This month Norwegian archaeologists hope to complete their excavation of a rare, buried longship at Gjellestad, an ancient site south-east of Oslo. It is the first such excavation in Norway for about a century. Most of the ocean-going ship has rotted away over the centuries, but archaeologist Dr Knut Paasche believes the layout of the iron nails will still enable a replica to be built eventually.
Ground-penetrating radar GPR revealed it to be about 19m 62ft long and 5m 16ft wide - putting it on a par with the well-preserved Oseberg and Gokstad Viking ships on display in Oslo. Those ships were found on the western side of the wide Oslo Fjord. In the 9th Century the Vikings started using sails, but they still needed strong rowers too for their epic voyages.
In their longships they travelled all around the British Isles, raiding coastal communities, then settling and leaving a legacy of fine craftsmanship, as well as Norse words and names. Others, like the Gokstad and Tune ships, combined rowing and sailing," he said. Study of the keel will be crucial and, he said, "the keel looks very different from the others, which is really exciting".
But to cross, say, from Bergen to Shetland it was better to wait for the right wind. That mound, the second-biggest in Norway, is m from the ship grave, which itself used to be a mound. Excavation leader Christian Rodsrud says Jell Mound marks the site of an ancient cremation burial, but hardly anything was found inside. It may have been looted at some point. Ploughing by farmers in the 19th Century levelled the mound over the nearby ship and other burial mounds.
There are also remains of long halls, probably used for ceremonies and feasts that went on for days. It was a time of power struggles between feuding Viking chieftains. Web Editor. Main navigation jump Main content jump Contact information jump. The Viking Ship Museum is closed for renovation. UiO Museum of Cultural History. Main navigation Search our webpages Search.
Back to uio. Found buried on a farm in Oseberg, Norway, an ancient Viking ship held sleighs, tapestries, silken bands, and the bones of two unidentified women.
During the late 19th century, a young Norwegian farmer, Johannes Hansen, arrived in the United States where—like many Scandinavians of the period—he had high hopes of starting a new life. However, an encounter with a fortune teller there made him change his plans.
He learned that he need not suffer hardships in America to get rich because hidden on his farm back home was a great treasure. This fateful encounter, described in a compilation of local history of Oseberg in southern Norway, may be nothing more than a yarn, but it reveals the intrigue and legends that surround one of the most exciting discoveries from the Viking age. Hansen returned to Oseberg. He started to excavate a curious mound on his land but found nothing.
He halted digging, speculating that the mound was just a burial site of Black Death victims from the epidemic.
Hansen and his neighbors had good reason to suspect there might be important archaeological sites in the area. In two teenagers in Gokstad, a town in the same region of Vestfold as Oseberg, discovered the burial place of a ninth-century Viking prince. The mysterious mound had also yielded a fantastic discovery: an entire wooden Viking ship encased in the dirt. What you don't know about the Vikings may surprise you. Rom continued to search the property and soon did find something: a wooden fragment measuring only eight inches.
It was a small find that heralded something much bigger. At first it seemed the veteran archaeologist might dismiss this farmer out of hand— but after Rom presented him with the wooden fragment, Gustafson marveled at the rich, intricate carving. Why were archaeologists so excited to find a Viking comb? The very next day the professor went to Oseberg and explored the mound to evaluate the site.
On August 10, , he informed the Norwegian press that a significant, new Viking burial ship had been found. The excavation began the following spring. The burial mound, feet wide and 19 feet high, was made from blue clay and stones covered with turf from the local marshlands.
Was the ship built purely for burial purposes? Could it really sail at all? Was the reconstruction following the excavation done correctly, or did the experts of the time make mistakes — mistakes that perhaps contributed to the fact that a ies replica hardly proved to be seaworthy? These were some of the questions that we wanted answers to through our shipbuilding. We therefore had to start by doing comprehensive research, including laser-scanning and physical inspections and measurements of the original ship.
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