Viking graves to be re-opened
Aftenposten's reporter, Cato Guhnfeldt - 8 June 2007
A
worker welded together the aluminium casket in which the Vikings' remains were re-buried in 1948.
PHOTO: NORDISK ALUMINIEUM A/S/KULTURHISTORISK MUSEUM, UNIVERSITETET i OSLO
The Viking graves that contained the famous ships
Oseberg and
Gokstad will be re-opened in September, in an effort to gain new knowledge from the remains of the two women and one man buried in them. It will be the first time the graves have been opened in nearly 60 and 80 years, respectively.
Grave robbers plundered the Viking mounds centuries ago. This photo was taken in 1904
Experts fear the human remains from
Viking times may be in the process of disintegrating, if they haven't already. They want to try to extract them to apply new methods of studying bone matter that can yield new information on the Vikings' genetics and background.
When the skeletal remains of the man buried in the Godkstad mound were re-buried in 1928, they were packed into gauze, fastened to an oak plank and laid in a casket made of lead. It was then sealed and placed in a stone sarcophagus.
These leather shoes were found in the Oseberg ship and probably belonged to the older of the two women buried with the ship. PHOTO: KOJAN-KROGVOLD/KULTURHISTORISK MUSEUM, UNIVERSITETET i OSLO
A similar re-burial procedure was used for the remains of two women found in the nearby Oseberg mound southwest of
Oslo. Those remains, however, were placed in an aluminium casket.
The burial mound containing the famed Oseberg ship contained the bodies of two women buried in 834. The vessel was excavated in 1904. PHOTO: ERIK THORBERG/SCANPIX
"Now we fear that condensation caused by temperature swings in both metal caskets may have made the textile damp," Terje Gansum of the Midgard Historical Center in Vestfold told newspaper Aftenposten. "This could in turn have destroyed the remains, or at least damaged them."
Vivian Wangen of the Kulturhistorisk Museum in Oslo described the pending grave openings as a means of "preserving this scientific material." The two graves are due to be opened between September 10 and September 14.
Some bones from one of the Oseberg women were held back from re-burial in the 1940s, and a team of experts in Copenhagen was able to trace her to the Black Sea area through DNA analysis last year. Archaeologists now would like to determine, among other things, whether she was related to the other woman in the grave.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1826974.ece
