Viking Ship Museum

OsloNorway

15 May

In Norway let’s have a good old look at some stunning archaeological finds that are still providing us with valuable information today.

While we’ve caught them in the middle of a massive reno, when they reopen they’re going to be bigger and better than ever.

The Museum and the Viking Age

The Viking Ship Museum first opened in 1926, and since then it has fast become a national symbol for Norway’s cultural heritage. And the items it holds have even been major contributors to the cultural heritage of Norway and Vikings in general.

The Viking Ship Museum has on display the ships and grave goods from major ship burial sites: Oseberg, Gokstad, Tune. So the museum was born out of a need to preserve these Viking ships that were found through archaeological excavations carried out in the 19th and 20th centuries. We had the Tune ship appear in 1867, the Gokstad appear in 1880 and then the Oseberg in 1902. And almost immediately a debate swirled about where the ships would be exhibited. Something this cool couldn’t just be hidden away, but the first attempt was a pretty sad one. Initially the ships were placed in a shed in the University Garden, which, I probably don’t even have to say, did not have the conditions appropriate for such an archaeological find.

And so in June of 1914, Arnstein Arneberg, one of the most important architects in Norway in the 20th century, was given 1st prize for the design of the new Viking Ship Museum which was very appropriately titled ‘The Queen of Oseberg’.

Of course, the museum was built in several stages, with the wing that housed the Oseberg Ship being the first to open in 1926, with the Gokstad Ship wing and the Tune Ship wing not far behind opening in 1932. But completion for the Viking Ship Museum was delayed due to the war, and it actually wasn’t until 1954 that the museum would be complete with the opening of the wing that contained objects found within the Oseberg Ship.

What’s interesting about the design of the museum is that the finished product looked quite different to Arneberg’s winning design in 1914. Arneberg had designed a

square building characterised by Nordic neo-baroque with strong references to the medieval Romanesque and Gothic style.

But what we see is more like a church than a fancy manor-like building. And this church-like feel is only enhanced by the layout in the shape of a cross, the central towers, the interior vaults, and worst of all the lime-treated walls.

Although the interior is all about the ships. The halls that house the ships are spacious, with plenty of light casting plenty of shadows creating a real experience around the main feature, the ships.

In an interesting move by the Museum directors, the whole Museum was closed in September 2021 so that a major refurbishment and expansion could begin. You might be thinking this isn’t the worst idea, especially if the refurb is in the ships favour, and you would be right, except that the new Museum of the Viking Age won’t reopen until it’s complete in 2025. That’s a lot of years without visitors.

But those in the know are confident that after the reopening the new museum will be the world’s leader on anything to do with the Viking Age. Which you do have to admit is a bloody fascinating period of history. And it’s even better that we have such rich archaeological evidence for it. And it’s the new Museum’s aim to

provide a more complete picture of the entire Viking Age.

Let’s hope they can pull it off.

But we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. We’ll get into the new museum in a little bit. First we need to learn a bit more about these Vikings.

So first up, we think the Vikings were wandering around in their peak from the last half of the 8th century to the second half of the 11th century. And during that time, there seems to be a large amount of movement. People living in Norway, Sweden and Denmark seemed to have caught the travel bug and with the help of sea-going ships were taking the opportunity to explore the rest of Europe.

And it’s these very ships that we see as a definite symbol of the Viking Age. It especially seems to be a favourite motif of the Vikings themselves, appearing in their saga literature as well being carried through to modern pop culture.

Weapons of war that have been dated to the Viking Age tell of a society that were not afraid to use violence to become more powerful or gain a higher social standing. And this is where Viking raids come in. The raids offered opportunities of wealth, high status and power for those strong enough to survive the raid and walk out the other side.

While the Vikings may be thought of and portrayed as heathens sometimes, that wasn’t exactly what they were. Like the Scots they lived in a clan system but had their own ethics and morals and rules and laws that were to be followed, with consequences if they were not.

While there was a push by some to introduce Christianity into Viking society, the Viking burials tells us that it didn’t really take off.

The Vikings actually had several different ways that they buried their dead. A grave would range between a large burial mound to no grave marking at all. Much like our modern burial practices, the dead could either be cremated with burial gifts and the ashes placed in a grave, or they could be buried with burial gifts unburned. These burial gifts may have included some animals, more often horses, to aid the dead in the afterlife.

