It’s a fascinating story and so far they have only excavated about 10% of the site. The thing which stands out to me (not mentioned in the article) is that so far the archaeologists have only found male remains. So far they do not know what became of the women. Some speculate that they may have been taken, but if that was the case there ought to be remains of old women since an attacker would not kidnap those. The working theory right now is that the women where rounded up before they were killed and that that site remains to be found.

The head archaeologist speculates that this attack was part of a civil war on Öland (the island where Sandby is located) and that the purpose of this attack was to intimidate opponents. And since no one came to bury the dead it appears to have worked.