New Huge Viking Ship Discovered By Radar In Øye, Norway – What Is Hidden Beneath The Ground?

A new Viking Age ship has been discovered by archaeologists in Norway during a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey. This exciting find reveals a huge Viking boat buried beneath the ground in Øye, in Kvinesdal.

This archaeological discovery is highly significant not only because Viking ship burials are rarely found, but also due to the fact that Kvinesdal was once the home to one of Southern Norway’s largest known burial sites from the Iron and Viking Ages.

Archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) said the ancient boat was spotted while researchers conducted geophysical surveys in the area as part of the road-building project E39 led by Nye Veier.

The surveys are a part of the research project “Arkeologi på Ney Veier” (Archaeology on new roads). Based on preliminary reports, archaeologists estimate the Viking boat to be between 8 to 9 meters long.

Niku researchers inform that in addition to the boat burial there are traces of several other burial mounds.

At present, it is still unknown how much of the Viking boat remains. Excavations must be carried out and hopefully, the new road project will not interfere with archaeologists’ work.

As previously explained in Ancient Origins, Viking burials were very complex which is the reason why so few boat burials have been unearthed.

When a great Viking chieftain died, he received a ship burial. This involved placing the deceased on the ship, sailing him out to sea, and setting the Viking ship on fire. People could watch flames dance high in the air as they embraced the mighty warrior on his way to the afterlife.

By modern standards, it might sound crude, but Viking burials were intended to be a spectacular ritual. Viking funeral traditions involved burning ships and complex ancient rituals.

Based on discovered archaeological evidence it seems that the funeral boat or wagon was a practice reserved for the wealthy.

This type of burial was not common however and was likely reserved for sea captains, noble Vikings, and the very wealthy. In Old Norse times, boats proper boats took several months to construct and would not have been wasted without a valid cause or a suitable amount of status.

Another option was that the Vikings was burned, and cremation was rather common during the early Viking Age. Ashes were later spread over the waters. The vast majority of the burial finds throughout the Viking world are cremations.

Archaeological discoveries such as the finding of the magnificent Gokstad Viking ship discovered in 1880 offer more insight into the world of the Vikings. When scientists re-opened and examined the grave in 2007 we could finally learn more about the man who became known as one of the most famous Vikings in Norway – the Gokstad Viking Chief and his remarkable ship.

The Gokstad ship was built in about 850, at the height of the Viking period. In those days there was a need for ships that could serve many purposes, and the Gokstad ship could have been used for voyages of exploration, trade, and Viking raids. The ship could be both sailed and rowed. There are 16 oar holes on each side of the ship. With oarsmen, steersmen, and lookout, that would have meant a crew of 34.

In recent years there have been exciting reports of unearthed Viking Age burial ships in Sweden and Norway. The giant Gjellestad Viking ship burial in Norway found some years ago has given a unique opportunity to see the world through the eyes of the Vikings.

The discoveries were made by archaeologists from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) with technology developed by the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology (LBI ArchPro).

– We are certain that there is a ship there, but how much is preserved is hard to say before further investigation”, Morten Hanisch, county conservator in Østfold said at the time.

Later, scientists using modern technology put together an outstanding virtual tour of the Gjellestad Viking ship burial site, allowing viewers to see what the place looked like in ancient times.

The new radar discovery in Øye is promising and hopefully, researchers will be able to unearth and examine the remains of the Viking ship. Once they accomplish this, we will learn more about the boat and its history. Maybe remains of a Viking Chief will also be found.

Ancient Hunting Blinds Found in Norway

If you want to kill a reindeer with a bow and arrow you have to get as close to the animal as you possibly can. You probably can’t be further away than 10-20 metres. Which is difficult, with an animal that will flee at the smallest sound or movement.

The mountains and ice patches in Sandgrovskaret didn’t provide hiding places for the hunters, so they had to construct some. 40 such so-called hunting blinds – a rock wall shaped like a half-circle that hunters would hide behind – were found when glacial archaeologists visited the site four years ago.

