The Oseberg: The 1,000-Year-Old Viking Ship Of The Dead | The Lost Realm

[Music] a mysterious mou folklore and Legend a fortune teller's words come true a sight unseen in centuries the greatest icon of the Viking age it is definitely the symbol of the Viking age a vessel on its final voyage a ship of beauty a ship of the Dead they clearly belong in the grave this was their place to be a story of Ingenuity of one of the greatest excavations in Viking archaeology the two women of osab are a mystery in every sense and the discovery of the most stunning and intriguing grave ship ever yet discovered the mysteries of the oer from the late 8th to the mid 11th centuries the Scandinavian peoples burst from their Frontiers almost wherever the Seas could take them through archaeology now we can explore the world of Viking Life by understanding the realm of the Viking dead strange blow history's winds at times down the centuries there is so much about the Vikings that we can't really understand all we are left are traces and shades the full spectrum so far Remains unrevealed by time and the Earth what is left to us from those times and those people is usually connected with death the time when the living marked the passing of the dead into the next World and for us into the archaeological record this is the story of an incredible burial and of individuals whose lives and importance we can only wander at from the fragments which remain of their passing into that next world one of my specialist Fields is the Viking Way of death I'm really interested in how and why they deal with mortality ultar is the most spectacular Viking burial ever found that's not just a sort of empty superlative it's it's literally true or or usur was the name given to the beautiful ship buried with its amazing inly well preserved cargo more than a thousand years ago it was discovered at the dawn of the 20th century the excavation was one of the first worldwide archaeological Sensations and this almost two decades before Howard Carter opened tutin carman's tomb one of the most famous excavations of the 20th century and now we know it as a a nationally important symbol of the whole of Norway and inter it's like famous around the world it is the iconic Viking ship whenever we see Viking ships we see a some sort of representation of this ship the osberg boat with its distinct serpent stem head was raised from the ground in the summer of 1904 anerobic conditions in the grave meant that very unusually organic objects were incredibly well preserved there were staggering find of hundreds of objects wood bone leather and even textiles yet amid all this in the whole ship there were found just two human skeletons of two women The Remains were proclaimed those of the 11th century Norwegian Queen Ursa and her servant or slave Norway had its legendary Queen Reborn in the new 20th century and the ship it was a number of years before the ship was carefully conserved and finally reconstructed it became known as the [Music] [Applause] urberg it's the first time archaeologist Tim sand has seen the ulberg boat at firsthand it isn't beautiful thing what a stunning ship the boat is 21 1/2 M long and just over 5 m Broad and made almost entirely from Oak it is breathtaking absolutely stunning the size and the scale of it it's immense and in a building like this it just suits it so nicely because it was made for the ship in fact the museum was specially designed to house the usur and its fellow grave ship the Gad for decades archaeologists focused on the amazing preservation of the ship and the artifacts the skeletons of the two women by comparison were all but forgotten after they were measured and recorded little more could be done with them but they were supposedly Norwegian Royals however ancient ient so they were reburied there had never been any proof that the bones were those of Queen Ura and so the evidence gone the greatest mystery of the osberg went uninvestigated who were the two women why were they buried so grandly were they a queen and her servant were they both of royal blood or were they something else in the early 21st century mov were made to reexamine some of these questions Norwegian archaeologists and osteologists Revisited the story of the urberg and of the bones tonsberg archaeologist terer gonome was instrumental in reopening the investigation he and everyone else wanted to find out more about the two mysterious women was is very hard to understand and things that are hard to understand can easily be mythical and of course it's intriguing in 2007 the skeletons were disinterred in the hope that modern science could reveal something more about the two individuals good morning ladies Ellen Marie Ness is the curator of the osberg exhibits in oslo's Viking ship Museum so here they are the two ladies who were buried inside that ship and I think it's it's so amazing that they're here that we can see them that we can study them that we have them the skeletons were forensically reexamined to confirm their sex and as far as possible their age at the time of death and this one is the older one and she managed to be incredible old when she died perhaps around 80 and a younger one young lady around 50 or 60 good ages though for that period absolutely but you know it's better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick there are also so many things to learn from from the bones the two women had certainly lived long lives relative to the times dendro chronology of the ship's Timbers suggested