They accidentally find a Viking ship in Norway
It had been several years since ships had been found in the Norwegian country, which is why this discovery has been so surprising.
Expert archaeologists of the INorwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) detected by the hand of a georradar high resolution, a Viking ship under the ground of a cemetery in the Østfold County.
An investigation initiated in 2018, in a nearby area, gave promising results making the researchers set out to go a little further in September 2019: “We had finished the agreed area, but we had free time and decided to do a quick analysis on another field. It turned out to be a good decision, ”he confesses Manuel Gabler, archaeologist, because thanks to that, eThey found remains of the ship.
According to the first studies carried out, the ship could be part of a necropolis in which remains of five communal houses have also been detected where the Vikings could have lived as well as eight burial mounds (which are funerary hills that are formed with dirt and stacked stones) that would be very close to these homes.
Lars Gustavsen, an archaeologist at NIKU has stated that this small town "is clearly designed to show power and influence."
The curious thing about this discovery is that it was found very close to Viksletta, where there was another famous burial, known as Jelle's funeral mound that by the data that is had of him, dates from 1500 years ago at the time when there was a king of the same name, Jelle.
"This is incredibly exciting," he said. Kut Paasche, Head of the Department of Digital Archeology at NIKI and adds: "As technology advances, we learn more and more about our past."
Radar images reveal that what is found buried about fifty centimeters deep has some 20 meters long and it is a large and well defined structure. The best thing is that the data indicate that the bottom of the ship is preserved despite damage to both ends of the ship by plows in the farm work.
“This finding is fascinating, since we only know three well-preserved Viking ships in Norway They were discovered a long time ago. This new ship will have great historical relevance, since it can be studied with new technologies in archeology ”continues Paasche.
And although they do not rule out digging, in the long term, what they are first considering is conducting additional non-invasive research to map the finding.
