At the end of the Viking age, Christianity was generally accepted in the Nordic countries. It replaced a heathen religion, with a pantheon of gods and goddesses who each had power over their own domains. Odin, old and wise, was the chieftain of them all. Thor was the god of the warriors, while the goddess Froy was responsible for the fertility of the soil and livestock. Loki was a trickster and a sorcerer, unreliable and distrusted by the other gods. The gods had dangerous adversaries - the jotuns - representing the darker side of life. The heathen gods are best known from descriptions written down in early Christian times, and perhaps coloured by the new faith. Farm names such as Torshov, Frøyshov and Onsaker have kept their original heathen god names. Present day Norwegian place names with the last syllable "hov" indicate that there once was a heathen temple at the site.
The gods had human traits, and like their Greek counterparts on Olympus they lived a raucous life. The gods fight, eat and drink. Mortals who fell in battle, went straight to the table to feast with the gods, and burial techniques clearly tell us of a need for the same paraphernalia in the life after death as here on earth. In the Viking age, the dead could be buried or cremated, but burial gifts were necessary in either case. The amount of equipment the dead took with them reflects their status in life as well as different burial traditions. In Norway, the burial traditions were especially rich. As a result, graves are a prolific source of knowledge about the everyday life of the Vikings. Everything provided for use in the afterlife provides us with a window into the world of the Vikings - even though time has taken its toll and often only remnants are left of the buried objects.
The grave remnants supplement our material from excavated living sites. In these sites - both in towns and on farms - we find misplaced or damaged articles, remains of houses, waste from food making and craftsmanship, and in the graves we uncover some of the finest personal effects of the deceased. A violent society An indication of the violent nature of society is the fact that nearly all the graves of males include weapons. A well- equipped warrior had to have a sword, a wooden shield with an iron boss at its centre to protect the hand, a spear, an axe, and a bow with up to 24 arrows. The helmets and coats of mail with which most Vikings are commonly portrayed in modern pictures, are extremely rare in archaeological material. Helmets with horns, ubiquitous in present-day depictions, have never been found amongst relics from the Viking period. Even in the graves with the most impressive array of weapons, we find signs of more peaceful activities: sickles, scythes, and hoes lie along side of weapons. The blacksmith was buried with his hammer, anvil, tongs, and file. The coastal farmer has kept his fishing equipment and is often buried in a boat. In women's graves we often find personal jewellery, kitchen articles and artifacts used in textile production. Women too, are often buried in boats. Wooden articles, leather goods, and textiles generally do not survive the soil, so there are many gaps in our knowledge.
In a smattering of graves, the soil type has been more conducive to preservation. In many areas along the Oslofjord, we find blue clay directly underneath the turf, dense and nearly impermeable by water and air. A few graves are well preserved after a thousand years, and we have retained a whole spectrum of articles placed in the pit. The treasures from the enormous Viking ship graves from Oseberg, Tune, and Gokstad - which can be seen at the Viking Ship Museum at Bygdøy in Oslo - are prime examples of what gifts can be preserved for future generations, given the right soil conditions. We do not know who the dead were, but they obviously belonged to the upper echelon of their society. Perhaps they belonged to a royal family which, a few generations later, unified Norway as one nation.
The graves at Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune have recently been dated by analysis of the annual rings in the oak material. The Oseberg ship was built around 815-820 A.D. The burial has been dated to an exact year - it was in 834. The Gokstad and Tune ships were constructed in the 890s and were placed in the graves right after 900 A.D. In these three graves, big ships were used as grave repositories.
Only the hull of the Tune ship has been preserved, and the grave was robbed earlier of nearly all its items, but enough remained for us to see that the ship was originally of the same fine quality as the two others. The Tune ship was about 20 metres in length. The Oseberg ship's length is about 22 metres and the Gokstad ship is 24 metres long. At the time of burial, the ship was drawn up on land and placed in a pit. A burial chamber was constructed behind the mast, where the deceased was placed to rest in a bed, dressed in finery. Copious provisions were placed in the ship, dogs and horses were sacrificed, and a large burial mound was piled on top of the vessel.
