Scandinavian archaeology

7,000-Year-Old Fish Traps Reveal Hunter-Gatherers Stocked Norway’s Mountain Lakes

Wooden fish traps discovered in a mountain lake in southern Norway have revealed that Mesolithic hunter-gatherers deliberately introduced brown trout into waters the fish could…

1,300-Year-Old Ship Burial Discovered in Norway Pushes Viking Age Origins Back by a Century

A 1,300-year-old ship burial discovered in Norway is pushing the origins of the Viking Age back by nearly a century, offering new evidence that complex…

Raknehaugen May Not Be a Royal Burial After All—Study Points to Catastrophic Origin

Raknehaugen, one of the largest prehistoric mounds in Scandinavia, has long been interpreted as the burial place of a powerful Iron Age elite. Yet despite…

Viking Sea Power May Have Emerged in the Roman Era — Not the 8th Century

The Viking Age is traditionally dated to AD 793, when Scandinavian raiders attacked Lindisfarne. But new archaeological interpretations suggest that the foundations of Viking-style sea…

A “Buddha” in a Viking Grave: The 1,000-Year-Old Bucket That Traveled Across Cultures

When archaeologists uncovered the Oseberg ship burial in 1904, most of what they found had already been crushed by time. Wood splintered. Stone collapsed inward.…

A 2,300-Year-Old Fingerprint Found on Scandinavia’s Oldest Wooden Boat

For a brief moment more than 2,300 years ago, a sailor pressed his hand into warm pine pitch while repairing a wooden boat. The gesture…

Rare 9,000-Year-Old Stone Age Hammer Unearthed in Norway Reveals Ancient Settlement

Archaeologists in Eastern Norway have uncovered a rare 9,000-year-old shaft-hole club — essentially a Stone Age hammer — during excavations in Horten, a site that…