Gotland: Visby’s Last Stand | Medieval Dead | Timeline

July the 27th, 1361, on the Isle of Gotland, before the fortified walls of a great city, a militia awaits an invading enemy. They're all that lies between survival or destruction at the hands of a ruthless foe, professional soldiers and hired mercenaries. Who were these people, and what made them fight and die together? More than 600 years later, an international group of archaeologists is attempting to find out more. They'll investigate some of the finds from the largest mass grave from a medieval battle ever found. If you win or lose a battle, it's a momentous occasion for either the victors or the losers. They'll try to shed light on the men who wore this armor and fought this battle. That's a foot that's been cut off. That's incredible. How they made their last stand and paid the ultimate sacrifice. The medieval world, the 5th to the 15th century. A team of archaeologists investigates medieval life by exploring the world of the medieval dead. We have a classic view of the storybook medieval life. We don't hear the stories about the common man trying to keep his family alive. In our schools there are hundreds if not thousands of skeletons. Our point of the speaker is to now focus in on the medieval dead people. You're looking for clues in the skeleton all the time. How did they die? Houses have been put to the torch. Grieving people stricken by the sword. Like a dog, he hurries with a sword. And Gotland is conquered by the Danes. The words of inscriptions found hidden in churches and monasteries of Gotland from 1361. Bitter words by a beaten people. The Swedish isle of Gotland in the Baltic sea has been free of war for 200 years. Yet in the centuries before, its history was anything but bloodless. In the middle ages, Gotland was the richest city in the Baltic. It was a hub for seafaring trade and commerce dating back to Viking times. There are more hordes of coins and treasure found here than anywhere else. The middle years of the 1300s were a golden age for Gotland. Most of all for its glittering capital, Visby. No wonder then that this rich island drew envious eyes from across the Baltic. 1361 proved a pivotal year for Visby and the Gotlanders. As archaeologists we're really interested in these periods of transition and there is nothing that displays one of these transitions better than a battle or a conflict because usually there is an outcome that's very decisive and that period of transition is not large scale. It can be down to hours, minutes, days or whatever but it's certainly not years and if you find the mass grave of a people who were killed during that conflict that's perfect because that is the moment when the transition took place. So you can find out what happened before, what happened afterwards and this is the point where it took off and this is just a catalyst on this island. Because it's an island it's a very small insular sort of activity but it has repercussions across the whole of the Baltic. The events of 1361 in Gotland captivate medieval historians and archaeologists. The story comes to us from different sources. Few Gotlanders were left alive to tell the tale. King Valdemar IV of Denmark invaded the island with a large army of Danish and German mercenary troops. The Gotlanders without a standing army formed a militia to try and stop them but they were pushed back to Visby. It was not an even contest yet the militia stood their ground. The Gotlanders were annihilated by the professional Danish and German soldiers. The island was stripped of its riches and never again flourished as it had done in past centuries. It was the end of the golden age. The story might have remained nearly forgotten in the history books were it not for a chance discovery more than five and a half centuries later. In 1905 a large grave was discovered outside the old town of Visby. Traditionally the site of the Gotlanders last stand commemorated by a great stone cross. In the grave were hundreds of skeletons. In 1928 three more pits were found with hundreds more. The Visby mass graves were a worldwide sensation among the most important finds ever made in medieval archaeology. The finds were extraordinary more than 1100 complete skeletons. I think Visby you could quite easily say it's unique. It's an assemblage of human remains that were discovered in the early 20th century that of people that died during battle. It's mind-blowing really in terms of the evidence you can acquire from a grave such as that. I can't think of another example where people were buried in their armour. Finding the people that died in battle in mass graves with their arms and armour is phenomenally rare. In fact it's virtually unique. When I first came across this assemblage and I first heard about the Battle of Visby I thought that obviously it's just another battlefield mass grave. And so when I first saw the information that was compiled in the early 20th century and there were plates of armour on the skeleton itself and you think this is unbelievable. It's so unusual and the mind races to try to work out so many questions. Why were they buried like this? What sort of armour was it? How effective was it? What were the people like? But as an assemblage it's so important and it really makes your mind race and it builds up a picture of what presumably happened on that day. The events of 1361 caused a deep scar that took generations to