Viking-Era Discoveries & Theories

We have to establish the tooth about this.

A Viking king whose nickname was used for Bluetooth wireless technology could actually be buried in Poland rather than Denmark, researchers have claimed.

According to a chronicle from the Middle Ages, King Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson of Denmark, who died 1,000 years ago, was buried in Roskilde in Denmark in the late 10th century.

But a Swedish archaeologist and a Polish researcher have recently claimed in separate publications they have pinpointed his most probable burial site as the village of Wiejkowo, in an area of north-western Poland that had ties to the Vikings in Bluetooth's time.

Marek Kryda, author of the book Viking Poland, told The Associated Press a "pagan mound" he claims to have located beneath Wiejkowo's 19th-century Roman Catholic church probably holds the king's remains.

He said geological satellite images available on a Polish government portal reveal a rotund shape under the Church of The Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary that looks like a Viking burial mound.

But Swedish archaeologist Sven Rosborn says Mr Kryda is wrong because Bluetooth, who converted from paganism to Christianity and founded churches in the area, must have been buried in an appropriate grave somewhere in the churchyard.

https://news.sky.com/story/danish-k...e-buried-in-poland-researchers-claim-12662697
 
Could they both be right? Instances are known of Vikings who had converted to Christianity being given pagan funerals and subsequently their remains either moved to a Christian grave or a church established on the site.

https://en.natmus.dk/historical-kno...h-and-rituals/the-transition-to-christianity/

Examples can be found of people, who having already been buried in a pagan way, were subsequently reburied as Christians. During excavations in Hørning Church a buried woman was discovered, accompanied by valuable grave goods dating to the 900s. The burial was found in a chambered tomb within a mound. Later on the mound was removed and a small wooden church was built directly over the burial chamber. This was probably to ensure that the buried woman came under the protection of the new faith. What the woman would have thought about this, we will never know.
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Glacial archaeologists find arrow in melting ice

Glacier archaeologists found a 1300-year-old arrow from the Norwegian Iron Age during a research project on the Langfonne ice patch in the Jotunheimen Mountains in Norway.

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The arrow was discovered in a collection of broken rock fragments between larger stones on the lower edge of the icefield.

The team believes that the arrow was lost and deposited downslope by meltwater and that it has since been exposed several times by melting ice over the centuries.

This is indicated by the lack of fletching, the fin-shaped aerodynamic stabilization normally made from feathers or bark. Evidence of sinew and tar has also been identified, but this survives in a poor state of preservation. The arrow is tapered towards the end and the nock has been thickened for engaging with a bowstring. The remains of the tar would have glued the fletching to the shaft, while imprints of the thread securing the fletching are still visible.

https://www.thearchaeologist.org/bl...sts-find-a-1300-year-old-arrow-in-melting-ice

maximus otter
 
Mulling over new sites.

Archaeologists are preparing to investigate two possible Viking boat burial sites on the Isle of Mull.

Two elongated mounds on the Hebridean island are to be evaluated as part of a series of digs later this month.

Boat burials involved high-ranking Vikings being interred with a ship, and in Scotland a site was previously found and excavated in Ardnamurchan.

On Mull, archaeologists will check to see whether the mounds near Lephin are natural features or burial sites.

The investigation will involve archaeologists and volunteers digging small trenches by hand.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-62794761
 
The looming power behind the Viking hordes.

Archaeology has a representation problem. For most of the time that scholars have been probing the human past, they have focused mainly on the activities of men to the exclusion of women.

There are a couple reasons for this bias. One is that the kinds of artifacts that tend to preserve well are made of inorganic materials such as stone or metal, and many are associated with behaviors stereotypically linked to men, such as hunting. Another reason is that early archaeologists were mostly men and more interested in men's work than in women's. As a result, our understanding of past cultures is woefully incomplete.