An Arab travelling in Russia at the end of the 9th Century happened upon a group of Vikings who were in the process of burying a chieftain in this manner. Ibn Fadlan made note of his observations, and his journal has survived. The deceased chieftain's ship was pulled ashore, and valuables were placed aboard. The corpse was dressed in fine clothing and placed on board in a bed. A slave woman, who had chosen to follow her master in death was sacrificed along with a horse and a hunting dog. The ship with its contents was burned, and a burial mound was constructed over the ashes. We have finds of cremated ships graves in the Nordic countries and in Western European Viking sites, but the large graves along the Oslofjord were not put to the torch. In the Gokstad ship a man was found, and the Tune ship probably carried a man a well. However, two women were buried with the Oseberg ship. The skeletons are of a 50-60 year-old and a 20-30 year-old. We can only speculate as to which was the companion and which was the noblewoman. Both the Oseberg and Gokstad graves were plundered by grave robbers, so the jewellery and luxurious weapons, which surely have been there, were not excavated. But articles of wood, leather and textiles - of no interest to the thieves - have survived. There are remnants of similar graves in other locations and it appears to have been standard practice to include sacrificed dogs and horses, fine weapons, some nautical equipment such as oars and a gangplank, balers, cooking pots for shipmates, a tent and often fine imported bronze vessels. Without a doubt, these once contained food and @5drink for the deceased. The Oseberg grave contained no trace of weapons, reasonably enough for a female grave, but all the other standard equipment followed. In addition, the central figure had been given articles which testify to her dignity as an administrator and a wife on a wealthy farm. We have to assume that women have had the main responsibility for carrying out farm work when the men were off on Viking journeys. The woman from Oseberg was, like many contemporary women, an authoritative and highly respected lady, whether she sat with other women at a spinning wheel or loom, or watched over work in the fields, or supervised milking and the making of cheese and butter. In addition to the ship, she has brought along a wagon and three sleighs. Both on land and water, she was prepared to go in style. Enough horses were sacrificed to draw the wagon as well as the sleighs. A tent and cooking utensils, tools for textile production, chests and small boxes for valuables, a breadboard, milk pails and ladles, a cutting knife and frying pan, shovels and rakes, a saddle, a dog collar and much more was found in the grave. Her provisions included two slain oxen. A dough of rye flour was placed to leaven on the large wooden breadboard, and in a finely decorated bucket, apples were included for dessert. Many of the wooden articles were ornamentally carved. It appears as if a number of artists were at work on the farm. Even such utilitarian things as the sleigh poles are ornately carved. Aside from the Oseberg find, our main knowledge of Viking art comes from metal jewellery, where the format is modest. The choice of motif is the same for woodcarving. The artists have been preoccupied with animal figures. These are imaginary animals, twisted and braided together in a tight asymmetric arabesque. These carvings are superb examples of advanced craftsmanship, so the Oseberg wood carvers must have been as handy with chisels and sheath knives as with swords and battle axes.
The man buried in the Gokstad ship has also had the service of a gifted woodcarver, even though the find is not so rich in ornamentation as the Oseberg grave. The Oseberg ship has a low freeboard and is less seaworthy than the ships from Tune and Gokstad, but it certainly could have managed a North Sea voyage and could be typical of the ships which were used for the first Viking attacks around the year 800. A copy which has been built proved to be quick to the wind, but was not easy to manage. The Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune ships were probably the private vessels of rich persons, rather than longships for transporting warriors. The Gokstad ship is very seaworthy. This has been demonstrated by replicas which have crossed the Atlantic in modern times. The hull design makes the ship fast - either under sail or when 32 men pulled on the oars. Even with a full crew, the Gokstad ship drew no more than one metre of water, so it could easily have been used for assaults on foreign shores. It is possible that the Vikings' experiences through frequent sea voyages in the early 9th Century led to a rapid evolution in hull design. If this is a correct assumption, then the differences between the Oseberg ship and the Gokstad ship might be a result of three generations of experience in the North Sea and hours of discussion between shipbuilders seeking improvements.
1000 years of development The Viking ships were clinchbuilt. The ships used for travelling to distant shores were a result of a thousand years of experience in the Nordic area. Shipbuilders strove to construct lightweight and flexible vessels, pliant to the forces of sea and wind - working with the elements instead of against them. The hull of the Viking ships is built on a solid keel, which together with a finely curved bow, forms the backbone of the vessel. Strafe after strafe was fitted to keel and stem and these were bolted to each other with iron rivets. This hull shell provided strength and flexibility. After the shipbuilder had given the shell its desired shape, ribs made from naturally curved trees were fitted and these gave additional strength. To increase flexibility, strafes and ribs were bound together. Cross supports at the waterline supplied lateral support, and extra solid logs braced the mast. The ships sailed were squarerigged on a midship mast. In a calm, or against a strong headwind, the crew could man the oars. As the Viking period progressed, different types of ships were developed. There were ships intended for battle which were built for speed and a large crew. There were also ships built for commercial trade, where speed was less important. These had a greater girth to permit more cargo. Trade ships did not have a large crew, and they were better suited for sailing than for rowing. Christianity takes over The Viking raids tapered off around the year 1000. The Vikings had become Christians, and the conversion had a restrictive effect on their urge to plunder. Denmark, Sweden and Norway had become separate kingdoms generally united under single monarchs. Life was not always peaceful, even in Christian kingdoms, but wars were steered by the shifting alliances of the kings. Countries could enter wars, but the age of private battles was gone as was that of colonization. The trade relations established in the Viking period continued, and the Nordic countries emerged as a part of a Christian Europe.