heal. Even now it casts a shadow down the centuries. This is why historians and researchers today more than 80 years after the last excavations are compelled to revisit the story. Tim Sutherland has come to Gotland to add what he can to the ongoing research into the events of 1361. He's a specialist in medieval archaeology, particularly battlefield archaeology. In 1996 he excavated the mass grave from the medieval battle of Towton in northern England. Now he's hoping to put that experience to use here. The grave site is a few hundred metres from the walls of Visby. The battlefield itself has long since been destroyed by modern development. But it's likely this area was chosen as a burial place because there was a monastery here at the time of the battle and it would have been close enough to drag or carry large numbers of dead. He'll carry out a survey of the site where the mass graves were excavated to establish exactly where the pits were. They haven't been touched since they were backfilled after the original excavation. The good thing about this area is it contains a monument, not only the medieval monument of the stone cross, but we've got a modern monument of the wooden cross which stands in the centre of the church. The graves are under the pavement, under the road, under the grass, or even under this garden and the house next to it. And so the interesting thing is how much of any part of this can we see? We've already got the grid laid out. I'm just going to extend it by a metre, maybe two metres, run some lines just up there and then we can just get going. Working with Tim is Dr Helen Goodchild of the University of York. She's a specialist in remote sensing, including ground penetrating radar. The radar may be able to show the graves, although there's no way of knowing just how much the site has been disturbed over the past 80 years. We can survey through the pavement and hopefully get evidence of the mass graves, then we want to just move slowly across the grass, getting more data as we move towards the grass, hopefully we'll see evidence of at least one or two of these graves. But that's the challenge here, can we see any evidence of the archaeological remains Back in 1928, Swedish archaeologist Bengt Tordeman began his own survey by looking for the area that had been excavated in 1905. He not only found this, but also three more mass graves. The dig had to expand to an unprecedented scale to recover all the material. Yet after almost a year, there was still one entire grave left unexcavated. This grave, grave four, is believed to be at the edge of the site, still down there, untouched. The reason they stopped excavating is that they just had too many bodies. They had three existing graves which were all full, some of which had chain mail, clasps, gauntlets, shirts, and there was even some plate armour in there as well. And so by the time they'd excavated one, two, three graves, they came across grave four and they thought there's no need to excavate this. So luckily for us, we left it in place. What seemed as though it would be a straightforward survey hasn't been as easy as they thought. All under the field are the buried ruins of the old monastery. It started out quite traumatic in that there are big thorn bushes in the way. There are lots and lots of undulations in the ground. We thought it was a very flat, green piece of grass. And it's covered in lumps, bumps, and also stone walls. So the radar was bouncing up all over them. So although it was very hard work, and we've only covered a relatively small area, but the results seem to be really good. The experience has left him with a strong respect for the archaeologists who surveyed this site more than 80 years ago. You can't help but admire the people in the past because they had very basic equipment, see all the lights, take measures, and the spade and the trowel. And yet they came up with so much quality data. And we should look back at these people with reverence and say, actually, they were very, very good at what they did. And we can learn a lot from them, because they accumulated very good data, but at a very basic level. And we now, following their footsteps, can say, can we improve on what they've done? Sometimes it's quite difficult, actually, because it's just such good work that they've done. They plot the results and see if any of the archaeology can be seen. So although this is still grass in the house and garden, we can see what they found. So we can use this to interpret our data. As Tim had feared, there's a lot of modern interference. The problem is we've got several hundred years of archaeology, including very, very modern features. When they strip this away, they can see the medieval archaeology. So we've got where the graves were, where the railings were, where the cross still is, and all the water pipes and anything else they encountered. So anything that's shaded there is where they've excavated. So although this is still grass in the house and garden, we can see what they found. The empty pits left after Torderman excavated them show up clearly. Grave one, right in the road. Grave two, half in the road. Grave three, almost on the part of the railing. And they've successfully verified grave four, completely unexcavated, under the pavement. This is the one that was never fully excavated. It still exists in its primary form about a metre below the surface. Then Tim sees something