Viking Ship Discovered in Norway Using Ground-Penetrating Radar

Norwegian archaeologists discovered a "high status" Viking burial site without having to dig it any land. They used the ground-penetrating radar technology (GPR) to see below the surface of the land.

Upon inspection, they discovered that the Viking burial site has a feast hall, cult house, and the remnants of a Viking burial ship. According to CNN, the key to this discovery is the Viking ship burial site on the Jell mound on Gjellestad, southeastern Norway.

History records suggest that boats in the Vikings culture are associated with a safe passage towards the afterlife and were usually given to the elite members of society.

GPR Technology Discovers Viking Ship

The scientists used ground-penetrating radar technology instead of digging the Viking burial site. The GPR data showed that the Viking ship measures 62 feet (19 meters) long and buried between 0.9 to 4.6 feet (0.3 to 1.4 meters) deep beneath the ground of the burial site.

A researcher from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research said that when they were doing the surveys, the images usually appear black and white blobs, but the data from the GPR is so visually striking. They immediately knew that something was special there although they have no idea that there was a burial ship in the area.

Lars Gustavsen, the lead study author, said that the site seems to belong to the top echelon of the Iron Age and a focal point of exerting their social and political control of the area.

The researchers think that the high-status cemetery started in the ordinary mound cemetery, which represents the monumental burial mounds, hall building, and ship burial.

Gustavsen added that since people in the 19th Century were unaware of what the Viking objects were, they burned a lot of the wooden remains of the Viking ship. That means there is only very little left today to be examined and analyzed.

They are now planning to excavate the ship burial, the first time ever after 100 years. "It's a unique opportunity, it's just a shame that there is so little left of it," Gustavsen said. So the researchers decided to employ modern technology in hopes of capturing something from the ship and to be able to describe what the ship was.

CNET reported that the area was classified as "high-status" because of the objects they found in the burial site like the gold pendant. In a tweet by the Antiquity Journal, it noted that the pendants were also found in burials dated from 1-400 AD.

Was The Discovery of the Viking Ship a Serendipitous Event?

There are a lot of critical historical events that happened between 550 to 1050, or the Late Nordic Iron Age, like the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the rise of the Viking Age. Researchers believe that the burial site holds many truths about that period.

They have discovered this area after surveys were carried out in 2017 to see if the proposed construction plans will cause any damage to archaeological artifacts in Jell Mound, Gjellestad, southeastern Norway. Jell Mound is famous because it is one of the largest Iron Age funerary mounds in Scandinavia.

Check out more news and information on Vikings on Science Times.