Misty clouds rise up from emerald grass as piercing as the swords thrown into the air for battle. A stone castle lies below the surface, breaking the water to reveal the realm of the Pagan Lady. Such is the dramatic scene at Peel Castle, a multi-layered archeological site located on St. Patrick’s Isle, a tidal island connected by water to the Isle of Man. The Pagan Lady, as we call an anonymous resident from the Viking Age, inhabits a special realm for those who enjoy rediscovering history, mainly due to her unique grave goods and her burial during a time of major transitions culturally and religiously for the Isle of Man. During the tenth century, the North Sea island became a hub of trade and central settlement for the Norse people and thus is full of artifacts that provide essential details for historians. But the Isle’s history stretched back much further. Grave goods such as jewelry and pottery date to the Bronze Age, and during the sixth century AD, the island became closely connected with Irish Christianity through the journeys of Colum Cille and other notable missionaries.1 While Christians didn’t bury their dead with grave goods, they leave other archeological traces. The island is dotted with keeills (Irish word for ‘cell,’), small chapels that don’t exceed three to five meters, perhaps testifying to the experiences of the Christian Manx population.

By the end of the eighth century, Scandinavians dominated the island, which acted as an ideal staging ground for raiding and trading expeditions further into the British Isles. We can explore their imprint through their burials, including a boat burial at the Bayny Carrickey and lintel, coffin, and dirt graves at Peel Castle. The Norse grave goods reveal an elite pagan culture that valued precious metals and warrior equipment such as shields, swords, and horse gear, as well as imported luxury items such as beakers, cauldrons, and drinking horns.

The Pagan Lady was buried around 950 AD in one such luxurious grave. She was surrounded by seven other clearly pagan graves, yet intriguingly, they were all buried within a preexisting Christian cemetery. We clearly don’t know her name, thus her moniker, but we do know she was middle-aged at the time of her death and clearly wealthy. She was buried underneath stone slabs (referred to as a lintel-grave2) and placed on her back with both arms at her side, her head resting on a feather-filled pillow, along with an organic material called sprang (a netted textile that could have been a head covering).3 She wore a delicate necklace full of beads of jet, amber, and glass. Alongside her were two iron knives with a bone comb and iron shears. At her waist, she had a possible amulet of ammonite and amber with a mortar and pestle at her knees. One object has generated continual attention–a long rod that could be a cooking spit or possibly a staff.4 Along the top of her staff are remnants of wheat and barley seeds as well as feathers (perhaps from the wings of a goose).5

Based on her grave goods, the Pagan Lady clearly possessed high status and importance to the Norse community, yet was she actually Norse, or was she a Manx woman married to a Norseman? Her jewelry, while luxurious, was not typical for a Norse woman, who we would expect to see wearing tortoiseshell brooches.6 Perhaps this unusual necklace relates her story to us– the beads that are along her neck are interconnected with history and trade– hailing from England, Ireland, and the Baltic Sea, and the Middle East, and some of them already over three centuries old. How she obtained this necklace fascinates scholars, and several believe she may have been married to a man who traveled the seas in search of goods and adventure.

Yet there is another source that can help us uncover the magic behind this woman. Neil Price, an archaeologist who specializes in Viking Age Scandinavia and currently works for the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University, Sweden, has theorized that the Pagan Lady was viewed as some sort of goddess or priestess. His book The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia explains the Old Norse concept of a seiðr— a broad subject for practices and functions within the larger system of sorcery. Seiðr can bring good and bad magic to others, depending on the type of ritual–which could include practices for divination and clairvoyance and could either bring good luck or curses, relating to larger communities, weather control, illnesses, and disasters. 7 While there is little contemporary textual evidence, Price studies the imagery in artifacts that might connect to the supernatural.8

Price argues that the Pagan Lady acted as a practitioner of seiðr, also known as a Volva, and that the unique artifacts in her grave connect her to the other world. Volva comes from the term “staff-bearer.” He has examined several graves throughout the Scandinavian world containing staffs and animal offerings and connected them with volvas. In addition to the possible staff, the wheat, barley, and goose wing in her grave are suggestive of earth magic.9 These so-called ‘charms’, as Price labels them, could enhance personal power, or could have been gifts from grateful recipients. Leszek Gardela has identified a stone carving at Kirk Michael on the Isle of Man which seems to illustrate a staff-bearing figure, perhaps a volva.10 Existing patterns can help historians understand and connect preexisting ideologies to other parts of history and places.

Was the Pagan Lady a practitioner of rituals? We cannot say for certain, but we can be sure that she acted as figure of prestige in her community, and that her world stretched far into the deep seas and bridged her tiny island with distant shores.

Examine the exact layout of her grave and burial goods here:

https://manxnationalheritage.im/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Peel-Castle-Guide-Pagan-Lady-Grave.jpeg

Learn more about the many stages of Peel Castle and the continuing excavations through the Manx National Heritage Site:

https://manxnationalheritage.im/our-sites/peel-castle

Work Cited

Gardela, Leszek. “Gardeła L., Larrington C. (Eds) (2014) Viking Myths and Rituals on the Isle of Man, Languages Myths and Finds Volume 1, Nottingham: Centre for the Study of the Viking Age/ University of Nottingham,”.

Keenleyside, A., Leigh Symonds, and T. Douglas Price. “Medieval Migrations: Isotope Analysis of Early Medieval Skeletons on the Isle of Man,” n.d. doi:10.1179/0076609714Z.00000000029,.

Price, Neil. The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. 2nd, 2nd Edition ed. Oxbow Books, 2019. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvhhhgz3.

  1. Keenleyside, A., Leigh Symonds, and T. Douglas Price. “Medieval Migrations: Isotope Analysis of Early Medieval Skeletons on the Isle of Man,” n.d. doi:10.1179/0076609714Z.00000000029, 1. ↩︎
  2. Gardela, Leszek. “Gardeła L., Larrington C. (Eds) (2014) Viking Myths and Rituals on the Isle of Man, Languages Myths and Finds Volume 1, Nottingham: Centre for the Study of the Viking Age/ University of Nottingham,”. 33. ↩︎
  3. Keenleyside, A., Leigh Symonds, and T. Douglas Price, 7. ↩︎
  4. Keenleyside, A., Leigh Symonds, and T. Douglas Price. 8. ↩︎
  5. Gardela, Leszek, 36. ↩︎
  6. Keenleyside, A., Leigh Symonds, and T. Douglas Price. 7. ↩︎
  7. Price, Neil. The Viking Way: Magic and Mine in Late Iron Age Scandinavia .2nd, 2nd Edition ed. Oxbow Books, 2019. 63. ↩︎
  8. Gardela, Leszek, 36. ↩︎
  9. Price, Neil, 118. ↩︎
  10. Gardela, Leszek, 36. ↩︎