“This was a big hunting location”, archaeologist Espen Finstad says to sciencenorway.no.

Hunted in the mountains and lived in the valley

The mountain in question is 1800-1900 metres above sea level, so the hunters wouldn’t have been living here.

“Most likely they lived down in the valleys, but clearly had large hunting stations higher up in the mountains”, Finstad says.

People have hunted here for thousands of years.

“In the Stone Age, they would have lived in simple settlements, and during the Iron Age they would have had grand long houses down in the valley”, Finstad says.

Some such settlements were discovered by glacial archaeologists about a year ago, dating back to the Viking Age and Early Medieval period.

Manipulating reindeer with sticks

The archaeologists also found 32 so-called scaring sticks at Sandgrovskaret, which were used in the reindeer hunt.

“Some of these were lying in a line, indicating where a type of psychological fence for reindeer once stood”, Secrets of the Ice write in a post on their Facebook page.

Scaring sticks are the most commonly found from the melting ice in Innlandet. Some sites have hundreds, others just a few. In total, more than 1000 such sticks have been recovered.

And they were used, as the name suggests, to scare the animals into position.

The sticks are usually about one metre long, with a movable object attached to the top, like a thin wooden flag that would flap in the wind.

“You would bring a bunch of these sticks to the mountains, and depending on weather and wind and where the reindeer are found, you would calculate how best to make them move toward the hunting blinds, and place lines of these sticks along the ice”, Finstad explains.

The movement from the sticks would make the reindeer worried and move in the opposite direction. It was a way of manipulating the animals to walk in the direction where you were waiting for them with your bow and arrow”, Finstad says.

Bones and arrows

Five arrows were found, a nice little collection, Finstad says.

Three of them have preserved iron arrowheads. One of them is of a rare type, and it’s the first find of this type of arrowhead on the ice. It is previously known only from a single grave found in the county, which dates to around AD 550-600. The other two arrowheads are well known from Iron Age burials.

The other two arrows were very long – up to 1 metre – but did not have arrowheads. These are from earlier periods, likely 800 BC based on the shape.

Bones and antlers from reindeer were collected but have yet to be dated using DNA analysis.

At another site, which was kept secret for some time, the glacial archaeologists once found a total of 68 arrows dating from the Stone Age to the Medieval Period. It was a prehistoric arrow bonanza, according to the Secrets of the Ice blog.

Perfect conditions, in 65 sites

The first traces of finds at Sandgrovskaret were seen in 2013.

“We were there just to explore the conditions and could see some materials that had been uncovered from melted ice. Over the years we returned sporadically and saw more items”, Finstad says.

A larger mission was then planned for 2018. The archaeologists spent a week in the challenging environment, surveying the site systematically, documenting the hunting blinds, and rescuing as many finds as they could. The report from this mission was just published.

But the ice may have melted more since. At Sandgrovskaret, and other locations. Glaciers are sensitive to climate change, and a recent mapping showed that Norway’s glaciers in total have shrunk about 14 per cent over the past six years. Many smaller ice patches have nearly disappeared.

The Secrets of the Ice project has a total of 65 sites in Innlandet county where there are finds, spread out over Jotunheimen, Dovrefjell and Breheimen.

“These are great distances”, Finstad says.

“We have a window of opportunity from August and until the snow falls, where more items might surface and we can go rescue them. So every year we have to plan and prioritize”, he says.

There have been finds from melted glaciers in other parts of Norway, but no other project can boast as many as Secrets of the Ice – spanning from the Stone Age and up until the Plague in the 1300s.

“These are the highest mountains in Norway with several thousand years old ices, be they glaciers or ice patches. There has been plenty of reindeer here throughout the centuries, and short distances between the mountains and valleys where people have lived. So both the conditions for preservation as well as the cultural history setting in this area means that there has been a lot of activity here and that things have been left behind and preserved”, Finstad explains.

