The 1079 date also constrains interpretations of who this man could have been.

He was not a survivor of Hastings in any direct sense: he was too young in 1066 to have fought, based on his estimated age at death of 50 to 60 years.

If he died around 1079, he would have been born roughly between 1019 and 1029.

That birth decade places him in the reign of Cnut, the Danish king who ruled England from 1016 to 1035.

Cnut’s England was the center of a North Sea empire that included Denmark, Norway, and parts of Sweden.