In recent years archaeologists have sought to fill that gap in our knowledge, in part by taking a closer look at traditionally ignored remains such as textiles, which had long been dismissed as trivial. Cloth rarely survives the centuries because it decomposes easily except under ideal preservation conditions. But even in a fragmentary state, it contains a wealth of information about the people who made and used it.

Michèle Hayeur Smith, an anthropological archaeologist at Brown University, has been at the forefront of efforts to glean insights from ancient cloth, scouring archaeological sites and museum collections for textiles that could illuminate the lives of women in early North Atlantic societies. Her work has shown that the Vikings never would have expanded their known world without the women's work of weaving.

Hayeur Smith's study of early North Atlantic textiles took off from the basement storage area of the National Museum of Iceland, its rows of metal shelving bursting with boxes and bags of dirt-covered cloth. She first visited in 2009 to inspect the museum's collection of remains from the Viking Age and later periods. “It was literally thousands of fragments,” she says. Yet they were just sitting there, hardly examined by anyone.

Hayeur Smith grew up surrounded by fabrics her anthropologist mother collected from around the world. In her 20s Hayeur Smith earned a fashion degree in Paris. She knew that the way people in the past clothed themselves and wove everything from currency to cloaks could reveal a great deal about a lost culture, especially its women. In the 1990s, as a Ph.D. student at the University of Glasgow, she'd devoted herself to studying Viking women's dress and ornament, typically from artifacts found in burial sites. Inspired by her first glimpse of the wealth of textile remnants in the museum's storeroom, Hayeur Smith eventually decided to uncover the lives of the ordinary women who stood weaving at their looms.

Ever since then, she has been analyzing textiles spanning 900 years of history, starting with the Viking settlement of Iceland in C.E. 874. ...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/viking-textiles-show-women-had-tremendous-power/
 
ramonmercado said:
The looming power behind the Viking hordes.

Archaeology has a representation problem. For most of the time that scholars have been probing the human past, they have focused mainly on the activities of men to the exclusion of women.

There are a couple reasons for this bias. One is that the kinds of artifacts that tend to preserve well are made of inorganic materials such as stone or metal, and many are associated with behaviors stereotypically linked to men, such as hunting. Another reason is that early archaeologists were mostly men and more interested in men's work than in women's. As a result, our understanding of past cultures is woefully incomplete.

In recent years archaeologists have sought to fill that gap in our knowledge, in part by taking a closer look at traditionally ignored remains such as textiles, which had long been dismissed as trivial. Cloth rarely survives the centuries because it decomposes easily except under ideal preservation conditions. But even in a fragmentary state, it contains a wealth of information about the people who made and used it.

Michèle Hayeur Smith, an anthropological archaeologist at Brown University, has been at the forefront of efforts to glean insights from ancient cloth, scouring archaeological sites and museum collections for textiles that could illuminate the lives of women in early North Atlantic societies. Her work has shown that the Vikings never would have expanded their known world without the women's work of weaving.

Hayeur Smith's study of early North Atlantic textiles took off from the basement storage area of the National Museum of Iceland, its rows of metal shelving bursting with boxes and bags of dirt-covered cloth. She first visited in 2009 to inspect the museum's collection of remains from the Viking Age and later periods. “It was literally thousands of fragments,” she says. Yet they were just sitting there, hardly examined by anyone.

Hayeur Smith grew up surrounded by fabrics her anthropologist mother collected from around the world. In her 20s Hayeur Smith earned a fashion degree in Paris. She knew that the way people in the past clothed themselves and wove everything from currency to cloaks could reveal a great deal about a lost culture, especially its women. In the 1990s, as a Ph.D. student at the University of Glasgow, she'd devoted herself to studying Viking women's dress and ornament, typically from artifacts found in burial sites. Inspired by her first glimpse of the wealth of textile remnants in the museum's storeroom, Hayeur Smith eventually decided to uncover the lives of the ordinary women who stood weaving at their looms.

