Das frühungarische Reitergrab von Gnadendorf, NÖ

In 2000 in Gnadendorf, northern Lower Austria, a grave of a early Hungarian boy was found. When he died he was about 14 years old and was buried with a beautiful sabre, clothing decorations and the remains of a horse, together with horse bits, saddle and stirrups. The anthropologists research showed that the boy was rather strong and trained, but he suffered with the Klippel-Feil-Syndrome. He had been wounded several times and probably has died after an accident during the training. The objects which were found i the grave are of high quality, especially the sabre which was decorated with silver cast and gilded fittings, the grip was covered with fish skin. 10 coins, which had been brought back to Hungary during a raid Italy, minted around 900, had been fixed on his cloths. All the grave items have been obviously used for a long time and had been probably somewere elses property. The 14c-analysis, done by the Laboratory VERA (Vienna) indicate, that the burial took place around 1000, a time when the Hungarians were on the way to transform their half nomadic cluster of different groups into a "modern" christian medieval state, a process, which led to several uprisings till the middle of the 11th century. Given the fact, that the site of Gnadendorf is situated far away from the Hungarian settlement area of the 10th century, in a region, which has not been organised by one of the actual powers of the larger region (Bohamians, Bavarians, Hungarians), it seems to be likely that the burial was meant als as a demonstation against political and religious modernism in Medieval Hungary.