A 1,200-Year-Old Latvian Grave Holds Six People, Three Killed by Sharp Blows, and Researchers Say a Viking Raid Is Possible

Archaeologists in Latvia analyzed a grave that holds six people who were buried together about 1,200 years ago. Three of them died from sharp force injuries, possibly from an ax or a sword. The researchers say a Viking raid is possible, but they will never know for certain.

Six people in one grave

The grave sits at the Čunkāni-Dreņģeri cemetery near the Gulf of Riga, an inlet of the Baltic Sea. Archaeologists discovered the cemetery in 1924, and its graves date from the 7th to the 11th centuries, in Latvia’s Iron Age. Radiocarbon dating places this grave in the second half of the 9th century, in the early Viking Age. It holds four men, a boy and a girl. Most graves in the region hold a single individual, so this one stands out.

What DNA shows about the dead

The boy was the son of one of the men. Another man was a third-degree relative, perhaps a first cousin or a great-uncle. Two men and the boy were related, while the other two men were not. The team could not extract DNA from the girl. All the dead had Indigenous Baltic ancestry, and the researchers identify them as Semigallians, an Iron Age group that farmed the region’s fertile plains.

How they died

The father, the related man and one other man died from sharp force injuries. One man had defensive cuts on his forearm and hand, another had a jaw shattered by a blow, and a third was nearly decapitated. The causes of death for the other three people remain unknown. The fourth man and the two children may have died from soft-tissue injuries that leave no mark on bone.

The researchers call the burial a multiple burial, not a mass grave. Mourners laid each body out properly with traditional grave goods. The girl lay with her head pointing northwest, and the men lay in a row beside her with their heads pointing southeast, a pattern that appears in other local burials of the period. The care suggests the dead belonged to a respected group and died at the same time.

A Viking raid, or something else

A battle with a neighboring community is one possibility. A Viking raid is another, given the grave’s date and the violent injuries. Co-author Elīna Pētersone-Gordina of the University of Latvia said the team will never know for certain. In the 9th century, Latvia was not part of the Scandinavian Viking world, though Vikings or their predecessors were active in the eastern Baltic earlier. Two Scandinavian boat burials on Estonia’s Saaremaa date to about 750.

Rimantas Jankauskas of Vilnius University, who did not take part in the study, said the victims could have died in internal or neighboring conflict. He also said the burial suggests an emerging aristocratic structure among the Semigallians.

Source: Live Science, 12 October 2026, reporting on Gerhards et al., “A multiple burial from the Viking Age in Semigallia, Latvia,” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, vol. 73, article 105790 (DOI 10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105790).