Forgotten mountain trails

The surveys at the Sandgrovskaret site also revealed an ancient mountain trail. According to local history, this was used all the way up to the 19th century. What the archaeologists don’t know, is how far back the use of the mountain trail goes. The trail is marked by a number of so-called cairns, little man-made piles of stone used to mark the path.

“It’s impossible to say based on these cairns how old the trail is”, Finstad says.

At another site, however, Lendbreen in Jotunheimen, the melting ice revealed a forgotten mountain pass, as well as a number of artefacts dated back to the Iron Age. Here the archaeologists know that the pass was since forgotten and not in use. In total, the archaeologists have discovered approximately 800 artefacts left behind by people who were there centuries ago, sciencenorway.no wrote about this pass.

Remains of sledges, dead animals, clothing and household items melted out of the ice in the pass. Many of the artefacts found, including a knife and a mitten dated to the Viking Age, are very well preserved. Radiocarbon dates of the finds in fact confirmed that the trail was most intensely used around 1000 years ago, during the Viking Age.

“The lost mountain pass at Lendbreen is the greatest discovery of the Secrets of the Ice program”, according to archaeologist Lars Pilø.

Medieval Runes Discovered in Norway

Just before Christmas, archaeologists Solveig Thorkildsen and Ingeborg Hornkjøl, both with the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research, NIKU, found two rare objects. A stick inscribed with runes, a so-called rune stick, and a bone, also inscribed with runes, was discovered a few days apart during an ongoing dig at the Medieval Park in Oslo.

Earlier in December, a unique knife handle depicting a king with a hunting falcon on his arm was found in the same place. The findings have been done just about halfway through the excavation.

Runes high on the wish list

“My heart was pounding. Finding runes was at the top of my wish list for this dig,” Solveig Thorkildsen says in an article on niku.no. It was Thorkildsen who found the large bone, probably a rib, which was inscribed with runes on both sides. The rune stick was found by Ingeborg Hornkjøl. It was found in a deep ditch where water was constantly seeping in. The water had washed out a piece of wood, which Hornkjøl thought looked a bit different.

“I thought to myself this cannot be true, this is not true, it’s not true! But it was true!” she says to niku.no.

The rune stick is a piece of wood that is inscribed on three sides, both in Norse and Latin.

Interesting finds

NIKU asked Kristel Zilmer to interpret the runes on the two objects. Zilmer is a professor of runology at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo.

“These are two interesting findings that expand our knowledge about runes, writing and written language in the towns of the Middle Ages,” she says to niku.no.

The context of the runic inscriptions is often unknown, according to Karen Langsholt Holmqvist, who recently defended her PhD on graffiti from the Middle Ages. As the context is often vital for understanding the meaning of the inscriptions, runes from the Middle Ages can be quite difficult to interpret in the 21st century. Zilmer writes in an email to sciencenorway.no that preserved runes often are very short pieces of text. A few typical phrases and expressions are repeated in many such inscriptions.

“The object itself also gives us a few possible keys for interpretation,” she explains.

The inscribed bone is an example of this.

“Working on interpreting runes in today’s day and age isn’t automatically as impossible as it may sound,” according to Zilmer.

“The greatest problems occur where the inscriptions are damaged, where the runic letters are difficult to read or where the inscriptions simply appear as meaningless. But other than that we can get quite a bit of information from the inscriptions themselves, the object they appear on and the context of the find,” she writes.

No sure interpretation yet

Old objects are often tainted by time. The rune stick is damaged, and some of the inscriptions are likely lost.

Nonetheless, Zilmer has managed to interpret several words.

On one of the broadsides, there are two Latin words: manus and Domine or Domini.

Manus means hand, and Dominus means lord or God. The words are found in a known Latin prayer: ‘In Manus Tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum’, meaning ‘Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit’. These are words traditionally attributed to Jesus as he was crucified.

Difficult without a microscope

The short side of the stick may be a continuation of the prayer, Zilmer explains. The first rune is difficult to pin down without a microscope. So far it can be read in different ways.

“It will be easier to establish what the more or less likely interpretations are when I can study this in a microscope,” Zilmer writes.

