The excavation of a Viking settlement in Stevns , Denmark has yielded an unexpected find : a 1000 - year - old toilet . The latrine could be the oldesttoiletin Denmark , reportsScienceNordic(viaReal Clear Science ) and might remold how we think about Viking privy habits .
research worker from theMuseum Southeast Denmarkwere in search of infernal region house ( partially underground buildings that might haveserved as shop ) when they constitute the long - bury feces in a 6.5 - foot - cryptical hole . They found fly pupa in sampling from the bottom layer of the pit as well as mineralized seeds , which would be in seam with the phosphate - rich , atomic number 8 - poor surround of a elephantine pile of poop . Pollen break down in the pit also suggest that the poop came from someone who eat honey — that is , probably mankind .
This is what it looked like before lead research worker Anna S. Beck and her team moil in :
While Viking cities may have require potty to take with the high mass of human barren in concentrated orbit , scholars have previously thought that out in the country , citizenry did n’t need schematic toilets , instead using the farm ’s general refuse mickle or demand care of their business organization in the static with the stock . But this pit seems to have been bounded by two posts that could have obligate poles , so it could have had a closed structure of some variety above it — which , judging from the burnt material found near the top of the pit , believably burn down .
This breakthrough could shift that notion , although not all researchers are on control board , accord to ScienceNordic . Just because this area had a toilet does n’t think of that every rural farmer did — someone in Stevns could have just been really into new engineering science . But at the least , this shows that this one subset of rural Vikings decided to waive pooping in the stable for a stand - alone toilet .
" It is easy to think about hoi polloi in the past as more rude than us , " Beck told Mental Floss in an email , " but thing as comb , needles , tweezers — and now also toilet — show that the Vikings care much about personal tending and maybe even hygiene ( though not in our sense of the word ) . "
And if outhouse like these were , in fact , a normal part of rural Viking life , it ’s potential that archaeologist have just overtop them in the past , thinking they did n’t subsist . The new find could open up fresh avenues for research into the toilet habit of Denmark ’s rural Viking universe .
[ h / tReal Clear Science ]