As we can see by the main stars of the museum, some were placed within a boat or ship and then the whole ship was buried, this ship again was believed to help the deceased in their afterlife journey. But that is how we find ourselves with the ships that are displayed at the Museum of the Viking Age.

The Oseberg

At the museum you can see four ships on display that continue to capture the world’s imagination: the Oseberg, Gokstad, Tune and Borre, but today we’ll only be looking at the first three.

The Oseberg Ship was found outside Tønsberg, about a 100 km south of Oslo, in 1904 and the archaeologists who exposed the find were smitten from day one.

It all started when a farmer named Oskar Rom had dug into a large burial mound on his property and found a ship. Oskar visited an archaeologist that went by Gabriel Gustafson who started his investigations into the burial mound only two days later. Sounds like Gustafson was keen.

Gustafson seemed to have hit the jackpot. He was pulling up all sorts of ship parts, most of them with decorations indicative of a Viking find. And he was convinced that the mound was a Viking ship burial. But because of the changing weather, what was an archaeological team by this point, had to wait for the calmer conditions of the following summer before they could really dig their way into the mound.

The excavation work itself only look about three months, and then the real work began, and it must have been a mountain to get through because it took a good 21 years to restore the ship to a state that meant it could go on display. The ship’s wood needed to be dried out very slowly before it was able to be put back together, and in order to restore the ship to its former glory, those in charge made an important effort to only use the original timber where possible. And they must have a done a bloody good job of it because now 90% of the Oseberg ship is made up of the original timber. Very impressive.

As we already know, Viking Ship burials, like the Oseberg, are funerary burials, and throughout the excavation it was discovered that the Oseberg was the burial of two women. It’s believed that the two women died in 834 and that they held a significant standing in society based off the lavish textiles that were found with them. Inside the burial chamber in the ship the two deceased had everything they would need to live a comfortable afterlife including:

clothes, ship’s equipment, kitchen utensils, farm tools, sleighs, carved animal heads, beds, tents, 15 horses, 6 dogs and 2 cows.

Now while we don’t exactly know who these women were or what they did to deserve such an important burial, we do know that they were important otherwise they wouldn’t have been buried with so many grave gifts, nor would they have been buried inside of a ship that literally would have had to have been dragged from the water. So a lot of effort was put into this.

Now if we turn our attention to the Oseberg Ship itself, we find that it is actually quite extensively decorated. Both the prow and stern are carved with animal figures which oddly enough extend below the waterline. Which does suggest, with its ornate carvings, that it was reserved for someone who held a special ranking in Viking society. While it’s not uncommon for the names of those who used to hold high-ranking titles to be lost to us, it does highlight just how much isn’t told to us from the past. There are so many people who were probably very important in their society, who did great things, but if they’re deeds and names weren’t written down or passed down through word of mouth in the form of stories, then their life and achievements have been lost to us here in the future. It really makes you think about how insignificant everything can be at the end of the day.

But enough about that, back to the ship. So the Oseberg can be both rowed or sailed through the use of its mast. What’s interesting about the oars that were found on the ship is that they show no sign of wear or tear, so it’s unlikely they were used for war and could have been made specially for this burial.

Made of oak, it’s believed the ship was built in the southwest of Norway possibly around 820, so it definitely would have been in use as a typical ship for a good 15 years before serving as a unique coffin.

Now I can’t possibly go through everything found upon the Oseberg Ship throughout the excavation as that would take forever, there’s so much of it and it’s all absolutely fascinating. So I encourage you to check out the extensive resources on the Viking Ship Museum website. But the sheer amount of intricate designs found carved into objects does strongly suggest the high status of the women found. It’s just unfortunate that we’ll never fully know who they were to their own society. But through research and study of the objects found with them we may gain a little understanding.

While we know it took 21 years for the ship to be restored, the Saving Oseberg Project is an ongoing project that

documents the wooden artefacts from the Oseberg find and investigates possible conservation strategies to re-treat and preserve this iconic heritage for the future.

So who knows, perhaps there’s more to come from the old Oseberg.

The Gokstad

The Gokstad ship was found by two bored teenagers who were digging into a mound in 1879, and they sure did find something. The mound they were digging into was a fairly large mound by burial mound standards and was actually known as ‘the King’s Mound’. An antiquarian out of the University of Oslo’s Collection of National Antiquities heard what was happening and in 1880 he got over to Gokstad (the location of the mound) to begin the excavation.

