An early Viking Age female burial from Finglas
The woman was buried in Scandinavian style dress. The straps of her dress were fastened below the shoulders with a pair of distinctively Scandinavian oval brooches. A wooden box decorated with plates of antler or bone was found by her right side. An antler comb, perhaps a prized possession, was found nearby and may have originally been contained in the box. These artefacts might be heirlooms that she brought with her to Ireland from her Scandinavian homeland. To be dressed in this way, with a pair of highly decorated oval brooches with gilding, silver and animal heads with glass eyes, would have been a statement in its own right. She would have looked strikingly different in this attire.
Furnished Viking graves offer an important insight into early Scandinavian activity in Ireland in the ninth and early tenth centuries AD. They contrast with the contemporary Irish Christian burial tradition where grave-goods were not included with the deceased.
Female Viking graves are a relatively rare occurrence in Ireland: before the discovery of Finglas in 2004 the last discovery was at Ballyholme, Co. Down in 1902.