else they weren't expecting. We've got this strange anomaly there, which I think may be something like a pit. The good news is nobody's excavated it. It doesn't look like modern interference. Could it be from 1361? That's interesting. And that looks more archaeological. It looks like an archaeological pit. Grave four alone might contain many more skeletons and armour. And now Tim and Helen's survey has found another possible grave to be investigated. Future excavations will benefit from Tim and Helen's work. On July the 22nd, 1361, Valdemar's invasion force landed some 15 miles to the south of Bisbee. At Vastegard, where the bay forms a natural harbour. Then they headed north. The Gotland militia fought at least one battle to try and head off the invaders. But they were beaten back. The militia fell back to the only fortified town on the island, Bisbee. Yet the great gates were closed to them. The Bisbeans would not allow them inside the city wall. Despite their protests, they were left to take their chances and face the invaders. Their backs to the wall. The scene was set for their brave but ill-fated last stand at Bisbee. The Bisbee defences were strong enough to hold out. Why did they not let the Gotlanders in? The ring wall is a symbol of the city. Today it's protected as Bisbee is a World Heritage Site. But in 1361, for the militia outside the gate, the ring wall meant the difference between life and death. Bisbee was one of the trading hotspots of the Baltic. With waterfront warehouses, whitewashed buildings and a safe harbour. These were prosperous times. People of many different nationalities came here. Drawn by a city built for trading. So when the invasion came, why didn't they open up to the Gotlanders? The Great Ring Wall was not just built for defence against overseas invaders. There was tension between the Gotlandic farmers and the Bisbee officials who controlled trade on the island. A city wall to force the indigenous farmers to pay to enter and sell their goods at market. Such was the schism that existed between the islanders and the Bisbeean merchants. In late spring 1361, the Gotlanders received warning that an invasion was imminent. They had to work fast. With no formal army, they had just weeks to raise the militia. To train and to armour up. The Danish army inflicted a terrible defeat on the Gotlanders. Yet little is known about exactly what happened during the final battle. Yet thanks to the excavations, there is physical evidence for what happened. Bisbee is unique in archaeology because many of the Gotlanders went to the grave still wearing the armour that they'd fought and died in. It's this armour that Karen Watts of Britain's Royal Armouries has come to see. It's here in Stockholm that most of the armour is stored. Karen has spent her entire career studying European arms and armour. And again as with Tim, Bisbee is one of the reasons she became passionate about the subject. The most iconic items among the Bisbee collection are the body armours. Any kind of armour from this time in the Middle Ages is extremely rare. Here though, there's a whole range of armours, all worn in battle together, then buried at the same time. It's an unparalleled insight into how medieval soldiers faced battle. The types of armours are known as coterplates and lamella. They're made up of individually forged pieces of iron, riveted or wired together, as part of a leather or textile harness. With several complete armours together, it's possible for Karen to see how each was tailored to suit individual competence. I can't believe the size! Look, it's for a boy! This actually, I hadn't ever realised that there are different sizes. Thomas Neyman is a serving Swedish army officer. He studied all the 1361 armours, painstakingly reconstructed here after they were recovered from the mass graves. Torderman identified a number of types at different stages of development. This is four different types of armours. So you can see it evolving in this different material from this piece. If you look up here, what you see here is different layers of textile that's been metallised. So now it's metal. What I counted to so far is three layers. But it could be more, but we have to do more research. The most common armours are the coat-of-plates type, a kind of medieval flak jacket. All of these armours are purely functional. They are fighting military equipment with no adornment or ornamentation. Except for this one, because this one has got brass plaques. It's there as a purely an example of a heraldic display. And have you identified who this belongs? That's one of the interesting things. It's a lot of theories on what it could be. One of the theories is that it could be a family down in Flanders, Gårda. But we actually don't know. It could be because it's one person missing from that family. Some of the skeletons had the remains of male armour still on them, such as these hoods or coiffs. It's rare enough to find single male links from most medieval battle sites. So entire shirts and coiffs like these are extremely unusual. One of the key mysteries surrounding the burials is why so much armour was left on the bodies and not first stripped. Various explanations have been put forward, such as the hot weather at the time of the battle, the risk of disease, or just that there were too many bodies to bury and too few left alive to do the job. In the first mass grave, you can see how they