(The Picture Art Collection/Alamy Stock Photo) Stela depicting Odin’s horse Sleipnir
The warriors of the Viking Great Army who campaigned in Britain from A.D. 865 to 878 worshipped gods often associated with animal companions, such as Odin and his eight-legged horse Sleipnir. It seems that some of the army’s leaders may have made the voyage across the North Sea from Scandinavia with their own cherished animals as comrades. A team led by University of Durham archaeologist Tessi Loeffelmann discovered evidence of these travel arrangements while analyzing isotopes of the element strontium in cremated animal bones recovered from Norse burial mounds near the site of the army’s A.D. 873–874 winter camp in Repton.
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