It is possible that it says “it is true”. If so, then the prayer is similar to one found in the Urnes stave church: ‘Hold thy sacred Lord hand over Brynjolvs spirit. This is true”.

The female name Bryngjerd is also inscribed. Perhaps the rune stick is about Bryngjerd who has given her life to the service of God?

“Many runic inscriptions from the Middle Ages contain simple religious quotes that expressed important messages in a Christian society,” Zilmer explains.

Probably from a large animal

The runic bone is most likely from a large animal such as a horse or a cow, according to NIKU. It will however have to undergo more examinations before this can be determined for certain. Zilmer has also found the inscription of «basmarþærbæin», for which she believes there are two possible interpretations. The first is that this could be the name or the nickname of a person. The other is that the rune describes the bone itself, the object on which the runes are inscribed.

The four last runes, bæin, mean bone in Norse.

Below are3d animations of the two objects. Examine them by zooming and rotating them as you please.

https://skfb.ly/o8oRD

https://skfb.ly/o8oTH

Oslo-people from the Middle Ages

Kristel Zilmer believes that the runic finds in Oslo can teach us more about people who lived in Oslo during the Middle Ages. We know a bit about what people in the Middle Ages thought, felt and found interesting, thanks to the old sagas. The sagas, however, were written in monasteries by people who could write far better than the average person. Runes were on the other hand-carved into items by a much broader section of the population. The newly found runes are from the Middle Ages, according to Zilmer. Characteristics of the runic shapes reveal this.

The question remains whether the context of the finds can give us a more exact dating of the objects. As per the king on the knife handle which was found a few weeks ago, his hairstyle revealed the age.

Viking Longhouses Detected Near Norway’s Gjellestad Ship

Norwegian archaeologists said Monday they have found a cluster of longhouses, including one of the largest in Scandinavia, using ground-penetrating radar in the southeastern part of the country — in an area that researchers believe was a central place in the late Nordic Iron Age.

The longhouses — long and narrow, single-room buildings — were found in Gjellestad, 86 kilometres (53 miles) southeast of Oslo near where a Viking-era ship was found in 2018 close to the Swedish border.

“We have found several buildings, all typical Iron Age longhouses, north of the Gjellestad ship.

The most striking discovery is a 60-meter (197-foot) long and 15-meter (49-foot) wide longhouse, a size that makes it one of the largest we know of in Scandinavia,” archaeologist Lars Gustavsen at Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research said in a statement.

The importance of Gjellestad during that time period wasn’t immediately known. But the body, known by its Norwegian acronym NIKU, said it was working on finding that out.

This autumn, archaeologists covered 40 hectares (about 100 acres) south, east and north of where the Gjellestad ship was found with the radar system, and one of the next steps are archaeological excavations, NIKU said.

The surveys are the first part of a research project called “Viking Nativity: Gjellestad Across Borders” where archaeologists, historians and Viking age specialists have examined the development of the area during the Nordic Iron Age that began at around 500 B.C. and lasted until approximately A.D. 800 and the beginning of the Viking Age.

“We do not know how old the houses are or what function they had. Archaeological excavations and dating will help us get an answer to this,” said Sigrid Mannsaaker Gundersen, another archaeologist.

They have also found several ploughed-out burial mounds in nearby fields.

“We are not surprised to have found these burial mounds, as we already know there are several others in the surrounding area,” Gustavsen said. “ Still, these are important to know about to get a more complete picture of Gjellestad and its surroundings.”

Archaeologists Extract 1,300-Year-Old Wooden Ski From Norwegian Ice

The long-lost ski of a pair used more than 1,300 years ago has been discovered on a Norwegian mountain top. The first ski was uncovered in 2014 and seven years later, the Digervarden ice patch melted enough to reveal its wooden counterpart – together they make the oldest pair of skis ever to be found.

On September 26, a team of Norwegian archaeologists led by the Secrets of Ice program hiked three hours up Mount Digervarden to the spot where the first ski was discovered.