are neatly tied side by side. But in the end, they are just thrown into the pits with everything, and you even find coins and knives and quite valuable items as well. So they are in a hurry for their last days. It must have been a horrible experience to get all those bodies into the pit. Why on earth would you bury these people with all that very, very expensive equipment with them? And there are all sorts of potential answers. One of the answers is that basically there was no time to strip them, which is a bit vague. Down to the extreme possibility that you couldn't actually get the armour off them. If it's the heat of the day, all the bodies have been left for a few days in an intense heat, and they all start bloating, you won't be able to get the chain mail off them. It's as simple as that. And so you would probably have to start butchering the bodies to get the mail off them and the armour. In which case, are they prepared to do this? The bodies are hot, stinking, infested, and of course you might think it's not that valuable, and so you bury it. The good news about burying somebody in their armour in a place that's marked by a large cross is that you can come back in five years, one year or whatever, and you can come and take them off skeletons rather than flesh bodies. And so that's the one thing that makes more sense, is that they were going to come back for these bodies, and they never did. Metal was an expensive commodity. But what if the armour was obsolete? Could that be why they left it and didn't come back? An armour was very valuable. So we think that they put the armours in the mass graves because it was hot, you had to get rid of it by car. But also that the equipment was old. Some of the armours, the plate armours, are still modern at this time. But some of them are more Viking style, and then it's really old. Another reason might be that access to the burials may have been restricted by the conquerors. This also suggests that they weren't, possibly weren't allowed, they weren't allowed to strip the dead, and it was only the victors that were allowed access to all this. Now if they had enough equipment and they didn't particularly want to bother themselves by stripping all the dead, they might not have allowed anybody else to. Remember, this is armour, and there were weapons. And so it could be that they wanted to hide their armour anyway to stop the Gotlanders getting access to it. So what better way than burying it? And it's a way of getting rid of a potential problem in the future. The coat of plates and lamellar armours were transitional systems. By 1361, these were being superseded by more sophisticated full plate armour for most professional men-at-arms, like the Danish and German mercenaries the Gotlanders were up against. But a rigid body protection is an advantage over maille. Maille is flexible, it's very good, it protects you against sword cuts, but it doesn't protect you from heavy percussive blows if you're hit with a heavy blunt instrument. They know that maille is good because it's very flexible, but they want plate. And they spent 250 years trying to evolve plate. This is a massive technological improvement when you can shape large plates. The Visby Collection is very important. It's almost the missing link in the evolution of European medieval armour. In terms of technology, in terms of whoever designed this one, this one is on the right track. This is the one that is going to evolve into the final armour. All of these are showing invention, are showing the desire to find the perfect armour. The well-equipped Danish men-at-arms and professional German mercenaries of Valdemar's army probably took anything of value left over after the battle. Especially items that were easily removed, like helmets, of which none has ever been found at Visby. The weapons and the helmets are taken care of, and they are quite easy to take off. You can also reuse the material, the iron itself. It's good even if the helmet is old or damaged. I think it was old and it was messy, speaking to those skulls that were smashed into pieces. But what of the remains of the Gotlanders themselves? What evidence still lies in their bones? Marlin Holst is an osteoarchaeologist, a specialist in skeletal remains. She's come to Stockholm to see for herself a selection of some of the bones from Visby. She wants to find out more about the collection, how the bones were classified and conserved. I don't normally approach the medieval period as a touchy-feely romantic thing. I just try to be scientific about it and try to see what's there and take what's there as fact, and then interpret from there. When I do analyze medieval skeletons, I do see their daily lives from their bones and also from the context they were found in. In the medieval period, you don't normally have grave goods, but you might see markers on their bones that suggest certain activities or fractures of certain bones or particular wear on the teeth that give a clue about their daily life. Marlin's osteological work has involved in-depth study of the only other mass grave from a medieval battlefield, at Tauten, with around 100 skeletons. Here in the stores at Stockholm's Historical Museum, there are more than 10 times the number of skeletons recovered from Tauten. We visually analyze the skeleton, so we determine the age, the sex, the living height and any diseases the person suffered from or any injuries