Resources in death : the past in the late Viking Age burials in the cemetery of Havor, Gotland

The cemetery of Havor, Hablingbo parish, on Gotland was in use from the Pre-Roman Iron Age to the early Vendel Period. In the late Viking Age, the local community decided to return to the traditional cemetery. The most prominent feature of those later Viking Age burials was the regular re-use of older graves. Even though secondary burials are widely known from Viking Age Gotland and mainland Scandinavia, the proportion was extraordinarily high at Havor. Furthermore, the secondary burials show a rather divergent interaction with the human remains from the primary burials. In some graves the disturbance of the older burial was avoided, while in many other graves the primary burial was dislocated or destroyed. Thus, the burials illustrate an intensive use of the past and local traditions and exhibit at least two different strategies in the interaction with the past and memories as resources for the local identity, from an integrative linkage to local traditions and the ancestors buried at Havor to a confrontative dissociation. Yet it was important for all communities that laid their dead to restat Havor to link – and thus to legitimise – religious and socio-political transformationsand new cultural influences to the traditional cemetery which was regardedas manifestation of a collective identity. Through the ostentatious references to the past and local traditions, the burials from the late Viking Age are a fascinating case study for the understanding and the socio-cultural adoption of the past for the construction of local identities