It's believed that the Gokstad Ship was built around 890, which would have meant the Viking Age was properly underway. A flexible ship, the Gokstad is ideal for fast sailing. Much like the Oseberg, the Gokstad could be sailed and rowed, but the build of the ship tells us that it was probably used in journeys of discovery or trading or even the treacherous Viking raids. Again made primarily of oak, the thickness of the ship is a little thinner than that of the Oseberg which lends itself to the theory of this ship being lighter and therefore faster.

As the ship was being excavated, 32 shields were found on each side of the boat, painted in brilliant colours. Unfortunately, both the posts at the bow and stern had rotted away so there’s no telling how those were decorated.

It’s believed the Gokstad was interred around 900, and the bloke buried within it to be a rich and powerful man, but again names and deeds elude us this far into the future. But the reason we believe him to be rich comes down to the quality of those grave goods found with him, especially the cloth and tapestries, with gold thread believed to have been interwoven with silk. Now that is quite fancy even in today’s standards.

But we do know a little bit more about how the bloke died based off the injuries to his body. Looking to be in his 40s and strongly built, there are clear cutting blows to both of his legs, indicating that he possibly died in battle, which we know was common for the raiding Vikings. So while we don’t know if this guy was leading the battle or was just apart of it, the magnificence of his burial does indicate that he was at least thought well of, or had enough money to buy people to think well of him.

And why do we think of him as rich? Because of what has been found with him. While he was probably buried with many weapons and jewels that have long since disappeared thanks to the help of grave robbers, there are many things that obviously didn’t mean a lot to them but can tell us a lot, like:

a gaming board with counters of horn, fish-hooks and harness fittings make of iron, lead and gilded bronze, 64 shields, kitchen utensils, six beds, one tent, a sleigh and three small boats.

Now I’m not sure what this guy planned to do with 6 beds in the afterlife, but I think the clear indication of his wealth or social standing is in the fact that he was buried with three smaller boats. Not to mention the animals that went along for the ride, 12 horses, 8 dogs, 2 goshawks and 2 peacocks were also found. But it’s the peacocks that tell us a lot just with their presence. Peacocks are not native to Norway, meaning that the bloke buried in the Gokstad had some international ties. They could have been a gift from another ruler, or perhaps they were brought back as trophies, we’ll never know, but it does open our eyes to the possible wide-wanderings of the Vikings.

Much like the Oseberg, after exacavation was complete the Gokstad was restored. In this instance that meant dismantling the ship ever so carefully, steaming and bending each wooden piece back into shape, as it had been in a bad way thanks to hundreds of years underground. Unfortunately though, there was a fair bit of original timber that was in too poor a condition to be treated, and so these bits had to be replaced with new timber, which, because of the colour difference, is actually quite easy to tell which parts are new and which parts are original.

The Tune

The Tune Ship was found in 1867 on a farm belonging to Nedre Haugen on an island in southern Norway known as Rolvsøy, making it the first Viking Ship to be excavated.

Made from oak all the way back in 910, archaeologists found the remains of a man in amongst the ship when excavating, along with 3 horses and the remains of several burial gifts, grave robbers had gotten there first so we only know that there were burial gifts from the remains left behind. While we don’t know who this guy was it’s because of his ship burial that leads us to conclude that he must have been a person of importance.

What’s really interesting here is that the items found with the ship

included a die, 2 beads, cloth remnants, parts of a ski, the remains of a saddle and a few carved pieces of wood of unknown purpose.

And we know they were found with the burial because they were included in the excavation notes. But mysteriously all the objects disappeared. Because back then the excavation techniques were not quite to the standard they are now, these objects never actually made it to the museum, so somewhere out there someone has a die that they’re going around telling people was given to their great-great-grandparent from a Viking Ship and there’s everyone else telling them ‘Yeah, sure, why not!’, but it might just be the truth.

It was actually a Professor Oluf Rygh who was supposedly in charge of the excavation, which surprisingly only lasted about two weeks. That’s not very long to excavate anything properly. And indeed it wasn’t, the workers worked so quickly that they damaged the remains of the ship in the process. You can actually see marks from the spades they used in several places around the ship.