the burial had taken place around the Autumn of 834 ad this meant that they had both been born prior to what we now consider the start of the Viking age around 793 ad the two skeletons were incomplete but from what remained it was found that both had survived various injuries and ailments in their lives but there was nothing to confirm what had killed either individual although it was found that the older woman had suffered for some time with cancer analysis of the Isotopes contained within their tooth enamel revealed that one of the women was probably scandin avian in origin or descent while the other the older may have descended from further east possibly though not certainly from the region we now know as Iran the story of the excavation to raise the osberg is also intriguing Tim travels south from Oslo to see for himself the mysterious mound in which the ship burial rested for more than a millennium Thornburg is reputedly the oldest town in Norway Bora not far away seems to have been an area for Royal burials numerous Mounds have been found here but the urberg mound is on its own well away from here and not in any known burial ground because very few have perhaps that's why for so long it lay untouched now you see the valley right you have the church straight in front of you yeah and it slopes down on both sides yeah there it is and there it is Tim's being shown around by local tburg historian Tor hin he studied the story of the burials Discovery and the archaeological dig which followed it's a strange tale with its own blend of myth folklore and Superstition the mound itself isn't exactly hidden but nor is it in a prominent position in the broad shallow Valley it's low down tucked away by a small Winding Creek what a bizarre place to put a burial mound yes when you've got so many sort of high places that outcrops of rock and things all the way around you know if you wanted to do something out of the way you could or more prominent you put them on the higher ground the mound remained intact and half forgotten for centuries after the Vikings such places were suspected to contain ancient burials that later generations were wary of digging into them lest dire consequences should befall them everybody thought that this was a burial site from the Black Plague if you started to dig in it you would dig up the pest and of course all of Norway would die again fear of the medieval pestilence meant that the mound remained undisturbed until almost the end of the 19th century then in the late uh late 1800s there comes a farmer johannas Hansen little is known about Hansen he moved to tburg to farm the rich land here yet like his four bears in the Viking age he was it seems no stranger to the Sea he was not only a farmer he was also a seaman sailor and he used for periods of time to travel to uh the United States to to be Skipper on a barge on the river in in in New York City hansome was a pilot guiding the great sailing boats on the Hudson River and like many sailors of all eras he was superstitious like many others he was um he was visiting a fortune teller there yeah the fortune teller asked Hansen why on Earth he'd come to New York when the fortune he sought was back home on his farm in Norway in the mysterious Mound the supposed plague burial so he went back home and he started trying to dig a little bit and he used uh a long iron rod and EV all that came out was some yellow stinking water which of course made the the local population say that yeah what have we told you we told you so stop doing it this is the black PL you stop doing this whether or not it had to do with the foul effluent from the mound Hansen soon after caught sick and died the stage was then set for the next important character in the story around the year 1900 a man named Oscar Rome purchased the farm it's not known if he did so because of the mound and its stories he buys the farm he must have had a hunch because he started systematically to excavate the mount ah and in the summer of 1903 on Friday uh the 7th of August in 1903 he comes home to his family drenched in in clay and very dirty but very happy because he has with him a piece of wood with intricate carvings on it so far as anyone can be sure this piece of wood was the first fragment recovered from the burial beneath the mound Rome could have no clue exactly what it was yet but it was a sample of what was yet to come he had to try and gain the interest of Norway's top archaeologist and he didn't waste any time and the next day which was a very extremely hot August day in 1903 he takes the steamboat into Christiania as Oso was called at that time and he walks the short way from the keyside up through the relatively newb built cultural Institute and he walks in and there sits Professor Gabriel Gustafson Gustafson was actually Swedish he was already well respected in oslo's cultural Institute but he could have no idea that what Oscar Rome brought him that warm day would lead to him becoming one of the most celebrated archaeologists in the world this farmer Oscar comes in and says I think I have found something very interesting on my property and then Oscar takes out the piece of wood and shows it to him and then the professor came to life [Music] Gustafson was [Music] hooked the very next day his birthday he traveled to see the mound for himself and that process was set in motion the usur boat and its silent passengers would be revealed news of the urg and its Treasures spread far and wide as word got out among archaeologists and