Ever since then, she has been analyzing textiles spanning 900 years of history, starting with the Viking settlement of Iceland in C.E. 874. ...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/viking-textiles-show-women-had-tremendous-power/
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Well worth reading the whole article, fascinating stuff. :hoff:
 
Swedish archaeologists excavating a Viking burial ground discovered two graves in which swords were buried upright (as if plunged into the ground). The symbolism of such a vertical sword is still a mystery.
2 Viking swords buried upright might have connected the dead to Odin and Valhalla

rchaeologists in Sweden have unearthed two Viking swords in neighboring graves that were buried upright, as if they were standing on their points.

Whoever installed the iron swords perpendicular to the surface about 1,200 years ago clearly did so on purpose, as it would have taken a lot of effort — possibly involving a rock or hammer — to wedge the weapons roughly 16 inches (40 centimeters) into the ground, archaeologists told Live Science.

"The placement of the swords reflects an action with a lot of symbolism," Anton Seiler (opens in new tab), Fredrik Larsson (opens in new tab) and Katarina Appelgren (opens in new tab), archaeologists at Arkeologerna, an archaeology firm in Sweden that is part of the government agency National Historical Museums, told Live Science in an email. "When you find swords in graves — which you don't do very often — they often lie beside the buried individual, as a faithful companion on the voyage to the next world."

It's unknown why these two swords were buried upright, but there are a variety of possibilities, one of which is that the standing swords served as a connection to the Norse warrior god Odin and his domain Valhalla, where slain warriors reportedly resided under Odin's leadership, the Arkeologerna team that helped uncover the sword said. ...
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FULL STORY: https://www.livescience.com/two-vikings-swords-buried-upright-sweden
 
Herring were Herring in those days.

Loss of Viking-era herring may be a warning to today’s fishers​

Genetic studies explain how prize stock of historically important fish vanished​


Fatty and abundant, herring have fed humans for centuries—and perhaps even longer than that. A new genetic study of modern and ancient herring bones suggests humans have been trading the fish across long distances since Viking times—and we’ve been overfishing them for nearly as long.

This is the first research to comprehensively show how herring populations in the Baltic Sea have changed through time, says Poul Holm, a marine environmental historian at Trinity College Dublin who was not involved with the work. The study also provides a lesson for today’s fishery managers, he says: Important stocks of this common fish can vanish.

Herring—a silvery, rolling pin–size fish—have been prominent across the globe for so long that many places regard them as a cultural icon. They are easy to catch, as they assemble into schools many millions strong to spawn. In the Baltic, Atlantic herring (Clupea harengus) “supported one of the most important trades in medieval Europe,” fueling the rise of Amsterdam, Copenhagen, and other cities, says James Barrett, an archaeologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Herring are still common, but fish ecologists worry about the viability of certain populations. To better understand humans’ impact on these fish, marine historical ecologist Lane Atmore and evolutionary biologist Bastiaan Star, both at the University of Oslo, along with Barrett and other colleagues carried out genetic studies of both ancient and modern herring. Atmore obtained DNA from herring bones unearthed at seven archaeological sites in Poland, Denmark, and Estonia that dated between 750 C.E. and 1600 C.E. The team sequenced ancient DNA from these 40 samples, as well as DNA from 53 fish collected between 2002 and 2010.

By combining these modern genomes with already published herring genomes from 22 other places, the researchers had fish DNA from throughout the Baltic Sea. “The scale and range of data of this study is very impressive,” says Iain McKechnie, an archaeologist at the University of Victoria who has studied the historical use of herring in the U.S. Pacific Northwest but who was not involved with the work.

https://www.science.org/content/article/loss-viking-era-herring-may-be-warning-today-s-fishers
 
Coal, pre spinning wheel times any pair of free hands had to spin.

The cloth was probably woven by specialists, some of whom were highly skilled.

And certainly some of those skilled folk were men...
 
"When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the gentleman?" Fr. John Ball.
 