Using GPS position and photos taken from the initial visit, the researchers located the second ski under the ice, which they chipped away with an axe and melted with boiling water to break the artefact free.

The Digervarden ice patch is in Reinheimen national park, located in Nordberg, Norway. It is a popular archaeological site that has revealed several ancient treasures once used thousands of years ago.

However, the reason these forgotten items are surfacing is due to climate change melting the once-solid ice sheets. The newly discovered ski is 187 cm long and 17 cm wide, 17 cm longer and 2 cm wider than the first ski found in 2014.

Archaeologist Lars Holger Pilø, who was part of the excavation, wrote in a blog post that the preservation of the new ski is much better, which may be due to it being deeper in the ice.

‘That may account for some of the differences in dimensions between the two skis,’ Pilø shared.

The long wooden plank features three twisted birch bindings, a leather strap and a wooden plug through the hole in the foothold.

The ski found in 2014 only had one twisted birch binding and a leather strap through the hole.

Both skis have a hole through the tip.  

There are slight differences in the pair, one being that the back end of the new ski, while the one found in 2014 is straight. Interestingly, the new ski shows signs of repairs and a piece of the back end is missing that could still be frozen in the ice.

‘Whether it broke when lost or while inside the ice may be possible to say at a later stage based on a careful study of the edge of the break,’ Pilø shared in the post.

‘The skis are not identical, but we should not expect them to be. The skis are handmade, not mass-produced.

‘They have a long and individual history of wear and repair before an Iron Age skier used them together and they ended up in the ice 1300 years ago.’

In November 2020, Pilø and his colleagues found a trove of artefacts on a mountainside in Jotunheimen in Norway. The items included nearly 70 arrow shafts, shoes, textiles and reindeer bones. 

The heads were made from a variety of materials — iron, quartzite, slate, mussel shell and even bone. 

Several still had the twine and tar used to affix them to a wooden shaft. 

Melting Norwegian glacier releases 500-year-old perfectly preserved wooden box full of candles

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of a beeswax candle used to assist Vikings to find their farms in a 500-year-old wooden box discovered in a perfectly preserved form when a glacier in Norway melted.

Archaeologists removed the tight lid of the pine box with the leather straps, uncovered in Norway’s Lendbreen ice patch, discovering the candle that was essential to Vikings hundreds of years ago.  

The team suggests the box – which was first uncovered in 2019 – was used to transport the long candles that were used by Vikings to light the path between their main farm and summer farm.

The Lendbreen ice patch has become a sought-out destination for archaeologists since 2011 when teams discovered thousands of artefacts sticking out from the melting Norwegian glacier.

At first, the team thought it was a tinderbox that was lost accidentally in the pass, but a further analysis proved otherwise, The History Blog reports.

‘It is radiocarbon-dated to AD 1475-1635, so 400-500 years old,’ glacial archaeologists from the Secrets of the Ice team shared in a statement. 

‘The content of the box was analyzed at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo: We were in for a big surprise – the content is beeswax!

‘What we are seeing inside the box is very likely the remains of a beeswax candle.’

Candle boxes were a common item among Vikings that were used to house expensive beeswax candles as Vikings made their travels to different farms. 

The melting glaciers, brought on by climate change, is creating a valuable archaeological site in Norway, which was an ancient passageway used by Vikings for thousands of years and littered with forgotten artefacts. 

The Lendbreen ice patch has produced more than 6,000 artefacts since archaeologists began investigating the area.

Last November, teams unearthed nearly 70 arrow shafts, plus shoes, textiles and reindeer bones on a mountainside in Jotunheimen, about 240 miles from Oslo.

Based on radiocarbon dating, the oldest arrows are from around 4100 BC, with the most recent dating from 1300 AD.

Clothes, tools, equipment and animal bone have also been found by a team in Norway’s mountainous region, according to the journal Antiquity. 

Researchers collected a haul of more than 100 artefacts at the site includes horseshoes, a wooden whisk, a walking stick, a wooden needle, a mitten and a small iron knife.

