In the
summer of 1926 a sensation was dragged from the ground at Gardar in
southwestern Greenland. An excavation of an old norse/Viking settlement found
among other things a piece of skull and half a lower jaw looking so
extraordinary it made international frontpage news, was discussed in the
scientific journal Nature, and made the leader of the Danish excavation team F.
C. C. Hansen describe it as a new species of human that he suggested should be
called Homo gardarensis. And one has
to admit, that especially the lower jaw looks rather strange. The skull is
quite thick and solid, and the jawbone is at least twice the depth of a normal
one.
Various
international experts, though interested in the finds, adviced caution.
Anthropologist Arthur Keith suggested the bones were from an individual
suffering from acromegaly, a glandular disorder resulting in excessive growth
of the bones of especially the hands and face. Hansen though was undeterred,
and suggested among other things, that if primitive men like this had lived
side by side with modern man, they could amongst other things have been the
inspiration for the stories about Viking berserker warriors, or perhaps even
for the many Scandinavian stories about trolls.
Nevertheless,
interest in Homo gardarensis started
to wane rather quickly, and the specimens eventually ended up in the
collections of the Panum Institute in Copenhagen, the University of Copenhagen’s
department of medicine and anthropology, where they have lain almost forgotten
ever since.
ALMOST
forgotten that is, because if you take to the internet and start searching for
information about the Gardar skull, you will find that a healthy little
conspiracy theory seems to have grown up around it. Various writers insists
that the skull can’t possibly be human, among other reasons because it is HUGE
– this idea is to some extent based on Hansen’s original attempt to reconstruct
the complete skull, as very few of these writers have seen the actual
specimens, let alone handled them. And they also insists that the Panum
Institute are keeping the skull hidden or simply refuses other scientists and
researchers access to them, because if they truth of the skull were revealed,
all of anthropology would be turned upside down, and all the scientists would
sit back with egg on their face, and of course they want to avoid this at all
costs. The Gardar skull might even be a specimen of a Bigfoot, alma, almasty –
you name it.
Well, as so
often before, there is quite a gap between the real world and what has been
written about a controversial specimen. When I were to take part in the 2013
Weird Weekend in Devon, to talk about The
Natural History of Trolls and The
Cryptozoology of Greenland, I thought it would be nice to bring along some
pictures of the Gardar skull – if at all possible.
It turned
out to be so easy, it was almost laughable. Professor Niels Lynnerup, who is
the curator of the Panum Institute collection of anthropological specimens, was
more than forthcoming. Of course I could see the specimens and photograph them
to my heart’s content. I just had to wear gloves, as sooner or later, as part
of the institute’s ongoing research in the old Norsemen, the skull will be
DNA-tested. So much for the myth of the Gardar skull being hidden and kept out
of the reach of researchers.
When
professor Lynnerup then took out a key and opened the glass-fronted cupboard
where the skull parts were placed with a copy of the original Danish newspaper
describing them, my first feeling was a slight disappointment. What that all?
Where was the HUGE skull I had been reading about?
Anyway –
professor Lynnerup showed me into an empty lab, took out a big sheet of paper,
placed the skull and the jaw on it, gave me some gloves, and left me to it.
So much for
the myth of secrecy.
First of
all, the skull is not HUGE, it is well within the size limits of modern man, as
the photograph shows, it actually looks somewhat small. The lens cap in the
middle of the photographs has a diameter of 65 millimeters, so absolutely no
giant here. This misunderstanding probably arose from the original attempt to
reconstruct the whole skull. At the time archeologists had only rudimentary knowledge
of how much bones could be warped, bent, twisted or compressed in the ground,
so what is in fact an almost complete top part of the skull – it ends just above
the eyebrows at front, and just above where the junction with the spine at the
back – was seen as a only a partial top part, which gave a skull far to big in
the final reconstruction.
The lower
jaw does look strange, but it has been flattened in the ground as well, making
it easy to reconstruct it as bigger than it actually was. And the large depth
of the jawbone is, despite what some writers claims, easily explainable as the
result of acromegaly, or even some sort of injury – a severely broken of
crushed jaw - and there a some indications of that – which could also have been
the cause of the excessive bone growth.
So much for
the myth of the giant skull.
All in all,
there is nothing mysterious or gigantic about the Gardar skull. It is not being
kept locked away, out of the reach of researchers, and it is absolutely not
evidence for the existence of Bigfoots, yetis or anything of the sort. So please stop writing about it.
