Norwegian Vikings grew hemp

Cannabis was cultivated 1,300 years ago at a farm in Southern Norway


The Sosteli farmsted, in Norway's southermmost Vest-Agder County, offers strong evidence that Vikings farmers actively cultivated cannabis, a recent analysis shows. The cannabis remains from the farmsted date from 650 AD to 800 AD.

This is not the first sign of hemp cultivation in Norway this far back in time, but the find is much more extensive than previous discoveries. “The other instances were just individual finds of pollen grains. Much more has been found here,” says Frans-Arne Stylegar, an archaeologist and the county's curator.

Sosteli is also further away from current-day settlements than other sites where cannabis finds have been made. Hemp is the same plant as cannabis, or marijuana. But nothing indicates that the Vikings cultivated the plant to get people high.

Most likely it was grown for making textiles and rope.

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Oar walking, underwater wrestling and horse fighting – historian examines the sports and games of the Vikings

Playing ball games is an activity played by children around the world. While today’s parents might worry that their sons and daughters might get scrapes and bruises, in the Viking world such a game could end with an axe being driven into an opponent’s head.

This detail comes from a new article, ‘What the Vikings did for fun? Sports and pastimes in medieval northern Europe’, which was published last month in the journal World Archaeology. In it Leszek Gardeła of the University of Aberdeen uses saga accounts and archaeological evidence to see what men, women and children from Scandinavia and Iceland amused themselves with during the Viking-era, and found that their were several popular pastimes.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Researchers look to save deteriorating Viking treasures of Oseberg

Conservation experts in Norway are conducting tests to see if a solution can be found on how to save important archaeological finds from the Viking Age that were discovered in Oseberg in 1904.

Researchers from the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, working closely with Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB), have been studying ancient wooden Viking artefacts at the synchrotron radiation source BESSY II. The conservators expect this non-destructive method will yield crucial insights into the degradation of these unique works of art.

The wooden artefacts come from a Viking grave found in 1904 at Oseberg near the Oslo fjords. The Oseberg finding is considered one of the most important testimonies of the Viking Age and is one of the most frequently visited sights in Norway. Yet, they are now in serious danger of collapse because the wood fibres in the artefacts are disintegrating.

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Immigration in the Viking era

Knut Kjeldstadli of the University of Oslo has led a group a researchers who have studied Norway’s immigration history from the Viking Age up to the present. He says the tracks left by immigrants and visitors traverse the entire period.

“Irish slaves came in the Viking Age. And around the year 1000 another import came that was to have a huge impact on Norwegian culture: Christianity," says the history professor.

The kings brought along specialists in Christianising people. These were priests and monks from Germany and England. Even the Anglo-Saxon bishop and advisor – who canonised Olaf Haraldsson, was a Brit.

Kjeldstadli points out that multiple groups immigrated to Norway in the Middle Ages.

At the bottom of the social ladder were the Irish slaves, or thralls. They might not have had too much of an impact on the culture. Around 1250 the first refugees came from Russia. They had been pressed westward by Mongolian tribes.

But a number of career immigrants − specialists in various professions − probably had the biggest influence. Some followed in the wake of the new religion.

“The men of the church in this context were not just the priests and monks, but also stonemasons and other craftsmen,” says Kjeldstadli.

Click here to read this article from ScienceNordic

New Norway Viking settlement discovered

Using a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and magnetometer, surveys have revealed the settlement in Sandefjord in Gokstadhaugen, eastern Norway, has 15 buildings, an 80-metre long street and a port.

Archaeologists from Oslo’s Museum of Cultural History and the Norwegian Institute for Cultural heritage Research (NIKU) were among those that made the discovery, in cooperation with Vestfold County.

Work in Gokstadhaugen began in 2011 with drilling there, as well as experts making geophysical surveys from the sea a northwards in what is called Gokstad Valley (Gokstaddalen).

NIKU’s Knut Paashe told Aftenposten, “There is no doubt that we have encountered a market town-like structure from the Viking age with houses and streets.”

Click here to read this article from The Foriegner

Norway: Ancient coins offer clues about medieval society

Norway’s economic system in the Middle Ages was more sophisticated than previously thought. This claim is based on research on coin circulation in Norwegian society in the years between 1050 to 1320. In this period the use of coins was widespread and frequent, according to historian Svein Gullbekk at the University of Oslo. His study, The velocity of circulation of Norwegian coins c. 1050 to c. 1320 was recently published in a history periodical.

“This debate has been going on for 10 to 15 years,” says Svein Gullbekk. “The main question has been if goods were paid for by coins or commodities.”

The answer to the question reaches further than one might think. Coin circulation in a medieval society says something about its economic system, and whether it was possible for the national government to organize, carry out, and maintain a system based on a fixed currency.

Click here to read this article from ScienceNordic

Archaeologists uncover pre-Christian temple in Norway

A fascinating discovery is shedding light upon pre-Christian Scandinavian religion and early Christian inroads into Norway. In the Norwegian press, this highly important find is being called "unparalleled," "first of its kind" and "unique," said to have been "deliberately and carefully hidden" - from invading and destructive Christians.

