Archaeologists have discovered strange bone fragments in a medieval find layer in Kyiv, which turned out to be fragments of walrus skulls. As they explain, they are relics of the trade in tusk ivory, which was transported while still in the bone. Further analyzes then revealed the surprisingly long journey of the material: it did not come from walruses in Russian or Norwegian waters, but from the mysterious Greenland colony of the Vikings. The findings thus testify to the astonishingly far-reaching trade connections in the Middle Ages, say the scientists.
The unusual discovery story, which the Ukrainian-Norwegian research team is now reporting, began with an excavation in Ukraine, when the country was not yet ravaged by war: A team of archaeologists had found finds during investigations in the course of a new building in the center of Kyiv they dated to the 10th to 13th centuries. In addition to various artifacts, the discoveries also included nine strange bone fragments of various sizes. The archaeologists were completely unclear as to which animals they could have come from. That’s why they consulted an expert, who surprised them with a finding that initially seemed astonishing: the bones come from walrus snouts. “We had never heard of similar discoveries in Kyiv,” says co-author Natalia Khamaiko of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv.
Walrus bones in medieval Kyiv?
But then it became clear that the exotic bones can be traced back to the medieval trade in walrus ivory: the tusks of the animals were often transported still attached to the snout and were only broken off when they were further processed into carvings. “Walrus ivory was a very popular raw material in Europe in the Middle Ages. It has been used to make objects in sacred art, as well as luxurious versions of everyday objects such as toy figures and knife handles,” says co-author James Barrett from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.
It was previously assumed that the supply of the precious material in Eastern Europe was based on walrus hunting in the Russian Arctic – the Barents Sea. Western Europe, on the other hand, was mainly supplied with walrus ivory by the Viking colony on Greenland, which was later abandoned. It was therefore initially obvious that the finds from Kyiv, far to the east, also came from animals from the Russian Arctic. But the scientists wanted to know more about it. So they followed a three-stage approach to trace the origin of the bones – and finally came to a surprising result.
First, they examined the traces of walrus DNA preserved in the bones. In five bone fragments, they were able to identify a genetic signature typical of Greenland’s walruses. The researchers then also carried out an isotope analysis of the bones. Isotopes are variants of one and the same element that vary according to food source and geographic location, thus allowing conclusions to be drawn about the origin of an animal. This detection method also delivered results that clearly pointed to Greenland. The third approach was an examination of the processing marks on the bone fragments produced during the preparation of walrus snouts for long-distance trade. It turned out: “Six of the bone fragments were processed in a typical Greenlandic way,” says Barrett. The bottom line is that there is no doubt: “Everything points to the same source – Greenland,” sums up co-author Bastiaan Star from the University of Oslo.
Extensive intercontinental trade
According to the experts, the ivory could have been sent from Greenland to trading centers such as Trondheim or Schleswig. Because the bone remains in Kyiv resemble finds from these cities. From there they could then have reached Kyiv via the Baltic Sea, the Dnieper and the Volkhov River. One can also assume that the ivory from Greenland was traded further from there – to the Islamic world and Asia. Because Kyiv was an important trading city in the Middle Ages, where traders from the north and south met. “In the 12th century, Kyiv was a medieval metropolis and the capital of a state whose economy was based on trade. What we have now found out about the walrus bones proves this importance of Kiev: Goods from far away parts of the world flowed through the trade center,” says Khamaiko.
Star concludes, “I find it amazing that these walruses found their way to such distant places from the Old Norse colonies of western Greenland. Today we are very aware that we live in a global economy. But these finds make it clear that global trade networks actually have a very long history,” says the scientist.
Source: Norwegian University of Science and Technology, professional article: Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Science, doi: 10.1098/rspb.2021.2773