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Newly Discovered Skeleton Can Tell Us About the History of Mountain Cattle

Date: 2020.10.07

Did the Vikings have cows? If so, how are Viking cattle related to today’s mountain cattle? We hope to answer these questions in the 3MC project, that gathers and disseminates knowledge about the mountain cattle’s origins and cultural history. A new bone find might help with this.

Ingrid Svarto lives in the scenic mountains of Swedish Lapland. From the 1980s and on, she has been restoring her grandparents’ farm. While working on the farmland in this remote and beautiful place, she noticed a low, oval shape in the ground, which became visible when trees and shrubs were cleared.

“A few years ago, I saw something that looked like remnants of an ancient roasting pit. I started digging, and found some pieces of coal and a couple of fairly large burnt stones. Then it seemed completely empty, until the shovel about 70 cm further down hit something hard”, said Ingrid Svarto.

Unimproved Type of Cattle

It turned out to be a skinned skeleton of a large animal that was buried without its feet. At first, Inger thought it might be a Sami bear grave, but the skull turned out to be that of a ruminant – a small moose perhaps, since the horns were missing. The marrow bones were intact, so she thought that the animal may have been slain and offered as sacrifice.

She contacted the Västerbotten’s museum, and a lower jaw piece was sent for evaluation with an osteologist. It turned out to be that of a an unimproved type of cattle, which is a term used for farm animals before the use of pedigree data. A tooth from the same find will be analyzed, dated and compared with other DNA from mountain cattle as part of the project “3MC – Traditional Transboundary Mountain Cattle Breeds in Nordic” led by NordGen. The purpose of the project is to collect and spread knowledge about the mountain cattle breeds that are found in northern Finland, Norway and Sweden.

“This is an incredibly exciting bone find. It is important for the 3MC project even if it would be relatively new, for example from the beginning of the 20th century. As part of the mapping of the common history of mountain cattle, we have a broad database of DNA material from cattle of both modern and older breeds. It will come in handy in the investigation of this bone find” said Mervi Honkatukia, Section Leader for NordGen Farm Animals.

It Would Be Sensational

What suggests that the find may be very old is the place where it was discovered. Vardöfjäll is located next to a trading route that was used from the Stone Age until the 1940s.

“About 50 meters from the bone find, I found an iron ax from the Early Iron Age and up on the mountain about five kilometers from the farm there is a grave from the Early Viking Age. What if the bones are from the same time period? It would be sensational” said Ingrid Svarto.