Archaeologists in Norway are about to dig up a Viking ship

A ground-penetrating radar survey in 2018 found a 20-meter Viking ship buried just beneath the surface of a farmer’s field in Østfold, Norway. At the time, archaeologists decided that the rare find was safest where it was. But recent analysis of a wood sample taken in 2019 reveals that although the ship looks remarkably well-preserved, it’s actually being eaten away by fungus. And that means it’s time for a rescue mission.

A Viking burial

The intended excavation is being led by archaeologist Jan Bill, curator of the Viking Ship Collection at Norway’s Museum of Cultural History, and his colleagues at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU). When they start digging in June, they’ll be the first archaeologists in a century to excavate a Viking ship.

The site, called Gjellestad, is especially interesting—and especially complicated. It’s a ship from the period when Scandinavian seafarers were raiding and settling their way around the North Sea and Atlantic—but it’s also the tomb of a Norse ruler. “Ship graves of this size were built for persons from the uppermost echelons in society—we would tend to call them kings and queens today, possibly also jarls,” Bill told Ars.

Such an important person would have been laid to rest aboard a ship laden with things they used in life and might need in the next one. “From other ship burials, we know that these may have included sledges, tents, boats, horses, beds, dogs, etc.,” Bill told Ars. “Usually, a male burial would feature weapons; both sexes would have food and items for food preparation; both sexes may also have personal bling (buckles, rings, etc.).”

The ship would have been buried beneath a huge monumental burial mound. Centuries of farmers’ plows have long since flattened the mound, but its outline still shows up clearly in ground-penetrating radar images: a neat circle around the long, narrow silhouette of a longboat’s hull. Bill and his colleagues hope that by excavating the ship and the lower layers of the burial, they can learn something about how, and why, the Norse interred their rulers this way.

“The way the burial has been arranged, the position of the ship, the position and sequence of objects in the ship, the possible presence of a burial chamber, the way the covering of the burial with a mound has been carried out—all these are things that may help to understand the burial ritual and the ideas behind it—for example, references to royal origin myths or to the cosmology,” Bill told Ars.

Preserving the Gjellestad ship

The hull itself may offer some insights into the finer points of Scandinavian shipbuilding. It’s not clear whether Gjellestad dates to the early or middle part of what’s known as the Viking Age, but the chance to take a few more wood samples for tree-ring dating may help answer that question. “Many different types of ship may have existed at the same time, and we only know a few Viking ships,” Bill told Ars.

Based on the radar images, the Gjellestad ship’s keel (a long, sturdy timber that serves as the backbone of the ship) and lower timbers are still intact. But the upper parts of the hull, along with all the rigging, were plowed away, along with the mound itself.

Preserving what’s left is going to be a major undertaking. That’s why archaeologists had initially planned to leave the ship where it was. Waterlogged wood tends to crumble if it dries out, because over time, the structure of the wood decays so far that the water is actually helping support the wood’s cells. To preserve timbers from shipwrecks, conservators have to slowly replace the water with preservatives, like polyethylene glycol (PEG).

Of course, the space and funding required to conserve an entire ship’s hull aren’t always easy to come by, which is why archaeologists who study shipwrecks often document their finds but leave the wrecks on the seabed, where they’re preserved for future researchers (or buried under a farm, in this case). But the same conditions that have preserved the Gjellestad ship for all these centuries also created the perfect habitat for wood-eating fungus.

“The fungus are of the ‘soft rot’ type and need humidity and oxygen,” Bill told Ars. “They are basically digesting all of the wood, with a preference for cellulose and hemicelluloses, but do also weaken the lignin structures to a point where no physical strength is remaining.” The conservation process should also help kill the fungus that’s eating the ship.

Is any body home?

There must have been at least one person buried aboard the ship, but Bill doesn’t expect to meet the long-dead Viking ruler in the flesh—or bone.

“Bones are generally best preserved in calcium-rich environments, not in slightly acidic [ones], as sand and silt tend to be,” he explained. But the archaeologists will analyze soil samples from the burial, looking for traces of what’s known as a “body stain,” where lipids from the body soaked into the soil. Jewelry and other metal items might also mark where a body once lay.

But even some of those items may be missing; the radar images show traces of disturbed soil near the middle of the ship, which might mean the burial was looted sometime in the past. Items buried at the bow and stern, however, are likely to still be where they were placed a millennium ago. With any luck, those items will be enough to tell Bill and his colleagues something about the person buried at Gjellestad.

The fungus that’s eating the Gjellestad ship’s timbers isn’t the only microbe Bill and his colleagues have to contend with. Archaeology is usually meticulous work, but fieldwork during a pandemic requires an extra level of caution. People working on the site will be spaced at least a meter apart, won’t share tools, and will take extra precautions with transportation to and from the site (as opposed to the usual method of piling as many archaeologists as possible into a van).

“It will delay the excavation,” Bill told Ars. “On the other hand, this is an excavation where we do not want to miss one ounce of information, so we are not rushing anything anyway.”