Reconstruction of a medieval Swede’s face showed he may have died from an ax stabbed in the face. The researchers used the photogrammetry method and scanned the remains buried near the battlefield.

what was found

• A medieval Swede’s skull had a deep crack running diagonally from the lower left part of the lower jaw to the nose.
• The force of the blow was so great that several of the man’s teeth were broken.
• Such a severe battle wound could only be inflicted one way: an ax blow to the face. Archaeologists modeled an ax and “applied” it to bone.
• It’s hard to tell if the ax killed the man, but the tool definitely caused a lot of soft tissue damage.

Most of Gotland’s warriors were inexperienced peasants. They were killed by well-trained mercenaries from Denmark. There were so many dead that most of them were buried in all their clothes, surprising the archaeologists who made the first excavations.

Archaeologist Cicero Moraes has created two digital 3D models of the face that match the man’s possible appearance.

• In the first, done in black and white, the man was in a neutral pose with his eyes closed.
• The latter took a more graphic approach, depicting the man in color and showing him with black hair, a beard, and a terrible scar on the lower face.

Reconstruction of a farmer’s face / Photograph by Cícero Moraes

Apart from the terrible wound, little is known about the deceased. He was one of the 1,800 local farmers who died during the Battle of Gotland. The invasion was led by the Danish king Waldemar Atterdag (also known as Waldemar IV), who ruled from 1340 to 1375. The aim of the attack was to seize the sparsely populated island of Sweden.