The face of a warrior who died 660 years ago, with axe wounds, has been reconstructed by a team of Brazilian experts.
Reconstructed face of a Medieval warrior. (Photo: Cicero Moraes).
Brazilian graphic expert Cicero Moraes completed the reconstruction using a 3D skull model shared by the Swedish Museum of History in Stockholm. He announced the study in the 3D computer graphics journal OrtogOnLineMag, as reported by Sun on November 3.
Experts reconstructed the face of a warrior after excavating the skull from a mass grave on the outskirts of Visby, a city on the island of Gotland in Sweden. In 1361, a Danish army of 2,500 warriors committed a massacre there, facing off against a local force of 2,000 poorly equipped farmers, at least one-third of whom were minors or elderly, according to excavation results. Approximately 1,800 people died in the subsequent massacre, including a warrior who suffered an axe blow to the face, alongside wounds above the left eye and on the left cheekbone caused by a spear.
Moraes digitally reconstructed the warrior’s facial features. He stated that once the skull was ready, a series of markers indicating the thickness of soft tissue were placed across the skull. These markers indicated the boundaries of the skin in certain areas of the face. To supplement the data, Moraes and his team incorporated a CT scan from a volunteer and distorted the bone as well as soft tissue on the scan to fit the face they needed to reconstruct. With the basic face shaped, they completed the reconstruction process and created the most scientifically accurate image in gray tones, with closed eyes and no hair.
The warrior’s skull provided an incomplete dataset, so some features such as the size of the nose, mouth, and hair were predicted based on statistical data. However, the final result is a reconstruction of the warrior’s appearance at the time of death. The experts are unsure whether the axe blow caused a fatal injury. “It’s very difficult to determine just from the skull. But certainly, such a wound would not be easy to treat, especially during wartime,” Moraes said.
After the battle, the residents of Visby, the capital of the island, surrendered to avoid further casualties. King Valdemar IV of Denmark was paid a huge ransom and claimed the island as part of his kingdom. Both Sweden and Denmark continued to vie for the island until the signing of the second Treaty of Brömsebro in 1645, following Denmark’s defeat in the Battle of Torstenson. Five mass graves were discovered outside the walls of Visby. The first archaeological excavation in 1905 revealed many dead still wearing their armor.
