The University of Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History has launched a global study to uncover how people around the world perceive Viking warriors and the enduring legacy of the Viking Age. The Great Viking Survey invites individuals to share their thoughts on these iconic medieval figures and their influence in modern culture. The survey, part of the Making a Warrior research project, aims to map the ways contemporary media and academia shape public perceptions of the Viking Age. Led by a pan-Nordic network of scholars, the project explores the concept of Viking “warriorhood” and its r ..read more

  “Remarkable historical find at Sverresborg. Skeleton at the bottom of the old well. Could it be the Baglers’ victim, thrown into the well in 1197, as the saga claims?” This was the headline in Adresseavisen on December 2, 1938. The manager of Sverresborg Folk Museum, Sigurd Tiller, and architect and self-taught archaeologist Gerhard Fischer found the skeleton while investigating the castle ruins. Three doctors were called in to confirm it was indeed a human skeleton. Despite the uproar caused by the discovery, Tiller was cautious with the press. “Thorough and lengthy investigations ..read more

  A compilation of essays may not necessarily be your first choice when you reach for a book on a library shelf or conduct a quick search on Amazon.  For many of us non-academics, essays are something that brings back pubescent horrors from schooldays. The type of thing that, as soon as you graduated from high school, you'd pledge to avoid for the remainder of your life... until you went to college or university.  Yet one must, as Voltaire's Candide quips, "tend to one's garden," and part of this tending is surely reading both for pleasure and for a purpose.  Muslims o ..read more

  The Viking burial ground at Tvååker revealed 139 graves, including ship-formed stone settings and a ship-formed mound. Photo: Arkeologerna Ship made of oak and stone  The latter appears to be the remains of a wooden ship burial that may have been relatively common in the local area.  "Scientists in the 1950s discovered a characteristic local grave type in Halland County known as 'oblong mounds,'" Nordin and Kjellin tell The Viking Herald.  "These have been interpreted to be the remains of a cremation in a ship site. The cremation here appears to have taken place in t ..read more

  The Galloway hoard is set to be on display in Adelaide in Australia next year One of the UK's most important archaeological finds this century is set to go on show for the first time outside the UK early next year, as it begins its international tour. The Viking-age Galloway Hoard - buried about AD 900 - was unearthed in a south of Scotland field by metal detectorist Derek McLennan in 2014. It contains a variety of objects and materials, including a rare Anglo-Saxon cross, pendants, brooches, bracelets and relics. Read the rest of this article ..read more

  Archaeologists excavated the Myklebust ship mound and found a 140-year-old message in a bottle left by the site’s discoverer, photos show. Photo from the University of Bergen When researchers began reexcavating a Viking burial mound in Norway, they knew they were following the footsteps of an influential archaeologist. What they didn’t know was that he’d left them a note 140 years ago. The Myklebust Ship is the one of the largest Viking ships ever found in Norway, reaching about 100 feet long in its original form. Archaeologist Anders Lorange unearthed the burnt ship in a large burial ..read more

The flat fields surrounding Jarlsberg Manor contain numerous boat burials Museum of Cultural History / University of Oslo In 2018, a metal detector survey started turning up rivets at Jarlsberg Manor, the historic seat of the Wedel-Jarlsberg family and the Count and Countess of Jarlsberg, who led the County of Jarlsberg. Archaeologists quickly realized that the metal detectors were finding hundreds — if not thousands — of rivets, suggesting that a Viking ship was buried there. Ship burials are an important part of Viking funerary traditions, and archaeologists suspect that this site could c ..read more

  When, in season four of the hit television series Vikings, Ragnar Lothbrok exhorts his fellow Norsemen to pull their ships out of the water and over the hills to attack Paris, it seems like an impossible feat – made for TV.  Certain written records, however, suggest that the act of dragging a ship across land – known as portage – is not so outlandish.  Both the 10th-century Byzantine text De Administrando Imperio and the 12th-century Rus text Nestor Chronicle describe instances of Vikings hauling ships over land. Now, a study taking place in Scotland could be about to prov ..read more

  Sindre Martinsen-Evje, the mayor of Østfold County Municipality in Norway, has called for urgent action to help preserve the Gjellestad Viking ship burial site.  Although the site was only excavated in 2020 and 2021, time is already ticking as archeologists seek to save the remnants of the first Viking ship burial to be found in Norway in over a century.  Will it be gone forever?  With the help of ground-penetrating radar, Gjellestad was discovered more than 100 years after the Oseberg ship was excavated in 1904.  The Gjellestad dig, which took place near the to ..read more

  The Well Man was little more than a myth until 1938, when archaeologists excavated an abandoned well in the ruins of Sverresborg, outside Trondheim in central Norway. Credit...Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research In the dying days of the 12th century, with Norway in the grip of civil wars, the Baglers, a faction aligned with the archbishop, laid siege to Sverresborg, the castle stronghold of King Sverre Sigurdsson. The monarch was away, so the besiegers pillaged the castle, burned down houses and poisoned the water supply by heaving the corpse of one of the king’s men he ..read more