Archaeologists Discover Viking Age Ship Burial in Norway
Jenny Gross 4 hrs ago
The New York Times
Archaeologists using radar technology have discovered a millennium-old ship burial in southeastern Norway, at a site that they hope will offer clues about life during the period after the fall of the Roman Empire through the end of the Viking Age.
Lars Gustavsen, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research and the lead author of a paper on the findings, published Wednesday in the journal Antiquity, said his team made the discovery in April 2018 in Gjellestad, Norway. A farmer notified the local authorities about his plans to build drainage ditches in one of his fields, prompting the archaeological survey.
“Before we started we knew about maybe one other site like it in that area," Mr. Gustavsen said. “Now we have another one that could probably provide us with more information about how society was built, what kind of political system they had, what kind of technological systems they had.”
The archaeologists used a motorized, high-resolution ground-penetrating radar system. They found evidence of the ship burial, a feasting area and another building that may have been the site of religious worship during the Viking Age, from about 750 to 1050. During that time, a ship burial symbolized safe passage into the afterlife and was a sign of status, wealth, and political or religious connections.
More:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/archaeologists-discover-viking-age-ship-burial-in-norway/ar-BB1aV371?li=BBnb7Kz
Excellent photos of the area, the imaging, Viking ships previously excavated in Gjellestad, Norway:
https://tinyurl.com/yxmsa6j3
Researchers from Østfold University College have created a comprehensive visual representation of the findings at Gjellestad based on the data the archaeologists currently have available. (Illustration: Screenshot from gjellestadstory.no)
Why archaeologists call for an immediate Gjellestad Viking ship dig
One reason is the ship is under attack by a fungus that is consuming the wood. "It’s being eaten from all directions and we don’t know how long this siege has been going on,” says Archaeologist Christian Rødsrud.
Wednesday 20. may 2020 - 13:07
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“This ship was doing fine until circa 1880,” says Christian Rødsrud to ScienceNorway.no. Rødsrud is the archaeologist at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo who led the preliminary excavation of the Gjellestad Viking ship in the summer of 2019.
The Norwegian Government recently allocated about $1.5 million toward excavation of the Viking Age grave which contains the Gjellestad ship. The funding must first be put to vote in the Norwegian parliament, the Storting, but the project manager Rødsrud doesn’t expect any resistance there.
The examinations carried out in the summer of 2019 showed parts of the ship to be in dismal shape. So in January the Museum of Cultural History, Viken County Authority and the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage recommended that the ship should be excavated.
The Gjellestad ship, as imaged in georadar by the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) in 2018. (Photo: NIKU)
The ship is believed to have been much better preserved until relatively recently, considering all the centuries it spent underground. It was intact, lying at the bottom of a burial mound until the 1880s when this and several other ancient mounds were evened out to create level, tillable soil.
More:
https://sciencenorway.no/archaeology-history-viking-age/why-archaeologists-call-for-an-immediate-gjellestad-viking-ship-dig/1687440
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for my heritage! 