Scientists corroborated an 800-year-old story about the literal poisoning of a well, according to a report in iScience.
The Norse Sverris Saga, which recounts tales about King Sverre Sigurdsson, describes an 1197 raid in which a body was thrown into a well at Sverresborg Castle, ostensibly to poison the area’s main water source. Researchers analyzed the DNA of a skeleton found in a well outside Trondheim in central Norway. This study of “Well Man” matched the events the saga recounted.
“This is the first time that a person described in these historical texts has actually been found,” Michael Martin of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s University Museum in Trondheim, Norway and an author of the study, said in a press release. “There are a lot of these medieval and ancient remains all around Europe, and they’re increasingly being studied using genomic methods.”
