The Oseberg ship burial contained two human skeletons, both female. One of the skeletons belonged to a woman who was about 70 or 80 years old when she died. Investigations suggest that the woman probably died of cancer. It is unclear who this woman actually was, and some have speculated that she may have been Queen Åsa, the grandmother of the first Norwegian king.

The second skeleton belonged to a woman in her 50s, though it is not known how she died. In Ibn Fadlan’s account, dead chieftains were accompanied in their graves by some of their slaves. It seems that the slaves are not forced, however, as they were first asked by the family of the deceased whether any of them would accompany their master in the afterlife. Perhaps this offer was accepted by some slaves, as the alternate treatment when they died, as Ibn Fadlan reports, was to be left “as food for the dogs and the birds.” It is plausible that the two women were mistress and slave, though their relationship is still not entirely known. Perhaps future research will be able to solve this mystery.

- (Dhwty, 2015)