The 1,200-year-old vessel, discovered in a Norwegian potato field, is revealing an extraordinary picture of how ancient Scandinavian warlords were sent into the afterlife
The ship was likely from the Viking era and its apparent size, more than 60 feet long, would make it one of the largest yet discovered. It was the first intact Viking ship discovered in decades and declared a “hundred-year find” by archaeologists.
While most of the wooden ship eroded away over the centuries, preserved iron rivets will enable researchers to reconstruct the 60-foot-long vessel, which was built at the time when Viking ships began to be powered by sail as well as oar.Please be respectful of copyright. Unauthorized use is prohibited.
, a University of Oslo archaeologist, “but the [planking has] been dried and become wet again so many times, there’s not much left.” Even before the digital model is complete, the researchers have uncovered critical clues about the Gjellestad ship. The 60-foot-long keel is unusually skinny for a Viking longship, and it’s missing the reinforcements required to support a mast—meaning the vessel might have been rowed, but never sailed.
But because burial mounds were important symbols representing a Viking community’s revered ancestors and were often erected next to significant settlements, presumably filled with heavily armed warriors, the theft was puzzling. How, they wondered, could tomb robbers escape undetected and unpunished? “You can’t really rob something like that in secret—it’s huge,” Price observes. “You’d not only have to dig a hole but cut through the ship’s planking.
Similar break-ins at other Viking burial mounds have been dated to 950, coinciding with the takeover of southern Norway by Harald Bluetooth. Archaeologists think the conqueror made a show of violating the graves of his rivals’ ancestors—and the Gjellestad ship burial might have been one of his targets.
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