The Vikings had a range of burial practices that reflected their rich belief in life after death.
But the burial practice that has most caught the imagination of modern enthusiasts is the ship burial.
Since the Vikings were seafaring raiders and traders, sailing must have seemed like a fitting way to travel into the afterlife.
While we only hear about a few ship burials, scores have been found throughout Scandinavia, as can be seen in the map below.
They were most common in Norway, where ships were also ritually placed in bogs to send them to the gods.
The few burials we hear about make headlines because they are the best preserved and tell interesting stories about life in the Viking world, and often also tell interesting stories about archaeological practices in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Below is an in-depth look at the ship burial at Myklebust, which has recently been re-excavated.
It is compared to the two most famous Viking ship burials, Gokstad and Oseberg.
Myklebust, Norway
The largest Viking ship burial ever found was discovered at Myklebust farm in western Norway in the 1870s.
It was originally excavated by Anders Lorange from the Bergen Museum in 1874 but has since been re-excavated to learn more.
The King’s Ship
The area covered by the estate was ruled in the 9th century by the Viking king Audbjörn Frøybjørnsson of Firda.
He died in battle against Harald Fairhair in around 870 CE while Fairhair was trying to unite Norway’s various kingdoms under his centralized rule.
He is the man believed to have been buried in this enormous ship.
As was the Viking custom for wealthy and important individuals, Frøybjørnsson’s body and grave goods were placed in the boat.
Unusually, the boat was burned before it was buried.
While we have romantic images of burning boats sailing off into the sunset at funerals, and it was the Viking custom to burn bodies for burial, this is one of very few ship burials known from Scandinavia that was burned before it was interred.
While the ship and its contents were burned, the fire did not burn hot enough to fully cremate the materials.
These were covered by a great burial mound, known as Rundehogjen by locals, which in Frøybjørnsson’s case was an immense 100 feet in diameter and 13 feet high.
The surviving remains include more than 7,000 rivets used in the ship’s construction and 44 shield bosses, which hint at the size of the ship with 22 rowing seats on each side.
Consequently, archaeologists believe that the ship was at least 100 feet long, making it the largest ship burial ever discovered.
The ship also contains the skeletal remains of an adult male estimated to be 25-35 years old.
According to osteologists, he died from a sharp-force injury to his shoulder, probably inflicted by a sword or battle axe.
He was found with weapons and other grave goods, including a bronze vessel looted from Ireland in the 8th century, suggesting that he was a raider.
The grave also contained: at least one but probably three horses, longbows, two shields, two spears, an axe, 2 arrowheads, a knife, a drilling tool, a horse bit, a bronze buckle, five bone game pieces, three bone dice, two bone combs, glass beads, hinges for a chest, iron key, and more.
The Excavator
Lorange initially excavated the site in 1874 and then refilled it to preserve the remains.
When he refilled the site, he included a note for future excavators on a rolled-up piece of paper placed inside a green glass bottle along with his business card and five coins.
The message on the note can be translated as follows:
This mound was excavated in 1874 by the Norwegian antiquarian Anders Lorange. The mound is built over fallen Men. They were burned in their ship with their weapons and decorations. There were 26 shield bosses, 2 swords, and ax ad many arrows in addition to many other old saws. The find is handed over to Bergens Museum.
His description of the finds doesn’t match up with the modern record because he didn’t find everything.
New technologies and techniques have allowed for a much more thorough excavation.
Modern researchers also believe that he wasn’t the one who got down into the dirt, with excavations being carried out by farmers and laborers, so he wasn’t intimately familiar with the contents of the excavation.
At the bottom of the letter, he also wrote a message in runes.
It puzzled translators for many years until they realized that he did not understand the runes, and instead transliterated a modern sentence in the runes “Emma Gade my girlfriend,” which he also wrote on his business card.
The Graveyard
This burial was part of a larger graveyard that seems to have been used between the 8th and 10th centuries.
It seems likely that this was because it was a new powerbase at the start of the Viking Age, and burial mounds helped reinforce its position of importance.
So far, five burial mounds have been excavated, including the grand ship burial, most containing multiple burials.
There is evidence of at least half a dozen boats buried in the graveyard.
The other most interesting boat in the graveyard was found in mound four.
When the mound was initially excavated, they found the mound of a man in an unburned grave also containing a sword and spearhead.
Since it was located so close to the edge of the mound, archaeologists assumed it could not be the principal grave.
Later a burned woman’s grave was found near the middle of the mound, and 350 large rivets indicate that she was buried in a boat.
She was also found with a bronze buckle, glass beads, kitchen utensils, textile tools, animal bones, and a special staff assumed to be a distaff used by Volva, a Viking witch.
This is the only other known burned ship burial from Scandinavia. Other ships buried in the graveyard do not appear to have been burned.
Gokstad, Norway
The Gokstad Ship was excavated at around the same time Lorange was excavating at Myklebust.
Local tradition held the memory of a famous burial mound, which was excavated in the 1880s to reveal the bow of a ship.
The Gokstad ship also dates to the early 9th century but is much more modest in style.
The oak ship, which was not burned before being buried, was more modest in size measuring 78 feet in length and 17 feet in width.
It seems to have been a ship that was used to transport goods and livestock, and not built specifically as a burial good. It carried 32 rowers (shields) with a sail.
The remains of a man around 40-50 years old were found in the ship, carefully placed in a specially constructed burial chamber within the ship.
He was extremely tall for the Viking age, measuring around six feet tall. Interestingly, alongside him were found the skeletal remains of 12 horses, 6 dogs, and a peacock (native to Asia and Africa).
The ship also contained three smaller boats, a tent, a sled, and riding equipment.
No weapons were found, contrasting with the king’s burial at Myklebust.
In the 1920s, Professor Anton Willem Brogger of the University of Oslo asserted that the body must belong to King Olaf Gudrodson, the gout-ridden son of King Gudrod of Vestfold.
However, evidence does not survive to confirm this speculation.
A replica of the ship was constructed in 1893 and sailed to the United States as part of that year’s World Fair.
Oseberg, Norway
The famous Oseberg ship burial was excavated between 1903 and 1905 on a farm in Norway and is believed to have been buried in the 830s.
It measures 70 feet long and 17 feet wide and was designed to carry around 30 people when it sailed the open seas.
Buried in the ground, the ship, which again was not burned, carried two women into the afterlife.
This perplexed archaeologists who had previously assumed that this kind of grandiose burial was reserved for powerful men.
One of the women was around 80 years old and suffered from arthritis, while the other was around 50.
The skeletal remains of 14 horses, an ox, and three dogs were also found on the ship.
The ship contained many rich grave goods including an elaborately decorated sleigh, a finely carved cart, bed posts, and wooden chest, and the “Buddha Bucket,” a brass bucket decorated with a Buddha figure believed to have come from Ireland.
It has been suggested that the older of the two women may have been a Volva, or that one was a queen and the other was her long-time servant or companion, who was buried alongside her mistress.
Many Norse stories refer to people dying of grief when someone close to them died, or throwing themselves on someone else’s funeral pyre.
The latter idea is supported by the fact that the women were found lying in the same bed and that they had a diet of expensive meat rather than the fish that was common in Scandinavia.
Mitochondrial DNA analysis also suggests that the younger woman came from Iran, suggesting that she may have been an exotic slave imported to serve the important matron.
Viking Ship Burials
Considering the size, grandeur, and fascinating context of the Myklebust ship burial, we fully expect it to join Gokstad and Oseberg among the most talked about Viking archaeological sites.