Archaeologists Unearth Trove of Viking Age Jewelry in Sweden

Archaeologists in Sweden have unearthed a once-in-a-lifetime trove of jewelry dating back an estimated 1,000 years to the Viking Age. Despite their age, the pieces are in near-pristine condition and look like they’re “almost completely new,” says Maria Lingström, one of the archaeologists who made the find.

Researchers with the National Historical Museums in Sweden were digging at a Viking Age settlement in Viggbyholm, a neighborhood north of Stockholm, when they stumbled upon a small ceramic pot tucked beneath the remnants of a building’s wooden floors. Inside, they found eight torc-style neck rings, one finger ring, two pearls and two arm rings. They also found a linen pouch that contained 12 coin pendants (which are coins used as jewelry).

Though the researchers were surprised and delighted to find all of the jewelry, they were particularly interested in the 12 coins. Some originated in Europe—probably from regions like Bohemia, Bavaria and England—while others were Arabic coins called dirhams.

normandiskt-mynt-1.jpeg

The rare coin minted in Normandy Courtesy of Acta Konserveringscentrum

Coin-makers minted one of the European coins in Rouen, a city in Normandy, France, sometime during the tenth century. Until now, researchers only knew of this rare coin’s existence from drawings in an 18th-century book.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smar...ve-of-viking-age-jewelry-in-sweden-180981093/

maximus otter
 
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1,000-year-old hall where Vikings once gathered is uncovered in Denmark, museum says

Archaeologists in Denmark uncovered a massive Viking-era structure unlike anything else found in the region so far. Before construction of a house in Hune could begin, archaeologists came to excavate the area, the North Jutland Museums said.

viking%20hall%20denmark.jpg


The unassuming plot of land revealed a massive Viking hall. The hall was about 130 feet long and about 32 feet wide, the museum said. The structure had 10 to 12 rectangular oak posts supporting the roof.

During Viking times, these types of large halls were prestigious buildings used as a gathering place for political meetings and large guilds, Thomas Rune Knudsen, the excavation’s lead archaeologist, said.

Archaeologists in North Jutland, the northernmost region of Denmark, have never before seen anything like this hall.

The design of the hall is similar to other structures found at castles belonging to Harald Bluetooth, indicating the hall was also built during the late Viking age, a period from 850 A.D. to 1000 A.D.

https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/world/article270472347.html#storylink=cpy
 
Frideswide said:
She's no longer at Browns. I think she is a Research Associate at the Smithsonian?
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Yep.

Michèle Hayeur Smith​

Research Associate of the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. Archaeologist (PhD.) Archaeological and Heritage Consultant.​

Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States​

 
Maybe they were victims of Viking raids?

Seven skeletons discovered in graves beneath a car park could be medieval, experts believe.

The remains were found during work to install a new water pipe on Holy Island, off the Northumberland coast.

Assistant county archaeologist Nick Best revealed the find to members of Ashington and Blyth local area council. Mr Best said there had been "just enough risk" of something under the car park that the council decided to check during the work.

"It's very likely they're medieval and there's a chance they could be very early medieval," he said. "The assumption is there is probably more."

Archaeologists plan to carbon date the bones to confirm their age. Historic finds are not uncommon on Lindisfarne, which was home to a monastery founded in 635 by Irish monk St Aidan. The famous Lindisfarne Gospels were produced on the island and, in 793, the monastery was raided by Vikings.

The council plans to release images of the skeletons at a later date, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-64276417
 
Animal import regulations were less strict in those days.

Vikings brought horses and dogs to the British Isles from Scandinavia, a new study suggests.

A chemical analysis of bone fragments from a cemetery in England provides the first solid scientific evidence of animals traveling with Vikings across the North Sea, scientists report February 1 in PLOS ONE.

In the 1990s, researchers unearthed the cremated remains of a human adult and child as well as of a dog, horse and probable pig from a burial mound in a Viking cemetery in Derbyshire, England. In previous work, radiocarbon dating of femur, skull and rib fragments revealed that the inhabitants all died sometime between the eighth and 10th centuries. That date was narrowed down to the year 873, thanks to the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which records that a Viking army wintered near the site that year. ...

