Chronicles from the Center Ages say King Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson of Denmark acquired his nickname courtesy of a tooth, in all probability lifeless, that seemed bluish. One chronicle from the time additionally says the Viking king was buried in Roskilde in Denmark within the late tenth century.
However a Swedish archaeologist and a Polish researcher just lately claimed in separate publications that they’ve pinpointed his most possible burial website within the village of Wiejkowo, in an space of north-western Poland that had ties to the Vikings in Harald’s occasions.
Greater than 1,000 years after his dying in what’s now Poland, a European king whose nickname lives on by means of wi-fi expertise is on the centre of an archaeological dispute.
Marek Kryda, writer of the guide Viking Poland, informed The Related Press {that a} “pagan mound” which he claims he has positioned beneath Wiejkowo’s Nineteenth-century Roman Catholic church in all probability holds the king’s stays.
He stated geological satellite tv for pc pictures obtainable on a Polish authorities portal revealed a rotund form that seemed like a Viking burial mound.
However Swedish archaeologist Sven Rosborn, says Mr Kryda is fallacious as a result of Harald, who transformed from paganism to Christianity and based church buildings within the space, should have acquired an acceptable grave someplace within the churchyard.
Wiejkowo’s Church of The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary stands on prime a small spherical knoll.
Historians on the Danish Nationwide Museum in Copenhagen stated they’re acquainted with the “suggestion” that Wiejkowo is Harald’s burial place.
Mr Rosborn detailed his analysis within the 2021 guide The Viking King’s Golden Treasure and Mr Kryda challenged a few of the Swede’s findings in his personal guide printed this 12 months.
Harald, who died in 985, in all probability in Jomsborg — which is believed to be the Polish city of Wolin now — was one of many final Viking kings to rule over what’s now Denmark, northern Germany, and components of Sweden and Norway. He unfold Christianity in his kingdom.
Swedish telecommunications firm Ericsson named its Bluetooth wi-fi hyperlink expertise after the king, reflecting how he united a lot of Scandinavia throughout his lifetime. The emblem for the expertise is designed from the Scandinavian runic letters for the king’s initials, HB.
Mr Rosborn, former director of Sweden’s Malmo Metropolis Museum, was spurred on his quest in 2014 when an 11-year-old lady sought his opinion a couple of small, dirty coin-like object with old-looking textual content that had been in her household’s possession for many years.
Consultants have decided that the solid gold disc that sparked Maja Sielski’s curiosity dated from the tenth century. The Latin inscription on what’s now often called the “Curmsun disc” says: “Harald Gormsson (Curmsun in Latin) king of Danes, Scania, Jomsborg, city Aldinburg.”
Maja’s household, who moved to Sweden from Poland in 1986, stated the disc got here from a trove present in 1841 in a tomb beneath the Wiejkowo church, which changed a medieval chapel.
The Sielski household got here into the possession of the disc, together with the Wiejkowo parish archives that contained medieval parchment chronicles in Latin, in 1945 as the previous German space was changing into a part of Poland because of the Second World Warfare.
