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Archaeologists Will Excavate a Viking Ship for the First Time in Over 100 Years
This ship was discovered in 2018 with ground penetrating radar in a field in Norway. At first scientists didn't want to dig it up for fear of breaking it up. But now they don't have much of a choice. It is being damaged by fungus.
For the first time in a century, archaeologists will excavate a buried Viking ship. Located a less than 2 feet below the surface, the ship is being ravaged by fungus, forcing archaeologists to act quickly.
With funding from the Norwegian government, archaeologists with the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) will begin excavations on the Gjellestad ship this June, reports The Local.
Scientists had been reluctant to dig it out for fear of damaging it further, but they don’t appear to have much of a choice, given the recent discovery of fungus munching away at the buried relic.
The Gjellestad Ship was discovered in 2018 with ground-penetrating radar, and it sits just 20 inches beneath the surface on a farm in Norway’s Østfold county. It’s around 20 meters (66 feet) long and around 1,200 years old, though the dating remains a rough estimate.
“The monumental ship graves like Gjellestad were built for some of the most powerful individuals that lived in Southern Norway in the Viking era.”
This ship is within a degraded burial mound, and other sites nearby suggest this place was once a Viking cemetery. Vikings had a deep cultural affinity with ships, burying high-ranking individuals inside of them, along with copious amounts of grave goods.
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