Norse history: ‘Well-man’ remains found [Video]

Researchers have connected the identity of skeletal remains found in a well at Norway’s Sverresborg castle to a passage in a centuries-old Norse text.

The 800-year-old Sverris saga, which follows the story of the real-life King Sverre Sigurdsson, includes the tossing of the body of a dead man — later known as “Well-man” — down a well during a military raid in central Norway in 1197.

It’s likely, according to the text, that raiders lobbed the body into the well to poison the main water source for locals, but little else is said about the man or who he was in the saga.

Researchers initially uncovered the bones in the castle’s well in 1938, but they were only able to carry out a visual analysis at the time. Now, scientists have an array of analytical techniques at their disposal, including genetic sequencing and radiocarbon dating.

A new study on the …