8/12/2019 The burial site of vid Kirkjugar in the village of
Sandur, Sandoy 15
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T H E B U R I A L S IT E O F V I K I R K J U G A R 19Christian
custom s. Thus grave-goods can oc-cur in burials effected long
after the societyin question adopted Christianity.
However, the question here is whether thegrave-goods from Sandur
do in fact mirrorheathen burial custom. Most of the
objectsrecovered can easily be classified as beeing ofa personal
nature or as belonging to the bu-ried pers on s attire - the items
found hardlyreally merit the term grave-goods at all.
In attempting to establish the nature ofthe burials at Sandur it
is natural to comparethem with the burials at Tjrnuvk. Thegraves
from both sites share many similari-ties in their construction. On
the basis of theafore-mentioned ringed-pin, generally datedto the
lOth century, the burial site at Tjrnu-vk is dated to the Viking
Age and thereforeinterpreted as heathen (Dahl
1968:191;1970:65-66)6. In reports on the site the deadare described
as lying with their heads point-ing north. This is, however, only
partly true,as four of the twelve graves are aligned east-west
(Arge 1990:fig.ll). Although there issome variation in the
alignment of VikingAge burials in the north, an east-west
orien-tation is far from unusual.
In this context it is interesting to note thatone of the
features instrumental to the in-terpretation of the H aug bu rial
site in N orth-ern Norway as a heathen one, is the veryvaried
alignment of the individual graves. Incontrast, individual graves
within purelyChristian cemeteries all seem to be orientat-ed in the
sam e direction - as a rule east-west- although minor variations
within thisalignment do occur (Sellevold 1989). Theseobservations
could support an interpretationof the site at Tjrnuvk as heathen
and thesite at Sandur as Christian.
However, a closer study of the burial site
at Haug, leads one to consider whether localtopographical
criteria might not in fact havedictated the siting and direction of
many ofthe burials, as these are mainly, and quitenaturally, placed
parallel to the area s con-tour lines. The same topograp hical
consider-ations may have been actual for the locationof the burials
at Tjrnu vk as well as on San-dur. On the latter site, the graves
seem tohave been placed on the southern side of aslightly sloping
deposit of shifting sand.
Even though it is an established fact thatthe east-west
alignment prevailed as a resultof Christianization, the question of
whethera site is heathen or Christian cannot be de-termined by
orientation alone.
Another feature emphasized in the evalua-tion of the H au g bu
rial site, is the position inwhich the dead were buried. The supine
po-sition - consisting of the body being laidout o n his or her
back - is almo st totallydominant in Christian burials, as
exempli-fied at the graveyard by the so-called Thjod-hilde s church
at Brattahlid in Ure enland . AtHaug on the other hand, the bodies
hadbeen interred in a variety of pos itions - ontheir back, their
front or left or right sides.Although somewhat less varied, the
fact thattwo to three of the buried were interred in alateral
position, while the remainder hadbeen laid on their back, may
indicate thatthe site at Sandur was a heathen one.
Another important fact is that none of thegraves at Sandur
overlap, but are placed endto end in rows - another feature common
ofViking Age burial sites (Grslund 1985:301).
The position of the burial site in relationto the old dyke and
the manner in which thedead are buried with their personal
posses-sions could indicate that the site is a heathenone. On the
other hand there is nothing that