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/strontium-isotope-analysis-vikings-animals-england
 

Ceremonial Viking Shields Re-identified as Actual Battle-Worn Armor​


A reexamination of 1,200-year-old wooden Viking shields excavated in Norway in 1880 have been used to assert that these round protective devices could very well have been used in hand-to-hand combat at some point. They may also have been used to add a layer of protective armor to Viking ships engaged in naval battles.

This conclusion came as a surprise. Past studies of the wooden Viking shields concluded that they were too thin and flimsy to have ever offered much protection in actual warfare, meaning they were most likely used strictly for ceremonial purposes.

Stockholm University archaeologist and Viking combat expert Rolf Warming has just published the results of his new study of the Viking Age wooden armor, which was recovered in fragments from inside a buried Viking ship found under a large mound at Gokstad in eastern Norway.

In 2019 Warming began his own study of the yellow and black painted shields. The objective was to investigate the possibility that they may have been used for more than just ceremonial purposes.

Key to his findings were a series of perforations running around the rim of the wooden Viking shields. According to Warming, this strongly suggested the painted surface of the shields had once been covered with thin rawhide parchment, of the type traditionally used to cover shields made for use in combat.

perforations.jpg


Longitudinal rows of perforations on the central board from Eske 5, indicated in yellow. (Rolf Fabricius Warming)

While the rawhide covering on the Gokstad shields is no longer present, the perforations were placed in the exact location where such a covering would need to be attached.

https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/viking-shields-0018151

maximus otter
 
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Vikings may have made Morston fake gold Arabic dinar, says expert​


A "spectacular" 9th Century fake Arabic dinar discovered by a metal detectorist could have been made by a Viking, a university professor said.

The gold coin was discovered near Morston, Norfolk, in April 2021 and has been declared treasure by a coroner.

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Rory Naismith said "the Vikings had a lot of contact with the Muslim world" so it was "plausible" they could have struck imitation dinars.

"It looks like it's made by someone who knows the generalities of what a dinar looks like, but is not handling them enough to get the Arabic right."

The professor of Early Medieval English History said the coin was "most likely" struck in the second half of the 9th Century.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-65059336

maximus otter
 
Vikings came to North America nearly 500 years before Columbus, study of wood reveals

Viking sailors landed on the shores of North America nearly half a millennium before Christopher Columbus, new research reveals.

Archaeologists from the University of Iceland came to this conclusion after analyzing wood recovered from five Norse farmsteads in Greenland, according to a study published on April 17 in the journal Antiquity.

Vikings-wood-2


Locations of resource areas and potential import routes Figure from the journal Antiquity

Norse settlers colonized Greenland around 985 A.D. and occupied the farms between 1000 and 1400 A.D.

As part of the study, 8,552 pieces of wood were examined to determine their origin. Only 26 pieces, or 0.27 percent of the total assemblage, belonged to trees that were definitively imported. These were oak, hemlock, beech and Jack pine.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article274531146.html

maximus otter
 
maximus otter said:
Vikings came to North America nearly 500 years before Columbus, study of wood reveals

Viking sailors landed on the shores of North America nearly half a millennium before Christopher Columbus, new research reveals.

Archaeologists from the University of Iceland came to this conclusion after analyzing wood recovered from five Norse farmsteads in Greenland, according to a study published on April 17 in the journal Antiquity.

Vikings-wood-2


Locations of resource areas and potential import routes Figure from the journal Antiquity

Norse settlers colonized Greenland around 985 A.D. and occupied the farms between 1000 and 1400 A.D.

As part of the study, 8,552 pieces of wood were examined to determine their origin. Only 26 pieces, or 0.27 percent of the total assemblage, belonged to trees that were definitively imported. These were oak, hemlock, beech and Jack pine.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article274531146.html

maximus otter
Click to expand...
Not really news... this is about the same time that L'Anse Aux Meadows was established in Newfoundland, but it does support the dating.
 