Although a warming world is revealing these extraordinary relics, archaeologists are in a race against time because the ice is what is keeping them preserved.

Archaeologist Regula Gubler told AFP in October 2020: ‘It is a very short window in time. In 20 years, these finds will be gone and these ice patches will be gone.’

‘It is a bit stressful.’

She explained that materials like leather, wood, birch bark and textiles can be destroyed by erosion.

And the only reason they have stayed preserved is because of the ice.

A Cache of 1,500-Year-Old Gold Pendants Found in Norway

Science Norway reports that seven gold pendants, or bracteates, estimated to be 1,500 years old have been unearthed in southeastern Norway by archaeologists Jessica Leigh McGraw, Margrete Figenschou Simonsen found in a field and near a small hill at the edge of the field.

If this spot was in fact a place where gold bracteates would have been laid down for sacrifice, it has been disturbed in modern times by farming.

Save for an assembly of gold artefacts which included one bracteate which was found in Møre og Romsdal in 2014, it has been 70 years since similar findings were done in Norway.

“Such votive hoards are incredibly rare”, three archaeologists write in a blog post on forskning.no (link in Norwegian).

Jessica Leigh McGraw, Margrete Figenschou Simonsen and Magne Samdal are all archaeologists working at the UiO Museum of Cultural History, and they have just undertaken an excavation on the site.

A scandie take on roman culture

A total of about 160 bracteates have been found in Norway, whereas in total around 900 such pendants are known. They are considered a Scandinavian phenomenon, and when found in Germany and England are presumed to have been imported to those places.

The inspiration for the pendants, however, is the Roman Empire Medallions.

“In homely tradition, the portrait of the emperor has been replaced by Norse gods and animal figures in Germanic style”, the archaeologists write.

“People in Scandinavia took ownership in a status item from the Roman culture, gave it a Norse look and made it their own.”

Animals, humans, symbols and runes

The name bracteate is derived from the Latin bractea – meaning a thin piece of metal.

The pendants were single-sided, made out of gold, and usually worn as jewellery. They could also be laid down as votive gifts to the Gods, as hoards of gold bracteates suggest.

Bracteates are classified according to what they depict. The seven that were recently found in Råde in Østfold, are of the types C and D.

Type C bracteates depict scenes of a person on the back of a horse-like animal, often in combination with birds, other symbols and runes. The dominating feature, however, is a large human head with prominent hair.

Type D bracteates are different stylistically from the other classifications and are assumed to be the youngest variants, dating from the 6th century AD. They depict various highly stylized animals and can be quite hard to understand and interpret today.

Pleasing the Gods

The bracteates are from the so-called Migration Period, a time of widespread migrations in Europe that mainly took place between the 4th and 6th century AD.

Norway has rich findings from this period from sites like farms, graves, hillforts and stray finds. Imported items from the Roman Empire, as well as copies of antique status symbols, show that Norway had cultural and economic ties to the continent, the archaeologists write in their blog post.

This is also evident in the gold bracteates.

“There is little doubt that these were items connected to aristocratic communities within a Germanic elite in Scandinavia”, they write.

In the year’s AD 536-540 however, a series of volcanic eruptions lead to thick clouds of ashes that affected the climate. This is referred to as the Fimbul winter in Norse literature. The sun did not shine for more than a year, crops failed, and people starved.

“We don’t know if the gold bracteates from Råde were laid down before or after 536”, the archaeologists write.

“But it appears as though gold offerings become larger and more numerous during the 500s. In a time of bad years and insecurities, people may have felt a heightened need to try and avoid dangers and seek protection. The Gods needed pleasing, and an increased amount of gold offerings may have taken place”.

The screen shows an enlarged image of a 5 mm broad area of one of the gold bracteates. Using a scanning electron microscope such as this allows the archaeologists to study the pendants up close in great detail. 

Will be studied in detail

The seven gold bracteates will now be studied in detail at the UiO Museum of Cultural History in Oslo. Some of them are a bit bent and the motifs are partly hidden.