they suffered from. It's usually not possible to tell the cause of death. Osteoarchaeology works very much together with archaeology and it's very, very important for us to work together and communicate with each other because if I just study a skeleton, it only tells me a limited amount of information. But if I then put it into the archaeological context and see what the grave was like, what the site was like, what the general area is like that the individual came from, then I understand much, much more about the individual. The excavations were very meticulous for the time to take care of all the skeletons because they had a great interest in the military history and all the cuts on the bones were very interesting to them. But we have another interest in the bones because we want to learn more about the people. Osteology was a relatively new science. Petter Akersson has studied the skeletons for much of his professional life, probably more than anyone else. He's looked at the ways in which techniques of analysis in the 1930s differed from current 21st century osteology. Due to the sheer amount of material, little work has been done on them since they were excavated the best part of a century ago. Since then, methods and attitudes, not to mention technology, have changed. This is also an example of how the skeletons have become mixed. So this is a box with crania and tibia and one femur. The bones were not kept together in their individual skeletons. Archaeological methods were different in Torderman's time. The site was gridded and excavated strictly square by square. If there were bones from one skeleton, they marked them so they could see each skeleton. Today, the accepted method is to excavate each individual skeleton completely, one at a time, keeping all the bones together in context. What isn't of use to contemporary means of analysis might still be useful in the future if the whole skeleton is stored together. In some cases, you have all the thigh bones in boxes, in one box, and the other bones in other boxes. But our work was a bit tedious trying to figure out which pieces belong to which skeleton. The sheer number of skeletons makes it very time-consuming to conserve them. Petter and other osteologists have spent many hours placing back together the Visby skeletons. Some haven't been looked at since they were packed away for storage. Yet it gives a unique cross-section of the types of wounds sustained in the medieval battle. Almost every skeleton has some evidence of trauma. Torderman's analysis was the first step towards revealing more about the individuals in the masquerades. His work paved the way for modern osteology. The evidence is in the bones. To be able to give them something back, hopefully, they'll never be able to give them their name back but what you could say is, right, this person was of a certain height, of a certain stature, of a certain nobility, and they look like they did some honest, hard drafting and they suffered in life like they had a broken limb or a broken finger. You can see all this on the skeletal remains. All these skeletons that now remain on these people, they need to tell their story and I'm trying to be their voice. To be able to see them through their eyes and say, right, fair enough, this is how they lived their life until eventually one day they died for whatever reason, whether it was young or old, whether it was alone or whether it was with family and friends, they could have died in a battle and you would have been tossed into a masquerade with large amounts of people completely anonymously and that's where they stayed. To be able to see their life almost through their eyes, I think it's very important because I've been told by soldiers serving today that one of their dreads is to die anonymously, unknown and then be buried with nobody knowing where they are, who they were and what it's all about, how they died. And so to a certain degree archaeologists can help an individual from a long time ago have some sort of saying in the future, this is who I was, this is what I did, this is how I lived my life and potentially this is how I died. It's always difficult to say in a battle situation where do the injuries hit the body. I mean it's in the turmoil of the battle you can get a blow from any part or from any distance and you don't really know. They had no chance because the invaders were so much better at fighting and more experienced. The most common wounds are from bladed weapons, most likely swords. As he worked his way through hundreds of skeletons, Petter found blade trauma on many of them. You often see this, there's multiple cuts on each bone and just this one is interesting as well since it's from not an adult actually. How old would you say, 17, 18? Yeah, it's very interesting. And it's also the inside of the shin so how do you think, why do you think there are so many cut marks on the shin bone? Were they on a horse maybe? No, I think these were the Gotlandic peasants and the Danish army knew that probably the people they were about to kill didn't have that much protection on their legs so they just aimed low and cut and cut and cut. To disable them? Yeah, exactly. But there must be about six cuts on here. We often see that, five, six, seven cuts. And are they generally concentrated on the legs or on the lower legs? Mostly on the lower legs but there also are some wounds on the thigh bones but then we see