Archaeologists Found Proof of a Viking City That Was Supposed to Be Mythical

The rousing debate surrounding the potential existence and possible location of a key 10th century Viking city has resurfaced, thanks to an observation tower on a Polish island in the Baltic Sea.

A simple construction project to erect a new observation tower in a public park on the Polish island Wolin unearthed fresh artifacts. Those artifacts point toward the existence of a 10th century city—at least, according to the man doing the finding.

When Polish islands start offering up clues to a 10th century city, Viking scholars get excited, knowing that the potentially-real-possibly-mythical city of Jomsborg could be part of the equation.

Believed to be a key part of Viking history, Jomsborg first surfaced in 12th century texts. But the location was never discovered. That led some to believe that Jomsborg was nothing more than a compilation of lore.

https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/archaeologists-found-proof-viking-city-133000777.html

According to the Knytlingasaga and Fagrskinna sagas, Jomsborg was built by the Danish king, Harold Bluetooth during the 960s, while the Heimskringla saga, describes how Jomsborg was destroyed in 1043 by Dano-Norwegian king Magnus the Good.

Recent excavations in an area [of Wolin] known as Hangmen’s Hill (where public executions were carried out between the 8th and 17th centuries), have led to the discovery of various burials and the charred traces of wooden structures, which the researcher states are the traces of a burnt rampart from the 10th century.

According to Dr Filipowiak, the ramparts indicate the location of the Jomsborg stronghold, which is supported with the discovery of a wooden pier that would have served a trading post during the Viking era.

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2023/...egendary-viking-settlement-of-jomsborg/147482

maximus otter
 
Old but won't win any art prizes.

Viking boat graffiti like this record-setting carving are usually "extremely poorly done."

A 1-inch-long reddish clay stone has a carving of an incomplete Viking ship. The stone is photographed against a rock background.

Iceland's oldest known drawing depicts a partly drawn Viking boat, which includes a sail, a rope connecting the sail to the front of the vessel, and an incomplete hull. (Image credit: Bjarni F. Einarsson)

Archaeologists in Iceland have unearthed the country's oldest known drawing: a scratched-out piece of "Viking graffiti" that looks like a partly drawn boat.

The researchers found the graffiti in the remains of a longhouse, said Bjarni F. Einarsson, an archaeologist and manager at his private company Fornleifafræðistofan (The Archaeological Office) and the project's excavation leader. The scribble was engraved on a 1-inch-wide (2.5 centimeters) reddish clay stone and dates to shortly after A.D. 800.
The ship isn't complete, which is typical of Viking boat graffiti, Einarsson said. But the carving shows a sail with vertical lines, a rope from the sail to the front of the ship and a partly drawn hull. "It's very common that the ships are not drawn [fully] in their hull," Einarsson told Live Science.


Viking Age ship graffiti — both depictions of lone boats and carvings of fleets — are common in Scandinavia and are often found on fragments of bone, stone and timber, he noted. "We don't know why people were carving those ships on all kinds of material," Einarsson said. But "they are extremely poorly done. They are no masterpieces."

The clay stone is just one of many artifacts discovered in the longhouse, which Einarsson uncovered in Stöð, east Iceland, in 2007 while doing an archaeological survey for a company that planned to lay down fiber-optic cable in the area. Thanks to local support and funding, he returned in 2015 to excavate the archaeological site and has returned there every year since.

Radiocarbon and tephra (volcanic ash) dating revealed the Vikings lived in and rebuilt the hall across three phases: before A.D. 800, shortly after 800 and, finally, in the second half of the 800s. These dates match known Viking arrival dates in Iceland; the 12th-century "Book of Settlement," which describes Iceland's early settlement days, states that Viking Age explorers came in the 870s. Archaeological evidence shows that people arrived before then, but the actual date of the first arrival is unknown, Einarsson said.

