Perhaps the most iconic symbol of the Viking era, this exquisite burial ship was discovered by a farmer in 1904 in the Slagen River Valley south of Oslo where it had been buried beneath a mound of clay for over a thousand years.

At first thought to be the grave of a powerful Viking King, the ship proved to be the burial of two women. Recent scientific studies aged one at approximately 80 and the other around 50 years old. The two were originally tucked into a large feather bed beneath the timber A-frame grave chamber, lavishly decorated with spectacular tapestries and fine fabrics. The weavings show a procession of men and women on horseback, driving carts or on foot.

Remnants of other textiles indicate that the women had been sumptuously clothed in finely woven red and blue dyed, wool appliqued with Persian silk. Horses, dogs, and an ox were sacrificed to accompany the women. The ship carried three beds, two ornately carved sleighs and a working sledge, as well as a lavishly carved cart that was much older than the ship itself.  There was equipment for camping, weaving, dairying and cooking, and the kitchen area was supplied with a butchered ox, a barrel of wild apples and one precious walnut.

There has been much speculation as to who these women may have been. It is not at all certain that one woman was sacrificed to go with the other. Regardless, these women were companions in life. The bones recovered show that the younger woman had broken her collarbone, but the bone had knit before she died.

Magical items were found in the grave, including a pouch containing cannabis seeds, along with two staves or wands, one of them carved with runes. A sorceress in the Viking age was called a Völva, meaning staff-bearer, or wand bearer. The Oseberg rune-carved staff is made of birch, 8’ long and about 3” in diameter, tapering at the ends, too large to be a volva’s magic wand. No one is certain of its use. The runes carved into it, “LITILUISM,” make no sense to the modern mind. They are interpreted by some to mean “Man Knows Little,” but it is possible that they form a coded spell. The Vikings often used code and hidden meanings in their runework.

The ship itself had been built around 820 AD of oak felled on the west coast of Norway near the kingdom of Avaldsnes, where Harald Fairhair later had his headquarters. Undoubtedly the ship was built there, and speculation is that it was the ship of a western princess who came to marry the king of Vestfold. The ship contained a wooden bucket with an Irish enameled figure on its bail, signifying contact with Ireland.

The grave chamber was broken into sometime in the subsequent century. The mound breakers could not have dug their tunnel quietly nor in the space of one night, and there is speculation that this was a Christian reburial of pagan ancestors. Near the time the Oseberg mound was breached, King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark reburied his pagan parents in a Christian grave.

In any event, the two ladies’ skeletons were dragged from their bed. Some of their bones are missing, while other bones were left scattered in the grave breaker’s tunnel. Perhaps the robbers were afraid of the ghosts of these powerful women, and left some bones behind in their haste to get away. They also left behind their wooden spades. It is presumed that some of the bones were taken for reburial or some other reason, and the absence of jewelry in this otherwise rich grave is thought to be the result of this robbery.

The Oseberg women are roughly contemporary with the legendary Queen Åsa, and they came from Agder, as Åsa did. Whether the Oseberg mound was the burial of Queen Åsa or not, it is likely that she was buried in similar fashion, and the equipment on the ship would be indicative of her possessions.