Dating the Grønhaug Ship Burial and the Plundering Event

Abstract Although the Danish Navy of different periods has been a subject of many historical studies, it seems that the human element of the fleet has been neglected by many of the researchers. It appears that common sailors, without whom even the mightiest navy would be forced to stay in the harbour, were usually hidden behind the numbers of statistics. The following thesis attempts to change this picture of the navy and bring to attention the lives of common sailors. The study focuses on the period of the Great Northern War, 1700-1721. In the analysis, it uses the available archaeological material from the contemporary shipwrecks and compares it with the historical documents found in the State Archives in Copenhagen. The process shows the benefits of incorporating historical sources in the archaeological research, and more importantly the need for historians to do the same. It also examines the parallels and contradictions that can be seen in the materials. As the result, out of the combination of this different types of sources a more accurate portrait of an average sailor is created. It shows his dress and equipment, and, where possible, relates to his life on board of an early 18th-century ship of the Danish-Norwegian Navy.

Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research), 2019

Seven samples from three wrecks found during excavations at Bispevika in Oslo, named Bispevika 16, Bispevika 17, and Bispevika 18, were submitted for dendrochronological analysis, to determine their date and provenance. The results are described in this report.

Excapades

This article presents the remains of three medieval ships from North Norway. The sites are clustered near the Arctic Circle, two from the islands of Husøy (Traena) and Lovund in the Helgeland region, and a potential third wreck from the small lake Fiskvågvatn in Saltdal. Available information from the wrecks is presented to provide a basis for assessing their cultural contexts and relevance to medieval maritime activities, the dried-cod (stockfish) trade in particular. The circumstances surrounding their discovery and documentation also offer insights into the history of cultural heritage management and role of community engagement in northern Norwegian shipwreck archaeology.

Danish Journal of Archaeology, 2016

New dendrochronological dates from Western Norway prompt an old question to be posed in a new way. They show that two ship burials on the island of Karmøy date from AD 780 and 790, i.e. the very beginning of the Viking Age, and are therefore the very earliest known ship graves – with one exception: Sutton Hoo. So where did the ship burial tradition originate? Sutton Hoo’s early seventh century ship burials, in large, ocean-going vessels, are often compared with the boat graves of Vendel, Valsgärde and other sites in the Lake Mälar region of Sweden, while Oseberg and the other ship burials in the Oslofjord area have traditionally been interpreted as the precursors of, and models for, the Karmøy ship graves. In this paper we aim to demonstrate that the use of ships and boats in burials was common practice around the North Sea and in the western Baltic during the Late Migration period and was introduced to eastern England with the same ‘wave’ of cultural influences that took took new forms of brooches and a new dress-code from western Norway to Anglia in the late fifth century AD. And, furthermore, that the Anglian ship graves of the early seventh century (Sutton Hoo 1 and 2) represent an elaboration of this common practice, related to political centralisation and Christianisation in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. We also suggest that this high-status, indeed royal, form of burial, i.e. actual ship graves as opposed to the much more widespread practice of burial in relative small boats, was introduced to Scandinavia from eastern England via western Norway in the eighth century, culminating in the well-known Viking Age ship graves at Oseberg, Gokstad, Tune and Ladby.

2020

Samples from three ships, found during excavations at Bispevika in Oslo, are analysed dendrochronologically. The remains have been categorised as three separate ships, Bi12a, Bi12b and Bi12c. The samples from Bi12a are from four planks and a keel. Ship Bi12b is represented by two samples, both from planks. Ship Bi12c is similarly represented by two plank samples. All the material is Quercus sp., oak. All samples are dated.