Artifacts unearthed from the latter half of the ninth century include lead weights, hack silver (a form of currency) and traces of gold, suggesting that the Vikings who lived there were traders.

"This length, combined with the artifacts — silver, lead and gold and an extremely high amount of beads" — indicates that a chieftain lived in the hall, which Einarsson called "the richest hall" from the Viking Age of Iceland. This chieftain probably shared the longhouse with many people, including "families and people of all classes, even slaves," he said.

Einarsson found the ship graffiti while excavating a wall from the middle settlement phase, when the hall was about 141 feet (43 m) long. There are a few contenders for the second-youngest carving in the country, but one shows an engraving of a walrus face from a Viking Age farm in western Iceland that dates to the 10th century, he said.

https://www.livescience.com/archaeo...the-oldest-drawing-ever-discovered-in-iceland
 
Viking era stone crosses hidden in church wall.

A Manx stone cross with an intricate design

Image caption, It is thought the larger stone was part of a bigger memorial for a wealthy person

Two Viking era stone crosses discovered in a Jurby churchyard are "unique" on the island, a heritage body has said.

The carved stones, which date back about 1,000 years, were revealed when a storm knocked down part of the wall at St. Patrick's Church in early 2022.

Andy Johnson from Manx National Heritage (MNH) said the intricate design on one cross was "very special" as it had "never been seen before".

The stones are currently at the Manx Museum ahead of their return to Jurby.

Manx stone crosses are thought to be one of the greatest legacies of early Christian faith and Viking settlement on the Isle of Man. But recognition of their significance diminished over time and the stones, which had featured in a church built around 1699, were used to make up part of the wall after a new church was built in around 1820.

When church warden Sandra Kerrison had been alerted to the collapsed wall last year, she said noticed a piece of slate which looked "a little bit interesting" and contacted the Manx Museum.

However, she said she was "totally shocked" when Mr Johnson, who is curator of field archaeology for MNH, confirmed there were two stone crosses among the rubble.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-66467489
 
Do you comb here often? New information on viking trade routes.

Viking trade connections stretched over hundreds of kilometers to the Arctic, research shows


An Early Viking-Age comb from Hedeby, made of reindeer antler. Photo by Mariana Muñoz-Rodríguez.

Analysis of hair combs made from deer antler has shed new light on the trade routes of Vikings—revealing connections between northern Scandinavia and the edges of continental Europe.

Led by researchers from the University of York, the findings provide evidence of trade connections between the town of Hedeby (modern Schleswig-Holstein, Germany), the largest urban settlement in Viking Age Europe, and upland Scandinavia, hundreds of kilometers to the north.

Biomolecular analysis​

The study confirms the existence of these trade routes through biomolecular analysis of antler combs found there.

Hedeby was a major center of antler-working, with 288,000 antler finds recorded, most of which was waste material from the production of hair combs: a major urban craft in the Viking Age.

The team of archaeologists from the Universities of York, Stockholm and Barcelona as well as the Center for Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology (ZBSA) and the Leibniz Center for Archaeology (LEIZA) analyzed the collagen in the combs to determine the species of deer the antler came from.

Reindeer antler​

The findings revealed that 85–90% of the combs were made from reindeer antler. Reindeer herds were only located in northern Scandinavia, indicating that either the combs themselves or the antlers from which they were made were imported.

A previous study of waste from the production of antler artifacts at the site found that only 0.5% of the waste was from reindeer, and no manufacturing evidence from this early phase is known. Therefore, these combs were almost certainly produced elsewhere. This demonstrates the existence of large-scale, frequent long-range maritime contact between Hedeby and the north as early as AD 800.

Viking-Age Britain​

Dr. Steven Ashby, from the Department of Archaeology at the University of York, said, "We have begun to answer a whole range of questions about the timing of travel and trade in Viking-Age Britain and Scandinavia." ...

https://phys.org/news/2023-09-viking-hundreds-kilometers-arctic.html
 
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