A new scientific examination of 800-year-old human remains in Norway corroborates a royal history claiming that a dead body was thrown there to poison its water.
The skeletal remains of the man were found in a well in a Norwegian castle in 1938. Now, a new study, published Friday (Oct. 24) in the journal iScience, combines radiocarbon dating and DNA analysis to determine that he probably died in 1197 during a raid on the castle of the Norwegian king Sverre Sigurdsson near Trondheim, in central Norway. The events are recorded in "Sverris Saga," one of the "King's Sagas," or prose poems, written in Norway and Iceland between the 12th and 14th centuries to glorify Norse kings.