people people interested in Viking history archaeology itself was changing at the time from the leisurely pursuit of amateur antiquarians to something more scientific it's because of this that there are other Treasures from the osberg which help now to tell the story of this incredible big to see for himself Tim heads to the cultural Institute where Professor Gustafson worked here in the The Vault are the Dig archives from the excavation they're almost as important as the artifacts and the ship itself um this is uh the documentation from the excavation uh at USG in 1904 this is Gustav son's Diaries and this is his sketchbooks Anna britz helverson is the archist in charge of this unique Trove in Norway's archaeological Heritage so these are his day-to-day thoughts and what he was doing and what his plans might be yes it is contained in the notes are traces of the character of an archaeologist who perhaps knew he was working on the most important dig of his life you can see that he has just grabbed the book because it's uh sometimes upside down and so but he dates every and of course this is exactly what we do today uh a lot of it is now done digitally so it's fantastic that these still exist and it's how how he carried out the excavation this is presumably the excavation trench so it's 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 yeah and also inside the ship so it's 9 10 11 so we cut it into sections yes and excavated A1 2 yeah and vertically as well and it's it's not that different to the way we would do it today but obviously now we have modern techniques and digital instruments yes but he used this is quite a modern techniques actually U writing it all down having it uh having artists uh drawing I think what's really important about this is that this this these are the first days the first minutes of the excavations and of course this went on to be a a national nationally important site so is this where all this took place yes this uh building was uh actually quite new in 1904 they just opened uh for the public these are the very same officers where the professor was dozing that afternoon hardly expecting what was to happen over the next weeks and months and of course it was initially a something brought in by a farmer it was it was something that could have been something and nothing but it turned into something massive something nationally important yeah this is very important because this is what the farmer Oscar room uh this is the wooden piece that he brought to gustavson here at his office you can just imagine it it's a hot day he's waiting to go home and somebody comes into the office with a piece of wood that's potentially going to change his life and little does he know what it's going to turn into but that was the day that literally changed his life his eyes must have opened and he goes ah okay yeah this is this is quite important I have to check this out it started with one piece of wood but it turned out to be something that is now iconic absolutely more than a 100 years after the excavation the usur still has a major International appeal many of the artifacts too are now displayed here in the Viking ship Museum there are so many though that even more are kept in store for some items the conservation process is still going on it's fascinating to compare some of these pieces with the drawings in the Dig archive perhaps most of all the carved piece of wood that first aroused gustafson's curiosity it's actually the very top of one of the user's distinctive serpent stem heads in fact the artifacts are dominated by animal imagery among the most striking are four figureheads they're carved from wood in incredible detail each one different leopards lizards or a dragon's head like the serpent stem heads of the ship itself they're famous and almost everywhere you look in the imagery and lore of the Viking age what makes the osberg artifact so special is that the vast majority of them are of organic material mostly wood bone or textiles it's very rare that these kinds of materials survive so long in the grave something we tend to forget when we we think of the Viking concept of value is textiles textiles are very very time consuming to make other kinds of materials particularly silk um very expensive and we know from some of the the burials of the Viking age that really really flashy clothing covered in silk um lots of different colors and textures things that would catch the Light when you're in a a firet hall clothes that would Shimmer and glow um that is another kind of wealth and a very important one as well as the boat itself the dead were provided also with other means of Transport there are several sleds and the largest item a large wooden cart maybe the two women advanced in years or too sick or infirm to walk used these in life again everything is ornately carved and on the cart is depicted the goddess Freya who it said also had a carriage pulled by cats the many animal carvings the goddess imagery did the women have a spiritual or Shaman likee importance Beyond conventional status through wealth there's a lot of there that equipment that is not easy to explain because it's a lot of things is not just functional they're quite symbolic and you have um a lot of things preserved that that we haven't seen before and of course it's intriguing when two women have all this equipment and it's placed in the landscape and it's hard to to try to to compare it with other finds because it's Unique as well as the sketches that were made