Viking teens were hacked to death by Dorset locals

The mystery surrounding the identity of 51 people whose remains were found in a mass grave in Dorset last year has finally been solved. Discovered with their heads stacked in a neat pile away from the haphazardly discarded remains of their bodies, the victims have been identified as Viking invaders who were killed in a grisly mass-execution 1,000 years ago. British intolerance towards foreigners, it transpires, is not a recent development.

The discovery is one of the largest mass graves containing executed foreigners ever to be found in this country. Samples of teeth from the site show that the men, in their late teens and early twenties, came from all over Scandinavia: one may even have originated from north of the Arctic Circle. The likelihood is that, in common with other Viking visitors of the time, they arrived in Britain as a raiding party.

Little is yet definite with regard to the circumstances of their execution, but Anglo-Saxon natives would have shown little mercy towards such raiding parties and these Scandinavians were probably slaughtered at a designated spot in front of an audience.

The ferociousness of the attacks inflicted is apparent even today with wounds to the skull, spine and jaw still evident. Ceri Boston, an expert in ancient bones who examined the remains, said: "It was not a straight one slice and head off. They were all hacked at around the head and jaw. It doesn't look like they were very willing or the executioners very skilled."

"We think the decapitation was messy because the person was moving around. One man had his hands sliced through. It looks like he was trying to grab hold of the sword as he was being executed."

Oxford archaeology project manager David Score said: "The find of the burial pit on Ridgeway was remarkable... Any mass grave is a relatively rare find, but to find one on this scale, from this period of history, is extremely unusual."

One reason for the rarity of such finds could be that far from being barbarous invaders intent on rape and pillage, most Vikings of the time, as experts at a recent conference in Cambridge claimed, came in peace as farmers and merchants. ·