Pre-Viking Vessel Discovered by Archaeologists

In Norse tradition, ship burials were used to honor the dead and give them a permanent resting place underwater. A discovery on the Norwegian island of Leka suggests that these rituals date back farther than previously thought. 

Archaeologists working for the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage found possible ship fragments while investigating the area around the Herlaugshaugen burial mound, named for the ninth-century Viking king Herlaug who, according to legend, had himself and 11 of his companions buried alive rather than be killed by an opposing leader. They dug trenches at the site and dug up wood fragments and iron planking rivets that were believed to once have been part of a ship and eventually part of a ship burial. Using radiocarbon dating of the wood, they determined that the burial took place around 700 C.E., making it the earliest known example of a ship burial in Scandinavia. 

"We know very little about what these large mounds contain because hardly any of them have been investigated," archaeologist Geir Grønnesby said of the effort, per The New York Times.

The researchers dug three shallow trenches at the site and unearthed wood fragments and iron planking rivets that were thought to have once been part of a ship. Although the vessel had largely rotted away, radiocarbon dating of the wood around some of the rivets and the two charcoal layers high up in the mound indicated that the burial had occurred around 700 A.D., making it the earliest known example of a ship burial in Scandinavia.

"You don't build a ship of this size without having a reason for doing so. It tells us that people from this area were skilled seafarers—they could build big ships—much earlier than we previously thought," Grønnesby said, per Newsweek. "This dating is really exciting because it pushes the whole tradition of ship burials quite far back in time."

The boat's apparent ties to the Merovingian Period raise more questions about the tradition of ship burials in the North Atlantic. Interestingly, Grønnesby noted that the burial sites at Namdalen in Norway and Vendel and Valsgärde in Sweden are similar to the burial site at Sutton Hoo in England, considered to be the oldest massive ship burial. 

"Should the ship in Herlaugshaugen burial mound be seen in connection with the burial mounds in Namdalen, Vendel, Valsgärde and Sutton Hoo, or is it a different phenomenon?" he asked. "This is a very exciting question, and something we want to explore further."