Located at the site of Ranheim, about 10 kilometers south of the Norwegian city of Trondheim, the astonishing discovery was unearthed while excavating foundations for new houses and includes a "gudehovet" or "god temple." Occupied from the 6th or 5th century BCE until the 10th century AD/CE, the site shows signs of usage for animal sacrifice, a common practice among different peoples in antiquity, including the biblical Israelites. (E.g., Num 7:17-88) Over 1,000 years ago, the site was dismantled and covered by a thick layer of peat, evidently to protect it from marauding Christian invaders. These native Norse religionists apparently then fled to other places, such as Iceland, where they could re-erect their altars and re-establish the old religion.


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Norway's pilgrim trail

Reaching into its medieval past, Norway has revived an old pilgrim path as a challenging long-distance walking trail with possible spiritual vibes.

Called St. Olav’s Way after the country’s patron saint, it follows the footsteps of pilgrims to Trondheim, called Nidaros in the Middle Ages, and the earthly remains of St. Olav buried under its great cathedral.

In life, the saint was King Olav Haraldsson, credited with sealing Norway’s conversion to Christianity with a martyr’s death in battle in 1030. He was rushed into sainthood a year later. His spreading fame made Nidaros a major destination for European pilgrams, along with Jerusalem, Rome and Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Pilgrims trod St. Olav’s Way until Lutheranism reached Norway in 1537, shutting down saint worship.

Retraced and signposted in the 1990s, it is a Nordic entry in the pilgrim tourism field dominated by Spain’s Santiago way, made famous by many books and a recent movie with Martin Sheen. Norway’s trail is Santiago without the crowds, and with natural beauty replacing the historic villages and churches of Spain.

Click here to read this article from the Montreal Gazette

New viking village discovered

Norwegian archeologists have discovered the foundations of at least 15 buildings, an 80-meter long street and a harbour near Gokstadhaugen burial mound in Sandefjord.

So far, the ground hasn’t even been broken into. The remains that could potentially be part of an entire village have been located by using ground penetrating radar and magnetometer.

Archeologists from the Cultural and Historic museum in Oslo, the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) and Vestfold County made the discovery at Gokstadhaugen, where the famous Gokstad viking ship and burial ground were also discovered in 1880.

"This is a very exciting and surprising find that shows there have been several buildings located close to the burial mound Gokstadhaugen," Professor Jan Bill at the University of Oslo tells NRK.

Click here to read this article from The Norway Post

Archaeologists uncover early Christian community in Norway

The cathedral in Stavanger was built in the year 1125, and is one of the earliest pieces of evidence for permanent settlement in the Norwegian town. However, new analyses of medieval skeletons found beneath the cathedral suggest that Christians lived in Stavanger for several generations prior to this.

Over 15,000 human bone fragments lay helter-skelter in a wooden crate. This mess did not discourage the researchers at the Archaeological Museum in Stavanger, who are now resurrecting the dead.

“We are reassembling and analyzing individual skeletons in order to form a picture of Stavanger’s population before and around 1000,” associate professor Paula Utigard Sandvik and osteoarchaeologist Sean Denham said.

They are working on a taxing puzzle that sheds new light on Stavanger’s history.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Researchers recreate face of ancient human

A reconstruction based on the skull of Norway’s best-preserved Stone Age skeleton makes it possible to study the features of a boy who lived in Scandinavia 7,500 years ago.

“It is hoped that this reconstruction is a good likeness and that, if someone who knew him in life had been presented with this restoration, they would hopefully have recognised the face”, says Jenny Barber, an MSc student at the University of Dundee in Scotland. She has scientifically rebuilt the face of the strong and stocky Viste Boy, who lived in the Vistehola cave near Stavanger, so that people can now look him right in the eye.

Ms Barber is studying forensic art, an unusual discipline embracing such elements as human anatomy and identification in order to recreate the appearance of an actual person. This modelling method is primarily employed to assist police investigations, and is little known or used in Norway. But the country’s most extensive reconstruction of a Stone Age skeleton has now been achieved.

Click here to read this article from History of the Ancient World

Research uncovers connections between charcoal and the church in medieval Norway

Norway’s more than 1,000 year-old-city and historical capital, Trondheim, was a beehive of activity in medieval times. Recent archeological research in the city’s popular public forest, “Bymarka”, has uncovered more than 500 charcoal pits, tell-tale signs of substantial medieval metal working activity.

For centuries, Trondheim – or Nidaros as it was then called – was home to the Archdiocese of Norway, and also for the Faeroe Islands, the Orkney Islands, the Isle of Man, Iceland and Greenland. Nidaros Cathedral, the city’s gothic cathedral, held reliquaries from St. Olaf and thus attracted thousands of pilgrims.

And the cathedral was not the only church in town. While just two of the many churches erected in the town center in medieval times still stand, 25 stone churches were built during the Middle Ages in the countryside around Trondheim.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

Centres of royal power: New findings about the realms of medieval itinerant kings

In the 900-1000s the power of the monarch in Norway was consolidated through the establishment of a new system of royal estates. Similar systems can also be found in other Northern European countries.

Kingston, Husebygård, Königshof. These three terms in English, Norwegian and German all describe the same thing: royal farmsteads that together formed a network and belonged to the early “state.”

In Norway we know of some 50 royal estates of this kind. In addition, there is knowledge of some thirty or so farmsteads dating back to before the year 1130 that were the kings’ own inherited property.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net