Real-life Hagars!

What's new? More to the point, what's old? They have found skeletons of two guys who were kinfolk, men from the Viking era, and they are going to be put on exhibition in Copenhagen. One of the men died in central Denmark, and the other one was killed in England as part of a massacre that a king ordered.

University of Copenhagen geneticist Eske Willerslev ran some DNA tests on the bones, and he says they show that the men "are either half brothers or nephew and uncle.” Beside the DNA tests, archeologists found each man to be in possession of  Vikings season tickets, and a pair of gigantic purple and yellow foam fingers indicating they are "#1."

One of the guys was from Funen, a town in Central Denmark that sounds like a fun place to live. They figure he was in his 50s, and worked as a farmer, as anyone could see from the farmer's tan his remains are sporting.  He stood just under 6 feet tall, and had arthritis in most of his bones and vestiges of inflammations inside his ribs, a possible hint that he had tuberculosis.

The scientists also figure that the man probably was involved in the Viking raids because he has a violent lesion on his left pelvis, which might mean he was stabbed with a sword. In fact, this wound may have been fatal.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the North Sea in Oxford, England, they found the earthly bones of a younger guy in a mass grave with 35 other men. This man "died of massive injuries from several types of weapons,” according to Lasse Soerensen, who's the head of research at the National Museum of Denmark. His skull shows at least nine boo-boos caused by a sword or other sharp object, and the skeleton also revealed signs he was speared several times in the back. 

The skeletons will soon be on display (as of June 26) in an exhibit at the National Museum of Denmark titled “Togtet” - Danish for ”The Raid.”

Danish people started settling in England to be farmers as early as 850 AD. That was great, Danes. But 

From the year 850 A.D, people from Denmark settled in England as farmers. But beginning in 1002, King Aethelred II had them massacred as part of his "Make England Great Again" program.

Recently discovered population rolls indicate that one town had one more Viking than they had counted; it turns out that the town officials must have taken Lief off their census.