The health of the doomed : A study of the executed’s health from two executional sites on Gotland.

This bachelor thesis covers two executional sites on the island of Gotland with focus on the palaepathology among the executed individuals. The aim is to see which pathological changes that occured most often and if they have any correlation between these and these individuals socioeconomic status. To achieve this the author has examined the bones from Galgberget to identify apparent pathological changes on long bones, vertebrates, maxillaries and mandibles. I have also compared the bones from Galgberget with previous analyses from the other executional site in Grötlingbo parish. The most common pathological change that became identified were osteophytes, arthritis and a couple of oral pathologies like calculus and cavities. Osteophytes and arthritis do share a comparability since they both are derived from osteoarthritis which is a denegerative joint disease. Calculus and cavities also share smiliarities, due to the fact that cavities is the first stage before it becomes calculus. No other pathological similarities were found among the two sites. Although the appearances of Schmorl’s nodes were significantly large among the bone assembly from Galgberget. Schmorl’s nodes is a vertebral lesion that may occur in all ages and have different causes. Other common pathological changes identified from Galgberget were skeletal anomalies and enthesopathies. Smiliar to Schmorls nodes, enthesopathy have different causes and often show in a relation to heavy physical work. It can be concluded that the presence of Schmorl’s nodes, skeletal anomalies, enthesopathy and osteophytes do share an equivalence with each other, when you think about how you get these pathological changes in life. With further studies regarding the material from Galgberget, the view of the people who were executed there may have a real potential to change