A skeleton was found beneath Prague Castle. The Nazis called him a Viking; later it became a Slavonic warrior

In July 1928, archaeologist Ivan Borkovský was working in the oldest parts of Prague Castle when his team opened a grave. It would stay with him for years. The man inside is said to have lived around the 10th century. He had been buried with several weapons and other objects as well.

It could have stayed a puzzle for archaeologists. It didn’t. His remains were pulled into a much bigger argument about who could claim the region’s past.

In a 2019 study in Antiquity, researchers Nicholas Saunders, Jan Frolík and Volker Heyd followed how readings of the burial shifted with the political upheavals of 20th-century Central Europe. Their paper, “Zeitgeist archaeology: conflict, identity and ideology at Prague Castle, 1918–2018”, looks at the grave and also at the conditions under which its story was told.


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First a Viking, then a Slavic

The objects in the grave gave clues, but they didn’t point one way. There was a sword, an axe and a fire striker, all linked with Viking equipment. There were also items like a bucket and knives, which have more local connections.

The sword was particularly unusual. According to the University of Bristol's account of the research says it was the only example of its kind among about 1,500 early mediaeval graves identified at Prague Castle at the time.

When Nazi Germany took over Czechoslovakia in 1939, the burial took on new meaning. A man presented as Germanic or Nordic could be used to support Nazi claims about the region’s history. The Nazi authorities accused Borkovský of withholding evidence that supposedly proved a German connection.

Borkovský was Ukrainian-born and had fought in both the Austro-Hungarian and Russian armies before reaching Czechoslovakia in 1920. He had also written about early Slavic pottery. Under Nazi pressure, he withdrew a book on the subject after being threatened with imprisonment in a concentration camp.

His 1941 publication on the Prague Castle grave took a Nordic line. After the war, with Czechoslovakia under Soviet influence, its title was changed to “A Viking Grave from Prague Castle” without his consultation. After the war, as Czechoslovakia came under Soviet influence, the interpretation shifted again. In 1946, Borkovský described the burial as that of an important person tied to the early Western Slavic Přemyslid dynasty.

What the objects can and cannot prove

It’s tempting to settle the matter with one label, Viking or Slav. The researchers didn’t.

The combination of objects could suggest contact between communities, movement across regions or a person whose cultural identity did not fit a modern national category. He could have been a Slav from some neighbouring region, who knew Old Norse and some Slavic tongue. He might have thought of himself as a Viking, too. The grave goods alone are not enough to decide which possibility is correct.

That’s important because archaeology is so often based on incomplete evidence. Objects can tell us about trade, technology, burial customs and links between communities. But objects cannot tell us, by themselves, how a person identified himself.

The 2019 paper placed the burial within a century of changing interpretations, showing how archaeological evidence can be pulled into political arguments long after the person being studied has died.

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The archaeologist became part of the story

Borkovský’s own experience makes this more than a debate about an old grave. He worked under regimes that wanted the past to support rival national stories. Under Nazi occupation, a Slavic reading could be dangerous. After the war, his earlier pro-Nordic account became a liability in a different political setting.

The University of Bristol’s report describes how the burial’s interpretation got tangled up with the creation of Czechoslovakia, the Nazi occupation and the Cold War. The grave wasn’t just evidence waiting to be read. It was being fought over by people living through events that could shape their careers and their safety.

The man’s name is unknown. His grave goods show he had access to objects from different cultural settings, but they can’t give a firm answer on who he was.

That may be the most useful lesson from the burial under Prague Castle. A sword can tell researchers something about the world a person lived in. On its own, it can’t decide which modern nation gets to claim him.