many of these artifacts were also recorded in a different way one that in 1905 was a technology very new to archaeology photography had been around for over half a century but it was only really now that cameras were becoming practical enough to use as a means of accurate documentary recording photographs were taken during the excavation they not only record the event for us now they're glimpses of a lost world and of some of the first modern archaeologists so what we're looking at is some of the photos that they took at excavation and back then in 194 it was really something to spend so much resources on taking photos that's the remains of the the bual chamber the stering or the prow is a wonderful quality and it tells us so much they're black and white large format slides so they contain a huge amount of detail you can also see that the the scale of it I mean that's a huge Mound it's very deep hole it's in and they've not taken hole M away they've just dug a hole into the into the middle of it haven't they that's why it's so nice when it has some people on the photos because it gives an idea of the of the size yeah there is a lot to see in it I mean there's obviously the ship but the there's there's the cut of the excavation and there's all the tools and the people and all sorts of things lying around it's it's a really good story about what's actually happening there and what's what's really amazing is you can see the conservation here I mean you can see the of the ship and you see all the carving down it there and it it just looks like like it looks now it's unbelievable state of preservation being able to see the famous artifacts just as they were Unearthed and before they were lifted gives valuable insight for archaeologists they also took some pictures of work in progress like this mess and when you look at that closely you can see what you see it's actually one of the animal poles yeah but today we take hundreds of pictures every day and just snapshots of everything but back then every picture had had a price yeah and and every every picture took a long time to take you didn't just walk up take it and walk away you took a long time to prepare it and it's so valuable for us today photographs of the Dig and the artifacts went around the world but while people marveled at the grave goods and the ship the sight of the excavation the mound itself was forgotten teria Gom has been intrigued by the usur burial since childhood he studied gustafson's archive more than anyone but it's not just the amount of records that gustavson kept it's the kind of things he recorded that terier found so useful Guston was very into having a biologist along GE ologist was also there and a lot of different fields of expertise were collaborating here that's very forward thinking for his time then isn't it yeah and we should be very grateful that it was the Swedish gustavson who actually did the excavation and he was a lot more advanced than the Norwegian archaeologist used to be Gustafson had trained at Upsala University and he gained a wealth of experience at Excavating many Viking age sites in Sweden where he'd learn new techniques so it's Lucky Strike that he he was the man very fortunate yeah the data collected by Gustafson was so comprehensive that in conjunction with the new work done on the bones tedia was able to interpret the funeral in which the nameless women were laid to rest we saw that we could divide the stages of the building process into several phases and actually one of the phases ended up with a um interpretation that half of the mound was built um incorporating the ship and the ship was standing out from that that mountain and that is actually the ritual scene Tera believes the osberg ship was half buried like this the front part of the Mound deliberately left open with the for ship exposed to the elements and visible to the living and it's in that for ship all the offerings and the rituals took place the bodies of the women were probably laid in a chamber or bed that might also have been left partly or completely open almost like a state funeral perhaps for people to view the bodies or pay their respect the mound stayed half open like this for some time perhaps half a year they know this because of seed samples of flowers collected by gustafson's biologist those from the front part of the Grave were of a different season to those in the enclosed rear part and now we can study the archaeology of the archaeology and it's by having notes like this you can actually do this otherwise we wouldn't have a clue would we really no we had to just settle with artifacts and uh treat the mound as a container but now we can see that the the mound is a construction very much linked to all the action taking place whether they took place in one great ceremony or several over the most part of a year the funeral rights must have been impressive every Viking funeral was different we can classify them into groups so you have boat burials or what we call chamber Graves they're kind of little underground rooms where you put the dead sometimes seated in chairs but when you go inside those Graves what they actually do for just this dead person on this occasion in this place is always individual if you look at the objects what they do with them where are they placed in the grave how sometimes you can get a sequence of actions um you can reconstruct how that grave was made and then with our imaginations and sometimes from written sources as well you can fill in the blanks of