Viking teeth examined
A careful study has been completed in Norway. As the news story describes, conclusions discovered are quite different than was hitherto believed.
It’s interesting how our minds work, at least in the scholarly world. Despite our best efforts to be “fair” and “unbiased” the conclusions drawn are still inaccurate. My assertion is that the inaccuracy comes from over-romanticizing the past.
As in the above example scholars wanted to believe that the woman buried with the Oseberg ship was a queen. They wanted to believe she had a good, upper class life. Why did no one propose that she was a cancerous old wretch that probably had a terribly difficult life (as the evidence seems to suggest).
I’m far from being an expert on these matters obviously but I would say that when historians look into the past they paint a picture that is coloured by personal hopes not entirely based on fact. Now I’m aware that oftentimes we don’t have all of the evidence and so we fill in the gaps with suppositions. This is exactly my point though, it seems those suppositions are always positive in nature; hopeful and optimistic. Frequently, fact and hard evidence come to light proving that historians were wrong about a specific case.
It’s interesting I think.