Six Feet Under

That's twice now on this trip that we've seen dead people, and in both instances they had been dead for a long, long time. All that was left was bones. We saw them today lying in thick wooden boxes six feet below ground level. The tops of their coffins had rotted away.

"They were most likely Viking soldiers or peasant farmers from the 1600 or 1700s," we were told by an the archaeologist student who was sketching them. "You can tell by the bones what diseases they had. These people had a lot of broken bones, that tells us they were manual laborers."

But not all of the bones found in Trondheim are from the poor. Here too is the burial site of Viking King Olav Tryggvason (St. Olav) who in 997 came to Trondheim to build his palace and govern the entire Norwegian empire (from the White Sea in the east to North America in the west). World-wide pilgrimages converged at his shrine, until, eventually, Trondheim became the seat of Norway's Archbishops. The bones of those bishops are here as well.

But digging up all the bones in Trondheim would take a long time. Trondheim seems to have been built on bones. In the public library and in the bank next door you can see permanent displays of the grave sites discovered when these building were erected. And the other buildings have bones under them as well. But not all of Trondheim's bones will be excavated; not all of those that are will be put on display.

"These bones here will be analyzed, boxed up and stored in the museum basement," the archeology student said. Then she smiled. "In twenty years someone will go down there and make a great discovery."

But why dig up the bones in the square around the Nidaros Cathedral? "Because the town wants to depress the Cathedral's entrance. So we came in first. We have until August to finish our work. After that, the bulldozers come in." So far twelve skeletons had been found already. The Archeology department expects to uncovered another twenty more.

"How do you know where to dig?" I asked.

"We don't exactly. Sometimes we miss." She pointed to the smashed skull in front of her. "They make a very distinct sound when you hit them with a pick."

Smashed bones must make their work that much harder. The position of each bone, or bone fragment, must be sketched. The site is photographed and the bones are placed, piece by piece, into a box. Later they are put back together, exactly as they were, to be analyzed. "What's that?" I asked pointing to a bucket of dirt encrusted objects.

"That? That's a mandible. It found my pick too."

I walked gingerly around town the rest of that afternoon. I was, after all, tramping on a piece of history, not only on the cobblestone streets of this Medieval town, but also on hostory lying six feet under.