Iron and Viking Age Scandinavians Kept Their Victims’ Bones Around the House

Funerary practices have evolved a lot over human history, but the underlying idea has been that we like to honor the dead. But there are always exceptions—which are also often the most unsettling stories from long ago.

During the Iron and Viking Age, humans living in modern-day Scandinavia were “infamous” for their “warrior ideology,” according to a recent paper published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory. However, actual findings from cemeteries dated to this period didn’t necessarily show…