what was going on were they talking were they singing was it at night um some of the graves you you find evidence for big bonfires and things um some written descriptions we have eyewitness accounts of Viking funerals are at night the effects of Fire Light in darkness can be very dramatic as well as the Myriad objects decorations and implements many animals were also consigned to the osberg Grave the noises sights and smells must have been intense it's hard for us to imagine the impact of all of this on those who were taking part there are whole worlds of belief and and shades of belief different people thinking different things just as at our funerals you know did do you love the dead person did you hate them um is it an act of Duty you know looking at your watch the Vikings did that too but they did it in different ways to us and how people view death how they construct death because these funerals are deliberate they can tell us a lot about how they viewed life and that's what interest me if the wealth of the rituals and the value of the offerings reflect the individuals then we can assume the two women were of high status but in what way a queen and her servant or slave as the Norwegians decided after the excavation if you really look into forensic and archaeology there is nothing different between those other than age and of course it could be mother and daughter we can't tell because the DNA doesn't give us any real answers yet so actually I I really don't know know uh how to decide which position in the society these two women had where of course they are on the highest level of society but what kind of role do they play I'm not sure but they might be connected to rituals and to religion they might be connected to the to the aristocracy but in What proportion these different roles are mixed I'm not certain still a mystery the two women of osani are a mystery in every sense personally I think the most important thing is that the grave is that of women um this itself tells us something about who they were and how they were regarded in society we know very little about women at the highest levels of Viking Society the word Queen might not even be accurate we can't really say if if the burial are about secular or religious power uh there have been theories on both of them both uh the queen Theory and the the more sorcerous uh theories but I think that one thing that we tend to do in modern society that we separate the secular and the religious spheres of society uh but I don't think that that necessarily was the case in the wking age and and that secular and religious power were really connected to to separate them I think it will probably be wrong the women were clearly special to the people who buried them but perhaps Beyond royalty alone as we would understand it now there's something more religious shamanic even suggest Ed by the animistic imagery of the artifacts and even of the serpent stem heads of the ship itself at first there was a theory that the osberg might only have been built for the grave yet dendro chronology revealed it had been built many miles away in another part of Norway and it had probably sailed for more than a decade so where did it all start then we really wanted to take back our heritage and that's how the idea of building and archaeological replica of the osberg ship came about the Saga usur was begun in 2010 and took two years to build here on the key side in tburg so how important do you feel it is for Norway to have a really good replica of the oor ship I think it's very important and for several kinds of reasons and we have learned a lot on how they really constructed white kingships how they were built and also I mean our own pride in our history and knowledge of the history that has gotten quite a boost as well so that's fantastic the alberg ship is a symbol of almost Vikings everywhere the king and queen of Norway were present at the launch and the replica now sails the F and sea just like its forbear more than a thousand years ago yeah you can actually we're about we're about 10 m from here and the first thing that strikes you is not just the visual appearance but also the smell it's a very pey sort earthy smell and it's uh it's wonderful it's it's fantastic is it is it okay if we go on board yeah we my guest excellent thanks very much UL flaton is the Saga usur Skipper prepare for the time machine stepping 1200 years back in time that'll do me that'll do me very stable isn't it I mean it's such a huge ship and it's a lot broader than I thought you really get a sense of how wide it is yeah it's gorgeous it is it's a beautiful smell but you can imagine why it smells because it's it's all the wood the different Timbers the ropes all the tar and and originally all all the rigging and the canvas or what was made of but sheep's wool wouldn't it yeah the original sale it's fantastic absolutely fantastic it's almost unbelievable you know standing here on a on a perfect replica of the urg ship even down to the the detail in the uh in the figure head and it's stunningly beautiful all around the world whenever you see stories of Vikings you see that figure head up there don't you it's an exact replica of the original not only in its overall structure every stake and plank was carefully copied right down to the smallest detail including the ship's many intricate carvings these two have been preserved leaving some interesting clues about the boat and the women who were buried but also might have sailed aboard it the DNA