have taken place. For me, as someone interested, not only in boat burials, but particularly the what we call mortuary behavior. What do people do at a funeral? The funeral rights

at Selma are utterly amazing. You have all these guys, pile of held up in a mound of dead men, lots of birds and fish and dogs, really quite odd things, the birds and fish, to deposit it in a grave like this. In total, both boats took more than two seasons to fully excavate. It was a surprise to everybody, as Salmetteu was even closer to the school, just yards away. Somehow the grave had gone undiscovered, even when the school was built. For Yuri, Salme II was much more complex to excavate than his predecessor, Salme I. So the weather is not very nice today, but what was it like during the excavation?

We had a lot of very nasty days, especially in autumn, when the excavation days grew shorter. And we also had rainy days as well. Not only is it a multiple grave, but also it is in a ship. So what was it like when you first found it? It must have been an incredible feeling. It was an extraordinary find. We didn't believe it could be a ship. When we realized it was, it was very stressful.

It was such an important site that we had to do everything correctly. The schoolchildren saw daily the ship cargo of the dead emerging one by one from the sandy soil. One thing that the purse people or the white teeth, the skeletons had. Not only bones, but swords and other weapons littered the grave. Some were decorated with precious metals and even jewels. One of the problems is the question of security, because obviously if you are excavating over a long time,

you have things in the ground that you need to leave in the ground. Obviously, there is a ship full of Viking swords. The archaeologists camped at the site, so they kept an eye out for 24 hours a day. They also had help from a very big dog. I just picture that. Yeah, a guard dog sitting over the mass grave of people. There must have been a really weird site.

A Neapolitan master. And from what we can see here, it is so lucky that the site survived because there are electric cables running through it and there is a road running through it. In fact, the excavation revealed that Salmet II had had narrow escapes even before the school was built. A second World War soldier's grave was dug right by one side of it, and the... there was a bomb crater on the other. It was as though something had wanted the grave to survive for posterity. But what did they learn about the site

back in Viking times when the men were buried here? So at the time of the excavation, was it very similar to it is now? Obviously there is a school behind us, and lots of trees and the roads and everything, was it very similar then? At the time when the ships were left there, it is very unlikely that there

were any trees growing here at all. There was an empty sandy beach, and yet for some reason the ships were left here on the beach. With no evidence, it's hard to be sure what happened. Perhaps the boats had been put there. They could have been part of a small fleet, traders or a raiding flotilla. Maybe there was an outpost or settlement here. But something befell their crews. When all the finds underwent recording and conservation,

it was clear that there was a strong contrast between the two boats, and not just in the numbers of skeletons. There are not so many artifacts in the first boat. And when the second boat was found and we had an opportunity to compare the artifacts, it's quite obvious that they are different kind. In the second boat, there are lots of higher status artifacts, but they are not present in the first boat. It could be that there are social differences between those men.

It looked like the smaller boat was for the servants or attendants. So who or what were the higher status men in the larger boat? Perhaps the artifacts they were buried with can provide answers. Hundreds of items were recovered, and each had to be painstakingly cleaned and cataloged. The personal artifacts were just about all found among the bodies of the men. They weren't chance finds. They were deliberately placed. Almost every individual had a comb made from bone, sometimes ornately decorated. Every man had a small knife.

By far the most numerous personal artifacts though were gaming pieces. There were more than 200. How many gaming pieces were in a set? It's a different number. And this game is Neffatafatafel. It's a central figure in this was a king. Right. So it's slightly like chess in that there is a king piece.

And the aim is to attack the king. Neffatafel was a board game that traveled wherever the Vikings traveled. Like chess, it was a game of strategy. And it was obviously important to either the dead or the men who buried them or both. The object was for one side to try to capture the king. While the king's defenders had to try and help him escape, the most distinctive piece was the king. The artifacts certainly seemed to build a bigger picture of the culture in which these men lived.

Whatever their rank in the hierarchy, this was a warrior society. Strategy, skill, guile, and strength were all prized attributes. We tend to think of gaming pieces as a rather elite kind of object. They're a sign of, almost like a sign of intellectual pursuits. You have the leisure time and you have the brain power to make to play strategic games. At Salma, the gaming pieces are mostly just strewn over the dead. There are several hundred of them.