that it's on the lower part of them. What is this? Is this a cut mark? Yes, well that's the foot that's been cut off. That is incredible. The lower legs, the bones of the lower leg here. And they've literally been sliced. And there are many examples of feet being chopped off and sometimes both feet with just one blow. That's incredible. So the Danish army must have had very good weapons. Oh yes, and the right technique. It seems that it was a deliberate strategy to chop off, well, chop at the legs. So here we have a cut. Yes, and you can see that it's almost like markings but you can see that the sword or whatever weapon was used was dented so that you see these lines. Do you think that's due to a damaged sword? Yes, I think so. Otherwise, when you see the cuts they're always really, really clean and smooth. So this one has this, like a pattern. Again, another injury down here, isn't it? And the bone was cut down and then the rest broke off. So the whole leg was cut in half. Petter has found that many of the Gotlanders suffered injuries like this. More than a third of the shin bones have cut marks on them and not only one cut on many of them. The Danish army has hit the Gotlandic farmers many times on the lower parts of their legs. Why were these injuries so frequent? Thomas helps them investigate. Almost all the cuts are to the lower leg and they're so low down. So how would you deliver that sort of blow? Yeah, I'm not going to be too vivid of course. With the range of the sword you can easily hit the lower part of the bone. Without bending down? Yeah. But while you're doing that you might be getting attacked by Petter's sword. Yeah. So you're making yourself more vulnerable. Yeah, exactly. If you don't have a shield just hold him and then cut to the lower bone. I see. But you need to be physically trained. Yeah, sure. And also experienced. Yeah, but if you have training for example if you're a farmer perhaps you don't have a sword. You have a spear. Then you can take hold of the spear and hold it and then take the cut. And Petter was saying that sometimes both legs were cut as if in one blow. Is that possible with the sword? Yes, I think so. Not because I've done it but it's so sharp. To make a cut like that you don't need that much force. But there's some like this one here. This is the foot. Yeah. So where the leg has been cut it's on the inside. Yeah, exactly. And the hole here. And there are lots of muscles here. And it has sort of glands. Yeah. During the blow as well. Yeah. And that I think is pretty natural when you do the cut. Because see without the cutting cutter here. When you come from above and make the cut when the length of the arm stops it bends easier. Yeah. It could be natural in the cut but it actually bends. Yeah. If you look at what kind of armor the presence of Gotland would have it would probably protect the upper body and the hip. And if you're not trained it's hard to protect the legs. The most important first thing is to get the opponent down on the ground. And then they could have been... Yeah, exactly. Cut them in the legs get them down on the ground and then finish them off. It's very effective to take the legs off. You won't fight more and you will scream more. And if you hear your brother screaming next to you you won't fight that good anymore. Many of the skulls have rhomboidal trauma marks. Some of these may have been caused by crossbow bolts but most were probably due to war hammers. The Danish army used these weapons with hideous efficiency. Probably to finish off men already wounded by the swords. Sometimes when you pick up a cranium with a big hole in it you just put it down and had to go and take some coffee and take a break for a while. It disturbs you what people can do to each other. And here's an interesting one. At the top of the skull there's some kind of arrow in it. You can see that the arrow is struck right in the middle of the forehead. And that must have been painful, mustn't it? Oh yes, this is right into the brain. Among the militia were the old the infirm the young even the physically disabled. Buried in outdated armour that wasn't even worth salvaging from the corpses. Why were these people left to face the Danish army? With its trained knights and professional mercenaries. They had to go out and fight against this well-trained army and they didn't know what to expect that they were all just slaughtered. Despite the terrible suffering evidenced in the bones there is also the truth that the Gotlanders fought and died in a brave yet hopeless last stand. Families fathers brothers and sons who died trying to protect their homes and loved ones. If you win or lose a battle it's a momentous occasion for either the victors or the losers and when this happens on a national scale it means that massive changes take place across a whole country maybe even the whole continent and so when you see evidence of a battle you can pick out what was happening to each side and these people in the grave presumably most of them are the losers The fact the Gotlanders lost and the Danes won means that there now is a sea change across the whole of that island and the Gotlanders who were phenomenally wealthy people suddenly are ruled by somebody external country. The physical remains in Stockholm and Visby serve as lasting monuments to the heroism and tragedy of 1361. The Gotlanders themselves and the grey walls that denied them safety.