Initially the subject of a modern homicide investigation, a skull discovered by two walkers in Bergen, Norway has been found to have belonged to a Germanic Iron Age woman. As the skull was found alone, the skull may be the result of ritual, perhaps the result of a sacrificial custom of some sort. Via thelocal.no:

“‘Only a skull has been dug up and there’s no sign of other body parts. This may indicate a decapitation,’ Asle Broen Olsen, at University of Bergen’s Section for Cultural Heritage Management told NRK. ‘It was hardly a part of legal practice. It was more a religious practice, where the person who was sacrificed had not done anything wrong, but was selected to be sacrificed to the gods.’

Bergen police were disappointed last week when they realised that the discovery would not help clear up any of their outstanding missing person cases.”