And we can picture whoever it is that's burying these guys, almost like sowing seeds, they're just strewing the gaming pieces over the bodies. Presumably the bodies of their friends, people they knew. It's quite a scene. There was one gaming piece among all the others in the burial that's still the subject of much debate. In the centre of the pile of dead men, there's one particular body that doesn't really have gaming pieces on him, except for one, and he has the king piece, and he has it in his mouth.

We shouldn't really speculate what that means, but it certainly stirs the imagination. When it comes to the artifacts from the site, it's impossible to see past the other items buried with each man. the swords. There are classic double-edged Viking swords, large, single-edged long saxes, and shorter machete-style scramasaxes. Obviously there are a kind of iconic object for the Viking age. They're the thing that every proper Viking ought to have and so on. But I think before Selma, we'd never really imagine that everyone on a mission like this might have their own sword. There are literally more swords than men. It's also interesting

how they're buried. Not all of them are buried in the same way. So the single-edged swords are placed with the hilt down. And then if we look at the double-edged swords, they've been bent up, they've been burned, they've been, we sometimes say their weapons are killed, weapons are deliberately broken. This isn't just unique to Salme. It's common practice in Viking burials, but rarely, if ever, is it seen on this scale. It points to some kind of means to some kind of means, in the burial ritual. A lot of speculation about what that means. Are they killing the weapons

because they're accompanying someone else who has died? So must the objects die along with the dead person? Is it a way of making them usable by the dead in the next life where they're going? Or is it instead a kind of protective measure for the living so that the dead don't return and annoy you? I suspect that this sort of neutralizing of the weapons is a protective measure, but we can't be sure.

The gaming pieces, the personal items, the higher status men in the larger boat, the lower status in the smaller. It's a glimpse into a very structured and organized society. But what of the dead themselves? Analysis of all the bones is still ongoing, but some evidence has already been found regarding what might have happened and what kind of men they might have been. We're surrounded by some of the Salma burials. I mean, did you know how big it was or was it just the top skeletons you could see initially? At first we saw the top skeletons,

six skeletons, but then we cleaned around the area and we saw skulls one by by appearing up. Most of the skeletons in Salme II were found compressed in one area of the boat. ahead of where the mast would have been, almost like a cargo. Riley and the team had to gain an understanding of the complex and compact space that they were excavating. So there are a lot of artifacts, there are lots of, obviously lots of skeletons and they're all mixed up. But in order to record all that, you need a lot of detail and lots of different people who have different specialities. You're the osteologists. So how does all that work in terms of putting it all together.

For me it was the most important to get an overview how the bodies had been put into the ship and how they are placed and how they relate to each other and that's why we use GPS. By carefully logging the position of each skeleton, Riley was able to create a three-dimensional record of the grave. From the way the bodies had been placed in the grave, Riley soon formed an impression of the dead. Perhaps a clue to who or what they had been. It's like a military burial. It's very rare. It's very retro-war. They are buried in layers.

It's almost like a formation. It was evident from early on these men hadn't died from natural causes. You've said that there is lots of evidence of skeletal trauma and in that respect they are typical sword wounds or axe wounds. And in cases of Rwanda where they're using machetes in the 1980s. You get exactly the same trauma on the schools, which is really disturbing considering it's a few decades ago. Whatever happened, it was brutal. Around half of the skeletons where bone has survived

show trauma. This and other evidence enabled Riley to come to know skeletons as individuals. Two in particular stood out, both from Salmette II. from Salmetteau, the higher status men. Exploring their trauma brings perhaps faint traces of what befell the group. The first lay only just beneath the surface. Broad and strong, probably in his late forties, he was on the very top layer of the grave, as if standing sentinel over the rest.

The man had been in a serious fight. It was the last he ever. ever fought. And this was an awe. Riley found the skeleton was covered with weapon markings. It's as though the individual was first wounded and then overwhelmed. So somebody is slashed at a foot. It would really hurt, but he wouldn't really disable them, would it? No.

Painful, but you could work. You can still fight. He's got wounds to the feet, he's got wounds to the arm, and he's got wounds to the head. It seems he took everything that was thrown at him. But still they had to be brutal to finish him off. It does look like somebody's tried to decapitate him. Because it was very rapist. They didn't manage.

