Den ofria viljan. Maktrelationen mellan ägare och trälar i samband med gravsättningar i Norden under den den yngre järnåldern

Sammanfattning: This thesis deals with the death of the thralls at their owners’ burial in the Nordic countries during the late Iron Age. In literary sources such as the Icelandic Sagas and Ibn Fadlan, it is told that thralls were killed at the funeral of their owner, and buried with them. It is inferred that the thrall may have had a choice, and that they chose death. However, certain graves from c:a 700-900 A.D, interpreted as containing thralls buried together with their owners, challenge the thralls’ willingness as they often seem to have met a brutal death. In this dissertation, I find a definition of the slave’s free will, as much as a discussion concerning the slave’s subordination to the owner, important to broaden the understanding of the burial in the thrall’s point of view. Instead of discussing the slaves’ willingness to die at the hands of others at the burial, I argue that one rather ought to focus on the influence of power and the broad aspects of the relationship between the owner and thrall. My definition of the thralls’ free will work on the supposition that the action performed by the thrall is not derived from the relationship of power. Is it then still possible that the thrall willingly could have given up his/her life to be buried along with the owner?