Ship burial

Model of the Sutton Hoo ship's structure as it might have appeared, with chamber area outlined

A ship burial or boat grave is a burial in which a ship or boat is used either as a container for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. If the ship is very small, it is called a boat grave. This style of burial was used among the Germanic peoples, particularly by Viking Age Norsemen, but has been practised in Scandinavia since at least the earliest Iron Age, as evidenced by the Hjortspring boat grave and the Nydam Mose ships.

A unique eye-witness account of a 10th-century ship burial among the Volga Vikings is given by Arab traveller Ibn Fadlan.^[1]

Viking Age ship burials

Scandinavia

• Ladby - from Kerteminde on the island of Funen, Denmark^[2]
• Gokstad - from Kongshaugen, Vestfold, Norway^[3]
• Oseberg - from Oseberg farm near Tønsberg in Vestfold, Norway^[4]
• Tune - from Haugen farm on Rolvsøy in Tune, Østfold, Norway ^[5]
• Valsgärde - from a farm on the Fyris River, Gamla Uppsala, Sweden
• Vendel - from Ottarshögen (the mound of Ohthere) in Uppland, Sweden
• Anundshög - the mound of Anund just outside Västerås in Västmanland, Sweden^[6]
• Nabberör near Nabbelund, Öland, a ship burial from the Vendel Period^[7][8] with four skeletons,^[9] formerly covered by a cairn and now heavily damaged.^[10]

British Isles

Viking/Norse burial

• Balladoole and Knock-e-Dooney - Viking ship burials on the Isle of Man^[11]
• Port an Eilean Mhòir - The only Viking burial yet discovered in mainland Britain, the mound was found in 2006 and excavated in 2011^[12]
• The Scar boat burial - a Viking burial found on Sanday, one the Orkney Islands ^[13]

Anglo-Saxon

• Snape - from Snape Common in Suffolk, East Anglia, England
• Sutton Hoo - Anglo-Saxon burial site near Woodbridge, Suffolk, England

Northern Europe

• Salme ships - from the island of Saaremaa, Estonia

Eastern Europe

• Rurikovo Gorodishche - situated on an island on the Volkhov River near Veliky Novgorod, Russia
• Sarskoye Gorodishche - from a medieval fortified settlement in Yaroslavl Oblast, Russia
• Timerevo - from site near the village of Bolshoe Timeryovo, Yaroslavl, Russia
• Black Grave - from the largest burial mound in Chernihiv, Ukraine

See also

Media related to Ship burials at Wikimedia Commons

• Norse funeral
• Ímar Ua Donnubáin, legendary Irish navigator of partial Norse descent
• Stone ship
• Chariot burial (Iron Age tradition)
• Solar barge (Bronze Age tradition)
• Khufu ship (Ancient Egypt)

References

1. Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North (Penguin Classics 2012, ISBN 9780140455076), Introduction by Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone, pp. xxiii-xxiv.
2. The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde
3. Gokstadhaugen - Artificial Mound in Norway
4. Osebergskipet - The Oseberg Ship, Norway
5. Viking Ship Museum at Bygdøy
6. Anundshög, Stoneship
7. Larsson, Gunilla (2007). Ship and society: maritime ideology in Late Iron Age Sweden. Uppsala Universitet, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History. p. 415. ISBN 9789150619157.
8. Incorporated, Walter De Gruyter (2002). Naualia - Ãstfold. Walter de Gruyter. p. 595. ISBN 9783110903515.
9. Strömberg, Märta (1961). Untersuchungen zur jüngeren Eisenzeit in Schonen: Textband. Mit einem Beitrag von J. Lepiksaar. R. Habelt.
10. Mikroficheupplaga av Tillväxten. Kungl. Vitterhets, historie och antikvitets akademien. 1946. p. xcix.
11. Vikings on Mann
12. "Viking boat burial site discovered in Scottish Highlands". Channel 4 News. Retrieved 2011-10-19.
13. The Scar Viking Boat Burial