So they've chopped into the neck, but it's not... But they didn't manage to decapitated. It's hard to be sure, but the wounds don't seem random. As if received in the chaos of a large action. There are so many variables, it's as though this man was surrounded before he was overcome. I'm suspicious. I don't believe in anything at the moment, but I think one thing is I don't believe it's a huge battle, some kind of. I think it's something, it's some kind of conflict unexpected, something unexpected. In my opinion, they were not prepared to something.

These were further clues that gave hint that the man was regarded with respect, at least by those who buried him. This person is now incapacitated and somebody is attempting to take his head off. And they put the head back. And they've put the head back. That means... In the burial. That is somebody who is trying to treat these people with the ultimate respect

because they're trying to make them whole again at the time of burial. Especially this first skeleton. We don't know if it was a battle, an ambush, or even single combat. The man took many terror. took many terrible wounds. He was the first to be excavated, yet the last to be placed in the grave. It was done carefully along with his brutally severed arm. He was still holding the sword. So somebody is almost putting these people back together again. That is absolutely fantastic. And he went to Valhalla. There was one

more detail that Riley found significant about the way the man had been laid to rest. He was lying looking left and all the other skeleton in the room were looking right. It seems to me that he was some kind of, I don't know, important... So this person has been treated very distinctively compared to the others. So that marks him out as a different person in that respect. His head turned as if looking over his comrades buried together in the top layer. layer. The front rank buried under their shields. It was beneath these in the center of the grave that the second skeleton which caught Riley's attention was buried, younger than many

of the others, probably in his 20s, and shorter than the big men buried around and above him. And there was something else. It's called occipitalization of Atlas. This means that the first vertebral, it's a is fused to the occipital bone. It's a common condition of the upper spine and one that's often congenital. But it's perhaps not associated with someone who made their living as a warrior.

So would that make his neck stiffer or just he would not have the same sort of movement? Usually it's very difficult to turn head. To rotate it. Yes, to rotate it. And sometimes it gives headaches. It might be a little bit. a little bit difficult, for example, if you fight with somebody that you can't turn your head,

right. Right. So it restricts the overall movements of the head. Artifacts around this skeleton seemed also to mark the individual as someone unusual. One of the highest status swords seemed to belong to him. And also, this was the skeleton found with the king gaming piece, either by or inside his mouth. This is one of the questions about this grave, isn't it? It's where the gaming piece was in relation to his mouth? It was a king piece. It was the most

prominent piece? Yes. Right. So that is tempting to suggest that it was given to him because he had a position of status or it could be completely accidental. I could say it could be accidental also. Yeah. Because sometimes this kind of small items move in the grave. It was covered like a carpet of caming pieces. In this area a lot of came in pieces were found. This was not the only one, so that's why I think it might be accident also. It might be intentional also, so it's difficult to say today. Was it chance or perhaps intended? The only way of marking him out for sure to the recipients in the next world, in Scandinavian folklore,

The Valkyries. Two individuals among more than 40, one older, probably a soldier, perhaps a defender, singled out in a position of honor in the grave, as he was in life, perhaps in duty. Another younger, slighter, perhaps well-born, richly equipped, a leader, a noble, or simply perhaps a treasured son or brother. We're unlikely ever to know for sure. DNA and other analyses are yet to be completed. Perhaps they will bring some answers. It's an astonishing find and we're only just starting to understand what Salma really means. So I think in the coming years there's going to be a number of really quite interesting revelations coming out of that project.

But the essence of the way these men were laid to rest conveys something itself. It seems to me that it's some kind of honour It's a question of honour and dignity and maybe it's the rule that you treat other people like you want them to treat you when you're not hit and lying in a pad of ground or wherever. I think maybe they have this kind of thoughts. The Salma graves remain one of the most intriguing and compelling finds from the Viking age and before. These people were buried with honour and with the respect. that the people who buried them thought they deserved. And it's not a bad place to lie, is it really?

The men who were buried on that remote sandy shore were among the first of the Viking dead. Those men buried in Salma, they will live in eternity. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, please be sure to follow for more. We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. 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.

And for more from the Like a Shot Network, check out where did everyone go, Histories of the Abandoned, a deep dive into the incredible stories behind forgotten places. Available now on your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for listening.