Gravarna vid Brotjärn och Vájgájávrre : vikingatid i Lule älvdal

• Main Author: Harnesk, Nils
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: Swedish
• Published: Norrbottens museum, Sverige 2023
• Subjects: Burial tradition; Late Iron Age; Norrbotten; Communication; Trade; Järnåldern; Gravar; Sverige; Handel; Vikingatiden; Archaeology; Arkeologi; Arctic; Boden; Jokkmokk
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:raa:diva-8387

The two graves at Brotjärn and Vájgájávrre, the first just outside the city of Boden and the other in the vicinity of Jokkmokk, lie about 140 km from each other. However, the distance is the only thing separating them. The grave goods are nearly identical and their locations are similar, both being located directly on the strategic travelling route along the Lule River, at portages – places where travellers had to walk between navigable stretches of water. The graves are unique in Norrbotten in that they are inhumations with preserved remains. This is rare in these soil conditions. The carbon dating and analyses of the human remains indicate that these were adult individuals, one possibly of middle age, who died on their travels around AD 1000. The objects in the graves indicate contacts and trade with areas in modern-day Finland, the eastern Baltic and Russia, while the burial tradition indicates influences from what is today the southwest of Finland.The results are put into the context of the hypothesis of a trans-Arctic trade network based on the inland waterways that developed during the Iron Age. A likely interpretation is that the buried individuals were local traders in this extensive network, possibly birkarlar, the traders that are mentioned in Swedish literary sources in the 14th century, but have an even older origin.