The Vikings: A Very Short Introduction by Julian D. Richards

brought back to Heath Wood. The cremation cemetery at Heath Wood is unique in the British Isles and appears to evoke pre-Christian burial rites in Scandinavia, as if some sections of the campaigning army felt it important to emphasize their Vikingness, while others preferred to be buried adjacent to the Mercian shrine.
    Whereas Heath Wood was short-lived, the cemetery at Repton continued in use for burials in Scandinavian character into the 10th 72
    Ivarr the Boneless (d. c .873) Ivarr was one of the leaders of the Viking Great Army that invaded England in 865 and is said to have been the son of Ragnar Lodbrok (‘Leather Breeches’), who led the sack of Paris in 845. In the later saga literature he is described as lacking bones, the result of a curse placed on Ragnar by his second wife, who warned him not to consummate their marriage until three nights had passed. Ragnar refused to wait, and as a result Ivarr was born. Some have argued that
    ‘boneless’ is a mistranslation of ‘childless’ but the sagas recount how Ivarr was unable to walk and had to be carried on a shield. It has been suggested that he suffered from brittle bone disease.
    Settl
    er
    When Ivarr defeated the Northumbrians at York in 867 their s in En
    leader Osbert was killed in the battle, and his rival Ælla was glan
    put to death by a form of ritual murder known as the ‘blood-d
    eagle’. One graphic description says that ‘They caused the bloody eagle to be carved on the back of Ælla, and they cut away all of the ribs from the spine, and then they ripped out his lungs’, although this account has often been dismissed as later folklore or mistranslation.
    Ivarr died in Dublin in 873. According to legend his body was brought back to England. Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle have suggested that Ivarr was the warrior buried in the centre of the mausoleum at Repton, although many doubt this.
    73
    century, including the erection of a hogback tombstone (see below).
    It is significant that, while 9th-century graves are rare, in the 10th century subsequent generations of Scandinavian settlers may also have abandoned grave-goods but developed distinctive stone monuments to mark their graves. In northern and eastern England in particular they borrowed the Anglo-Saxon and Irish custom of erecting stone crosses at monastic sites, and turned them into individual memorials for the founder burials of rural graveyards. At Middleton in North Yorkshire, for example, there is a small group of warrior crosses, including one which depicts an armed warrior on the front, and a dragon-like beast on the reverse, and another which shows a hunting scene.
    The so-called hogback tombstones reflect another newly invented s
    type of monument. These low grave memorials have arched backs, g
    kin
    like bow-sided halls; some are grasped at each end by pairs of e Vi
    beasts, sometimes identified as muzzled bears. Their inspiration Th
    may have come from recumbent stone grave slabs of the early Scandinavian rulers of England, such as those found under York Minster, combined with elements of Irish house shrines. Although examples have been found as far afield as northern Scotland and south-western England, the distribution is focused in North Yorkshire, within the territory of the Viking kings of York and Dublin. Both the crosses and the hogback stones date from the first part of the 10th century and may reflect the arrival of later generations of Hiberno-Norse settlers from Ireland, following their expulsion from Dublin, for whom it was important to preserve a Viking identity.
    The new Anglo-Scandinavian lords were Christianized, and much of the sculpture incorporates Christian and pre-Christian themes, such as the cross from Gosforth in Cumbria, which shows a Crucifixion scene populated with figures in Scandinavian costume on one side, and a scene from Ragnarok, the end of the world, on 74

    Settl
    ers in En
    glan
    d
    11. Middleton warrior, North Yorkshire
    the reverse.