Europa reveals yet another treasure
OSLO, Norway—Archaeologists opened a Viking burial mound on Monday, seeking to learn more about two women—possibly a queen and a princess—laid to rest there 1,173 years ago.
In 1904, the mound in southeastern Norway’s Vestfold County surrendered one of the country’s greatest archaeological treasures, the Oseberg Viking longboat, which is now on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.
The 65-foot vessel was buried in 834 in the enormous mound as the grave ship for a rich and powerful Viking woman, according to the museum.
The remains of the two women, one believed to have been in her 60s and the other in her 30s, were first exhumed during the ship excavation. They were reburied in the mound in 1948—in a modern aluminum casket placed inside a five-ton stone sarcophagus—in hopes that future scientific methods might reveal their secrets.
When experts opened the sarcophagus Monday, it was filled with water, although the casket itself may not have been flooded.
“We were surprised when we removed the lid of the sarcophagus that it was filled with water,” project leader Vivian Wangen of the Museum of Cultural History told the Norwegian news agency NTB. “We hope the casket and the remains are intact. We won’t find out until tomorrow.”