Using advanced technology, the archaeologists hope to be able to say something about how the pendants were made, and perhaps even by whom and where.

They will also compare the newly found bracteates to old findings. This might tell us something about connections between the elites in Scandinavia or Northern Europe.

“Laying down seven gold bracteates must have been a considerable ritual act, reserved for only the most privileged in society”, the archaeologists write.

“Thus, they are also bearers of stories from the time before they were given as offerings”.

Hiker Accidentally Discovers 1,200-Year-Old Viking Sword in Norway

After hiking across the plateau that covers the region between the west and east sides of Norway, Goran Olsen sat down to take a break. That’s when he spotted a rusty sword blade lying under some rocks on the well-travelled mountain path.

Archaeologists have identified Olsen’s find as a type of Viking sword made circa A.D. 750. That makes it some 1,265 years old, though the scientists have warned this is not an exact date.

Double-edged and made of wrought iron, the sword measures just over 30 inches long (77 centimetres). Though covered in rust, and lacking a handle, it is otherwise in excellent condition.

The Haukeli mountains are covered in snow and frost at least six months out of the year and experience little humidity in summer, conditions that may explain why the sword is so well preserved. As County Conservator Per Morten Ekerhovd told CNN: “It’s quite unusual to find remnants from the Viking Age that are so well-preserved…[the sword] might be used today if you sharpened the edge.”

Beginning in the 8th century, many Vikings left their native homes in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, using advanced navigational technology to spread out across Europe and beyond. Famous—and feared—for their violent attacks on coastal cities and towns, they were also skilled traders and daring explorers who founded the first colony in Greenland and reached North America some 500 years before Christopher Columbus.

The Viking Age endured until the late 11th century, leaving a lasting impact on Western society and the world.

Viking law mandated that all free men were required to carry weapons and be prepared to wage war at all times. Of the most common weapons—swords, spears and battle-axes—swords were the most expensive to make. With their decorated hilts of silver, bronze or copper, Viking swords functioned as status symbols.

According to the pagan beliefs of many Vikings, a sword was a sacred object that could help its bearer enter heaven. After attaining the highest honour of dying in battle, the heroic Viking warrior, with his sword in hand, would feast with the gods in a special place known as Valhalla.

Many later Viking sword blades were emblazoned with specific markings, believed to be the names of their creators. Of the thousands of Viking swords that have been discovered across Scandinavia and northern Europe—most excavated from burial sites or found in rivers—some 170 have been marked with the name Ulfberht.

Their superior quality shocked archaeologists, as the technology needed to produce such pure metal would not be invented for another 800 years. In order to liquefy iron ore and remove impurities (known as “slag”), modern metalworkers heat it to 3,000°F (1,650°C); carbon is then added in order to strengthen the brittle iron.

In medieval times, when ovens could not achieve high-enough temperatures to liquefy the iron, metal workers would have to remove slag by pounding it out, a much less effective process.

With very little slag, and high carbon content, the Ulfberht blades are made of what’s known as “crucible steel,” a state-of-the-art metal that would not be seen in Europe again until the Industrial Revolution.

Experts believe the crucible steel used by the Vikings may have come from the Islamic world. Warriors in Central Asia had been using swords of material similar to that of the Ulfberht for centuries before the Viking Age, and a robust trade route known as the Volga connected Scandinavia with northern Iran from the early 9th to the mid-11th century.

Last March, researchers announced that a ring recovered from a 9th century Viking grave a century ago bears an Islamic inscription meaning “for/to Allah,” providing a rare physical link between the two worlds.

The sword Olsen discovered in Haukeli is not branded, and is missing its handle, but is still a strong blade. Experts believe it could be from a Viking burial site, or it could have belonged to a traveller who died in an accident or succumbed to frostbite. Either way, they say, its owner would likely have been a high-status member of Viking society.

The sword is now at the University of Bergen, for preservation and research purposes. Archaeologists are planning an expedition to the site of Olsen’s discovery for next spring, once the snow melts, in order to see if they can uncover any more artefacts.