The Tune ship would probably have been the fasted out of the three ships we’re having a peak at. The people in the know think it was probably used to move people quickly around from here to there. And this theory is supported by the fact that even though it’s smaller than the Gokstad and the Oseberg ships, its mast has extra support for supposedly a super large sail. But oddly enough for something that may have moved people about it couldn’t carry that much in terms of cargo, so really it’s anyone’s informed guess.

Conservation – Saving Oseberg

Over the years we have learnt so much about the Vikings and the Viking Age, and yet there is still so much left to learn. And that is where the Viking Ships come in. By preserving and conserving these finds and objects we can learn more about the importance of cultural heritage in terms of the Vikings.

One such project is Saving Oseberg, launched in 2014 it’s a project dedicated to documenting the many artefacts found with the Oseberg Ship. The project initially would build upon the findings by the Museum of Cultural History’s Alum Research Project, but it also investigates conservation techniques and strategies to preserve the artefacts for future generations.

Thanks to conservation methods used when the ship was first uncovered, the artefacts are today in a pretty sorry state. Immediately after the excavation in 1904, the wooden objects that were deteriorating were treated with alum salts. This turned out to not be the best thing long term, as the treatment has done more harm than good in terms of preservation and new techniques are having to be developed so that the objects can be stabilised and strengthened so that they last as long as possible.

Due to the burial conditions of the Oseberg a lot of the wood was waterlogged, which led to the wood needing to be dried that we mentioned earlier. But some pieces were in such a bad way that they were literally falling apart and were badly deteriorated, and so the water had to be removed from the wood to avoid it degrading any further.

Interestingly the best preserved pieces were those made of oak, ash and pine, like most of the ship itself, and drying out these bits were pretty easy, really all they needed was time to airdry. But other bits, mainly the maple and birch wood that was found in some of the burial goods, were in quite a bad way and airdrying them would just lead to them degrading further than they already were. And so the alum treatment method was introduced.

Now at the time the excavation and conservation was being carried out, so early 20th century, our understanding and methods for treating wet wood was fairly limited. We weren’t that great at it. But one method was developed in Denmark in the mid-1800s and must have done something good because it was still in use in the 1950s, and that was the alum conservation method. And it was used to treat about 200 objects found with the Oseberg ship.

But what is so bad about the alum method? If it’s done the job of stopping the deterioration of the wood pieces then surely it’s done its job well? Well my dear Destination Historian that is exactly what it has only about half done.

So the alum method involved immersing the wooden piece to be conserved in a concentrated solution of alum, which for those not in the know is potassium aluminium sulphate. Then the fluid with the wooden piece would be heated to about 90°C which would make the solution more soluble allowing the solution to penetrate into the wood replacing the water that had caused the issue in the first place. The recrystallisation of the alum solution provided support to the wood therefore reducing any shrinkage as the piece dried. Boom, problem solved.

Except, it wasn’t. The alum solution just wasn’t able to penetrate deep enough into the wood, meaning that while the surface wood looked all fine, there was still deterioration taking place on the inside due to the water still sitting there.

And here’s the real big issue, after the pieces of wood that had been treated with the alum solution had dried, they were then coated with a layer of linseed oil, then once all the parts of an object were screwed back together the whole thing would then be coated in a couple layers of lacquer and then with an artificial resin, so they really weren’t going anywhere.

And herein lies the problem. How do the conservationists get through the layer of resin, the layers of lacquer, the layer of linseed oil and the alum treated surface in order to access and dry out the water in the middle of the wooden piece? Now that’s a thinker.

By the 1990s damage was starting to be seen. The weaker inner part of the wood was starting to deteriorate to a point where the outer hardened part just couldn’t hold the extra weight, and damage could be seen from the outside. The structure could no longer be supported, especially for the parts on the Oseberg ship itself. The alum-treatment hadn’t worked.

But, these damaged parts are incredibly important and so all efforts were then focused on how to re-conserve the pieces in need.

Of course this kind of work needs proper understanding of the degradation of wood and its behaviour, and with only contemporary written sources to work from, a more thorough understanding was needed in order to help in any meaningful way. Enter the research currently being carried out on archaeological wood, with studies from the Pisa Project in Italy, the Vasa Project in Sweden and quality information coming out of Denmark on the composition of wood after it’s degraded. Sounds fascinating.