analysis of the older woman revealed that it was possible she'd suffered a condition which gave her masculine traits in later life including maybe facial hair 1200 years ago this was a burial ship and uh a border ship was two women one of them was around 80 years old she was walking like this and she had a disease uh which made her quite uh male she had very deep voice and a beard I I see you not the most beautiful of women then but I think quite powerful powerful possibly yeah yeah yeah and we think that this woman is the owner of the ship you see it's a woman uh yes and you see she has a has a beard beard yeah so maybe maybe that's that's her then that's her we know In some cultures powerful women were sometimes depicted with a beard to appear more masculine so it could be symbolic or it could just be coincidence and and in a a prominent place as well on the prow yeah fac facing the crew so definitely a an important image absolutely some of the carvings were much more personal and a real bonus for archaeologists to discover on the original I will show you something because you won't see this at the original because it's well hidden so wow this that's original yeah that's original that's that's a copy of the original carving yeah that's wiing graffiti but it's not just any old graffiti is that is without a doubt this ship yeah so somebody's drawn a picture of this ship on the one the planks of this ship yeah that is unbelievable H it's maybe they had some spare time and had to do something or maybe it's a ritual we don't know it's almost as if they're doodling just sketching and had time to spare that's really really nice I like that and that's without a doubt isn't it I mean you can tell the way all the lines are drawn that's is definitely this proud I show you one more thing yeah yeah better than that maybe maybe on some excavated boats carvings have been found perhaps by the builders or members of the crew of the outline of a hand or a foot almost like a signature I told you the owner of this ship was quite a small lady and here oh look at that here we have a carving of a foot and it's quite a small foot The Carving is comparable in size to leather shoes from the grave which show signs of having been used before the burial there are some sites in especially in Scotland for example they they apply uh carvings of feet yeah to quite significant places yeah that would be so nice to think that that was her fault wouldn't it it would one of the greatest Mysteries of the osberg burial beyond the ship the artifacts and the skeletons is where it was commended to the ground this part of Norway isn't remote or a Wilderness in the Viking age it was much the same as it is now just Farmland so you don't know why the mound is there no at all no it's no roads there we can can't connect it to any communication route and that is the most obvious thing with other Rich gray mounts yeah uh and it's not directly linked to a farm it's like a black hole Yeah we have tried a lot of different angles and methods but to be honest I really don't know how on Earth they chose that place you can say that the mound is Monument but it is put in an anti Monumental Place yeah lowest part in the valley not visible from very many places from that Valley archaeology showed the boats had been dragged over land to this spot the timber they had used to do this was still beneath the Keel so it's an active Choice putting it down in that Valley but we can't really know why so it may be that something that is under even the modern the what's left of the mound and the former excavated trench that they put the ship in there may be something under the whole thing that would tell us why they did it maybe and maybe not because whatever reason the location was chosen another clue in the Dig archive suggests that one thing was for sure the two women were meant to remain right there right right where they were buried you always hear that well the Vikings they buried people in a boat so that they could sail into into the kingdom of death but not the two ladies they were supposed to stay put in the grave I mean look at the size of the stone that's the an do you think that's the real anchor Stone it's not an anchor Stone it's just made for the funeral so this this looks like it was meant to tie that ship to the ground in that location certainly look like it's huge and it's so interesting why those two ladies shouldn't leave that's interesting so they were supposed to stay there forever leaders spiritual figures witches perhaps all of these at once buried in a beautiful boat but mored to that place tied into the grave for some reason DNA and other analysis in years to come May well reveal more about the two women but we're unlikely ever to know all the answers I think the the key to this is to unpack our assumptions not to be so sure so ready to come to conclusions about these Graves and instead to try and begin with what they are the collections of objects the particular combinations of people and things and actions at a particular place and a particular time and then work from there they clearly belong in the grave this was their place to be the burial ship of the husberg weaves its Mysteries yet [Music] [Applause]

Channel: Chronicle - Medieval History Documentaries

Views: 119,006

Keywords: history documentary, medieval history documentary, middle ages, medieval history, the middle ages, the dark ages

Id: Lpc71qN0tGg

Length: 44min 12sec (2652 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2024