The only issue is that the parts treated from the Oseberg were treated quite a bit differently than these other projects studied, and they were treated so extensively, you remember the ridiculous layering, that to take them back to bare wood would undoubtedly cause irreversible damage. Not to mention that almost the whole ship has all these beautiful and complex carvings, which really just can’t be risked. And so the search continues for a way to prevent any further decay.

Conservation – Gokstad Revitalised

But the Oseberg isn’t the only ship with some constant conservation going on. The Gokstad is also under a close watch. And what’s interesting is that this ship was never actually properly investigated, and that’s what Gokstad Revitalised is all about.

[It’s] a comprehensive research project [that aims to] bring out and analyse its unexplored knowledge potential and make it available to the public.

Free knowledge. My favourite kind.

So when Nicolaysen excavated the ship he very very briefly published what he found in 1882, but it wasn’t really much more than just a catalogue of what hadn’t been looted by grave robbers through the centuries. With such little understanding and information coming out of the excavation, and with the methods back then, Gokstad finds were spread out across a couple museums, the research project focused on discovering as much as they could about everything Gokstad. They narrowed their focus to the ship and the man buried in the ship in the hopes of possibly identifying him as well as the continual excavation of the old site, conservation of the pieces found and of course publication of their findings.

And in 1993 something brilliant happened. Through the art of dendrochronology, the Gokstad Ship was able to be dated to the last decade of the 9th century and the burial was able to be dated to the first decade of the 10th century. It’s pretty amazing that they can narrow something like this to just 10 years. The bones of the man found in the Gokstad ship, which had been reinterred in the burial mound in 1928, were removed and taken to the University of Oslo for further research and more appropriate storage.

Another branch of research that is being looked into more thoroughly is the area around where the Gokstad ship was excavated. The site has proven in the past to be quite rich in contemporary structures and this only provides more information and understanding when studied in length. So it might be a bit odd to learn that the area has never been properly investigated, neither has the burial mound where the ship was found been fully investigated as a whole. Here’s what they’re planning to do:

[Focus] on understanding the context in which the Gokstad burial was created and used, Gokstad Revitalised combines a historical and landscape archaeological approach with detailed studies of the local surroundings, the burial structure, the burial goods and the deceased itself.

How astonishing, just imagine what treasures and insights into the past could lay in our future.

And they may not be that far in the future. There have been some great strides in understanding the man who was buried, including associated projects that use all sorts of scientific methods including DNA analysis and dendrochronology dating. I don’t know about you but I’m sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for those final findings to be published.

While it’s fun to research and study these individual items and burials we need to remember the bigger part they play in the cultural heritage of the Viking Age and wider Norway and understand the importance of keeping them safe and preserved for future generations, so that they can understand their cultural heritage.

A massive step that has helped this forward is the introduction of 3D scanning. It’s pretty cool to see, experience and potentially study something in 3D, especially when that item may not be in a stable state for handling. We’ll have to keep our ears peeled for any information that has come from these new and, let’s face it, futuristic techniques.

Visiting

So after 95 years with its doors open, the Viking Ship Museum is closed for renovation. While this closure may be a bit annoying, especially if you visited Norway during the closure, I think in the long term it’s pretty important to make sure that the items are housed in an environment that ensures their longevity, and that’s what they tell us this new museum will do. So fingers’ crossed we get to see everything in tip top shape when the Museum of the Viking Age reopens in 2025 or 2026 depending on how bad the delays from the pandemic put them behind.

So not only will the new museum display the Viking ships they already do, but they’re going to have an exhibit that focuses on

the world’s foremost collection of objects from the Viking Age.

Which is pretty amazing because I know for a fact that the old museum had over 500 000 objects all related to the Viking Age just sitting around in storage. So that means that when the new museum opens you’ll be able to walk among more than 4000 of these objects that will be all tied together with pretty awesome experiences.

And let’s not get started on the sharing of the ground-breaking discoveries their scientists are making and how this could impact and change the cultural understanding.

And the new museum will be three times the size of the old one, meaning more room for awesomely exciting exhibits, and that’s not even mentioning the restaurant, lecture hall, park, school group facilities, a lab that has public access, a research centre, and of course the most important of them all, the gift shop.

Oh yes, I can’t wait.

So I guess that means keep your eyes out for an I Digress episode coming to your ears in a couple years’ time that will give you a low down of what to expect when you visit the new Museum of the Viking Age.