Viking grave found in Oslo

A Viking grave has been discovered in the center of Oslo, the capital of Norway. This autumn, during the construction of a new house, a grave with the remains of a shield was discovered. It was the first burial rich in artifacts excavated by archaeologists in Oslo.

“The place was a prominent hill and a great view,” says Marianne Bugge Kremer for sciencenorway.no. She works as an archaeologist at the Cultural Heritage Office of the Municipality of Oslo.

Here, on the upper side of a small pond called Holmendammen, someone in the Viking Age decided to make a grave. Today it is a residential area in the western part of Oslo.

“The grave was located under a thin layer of soil and turf on the eastern side of the highest point of the site, offering a fantastic view to the west, to today’s Holmendammen. It was a valley where the Holmenbecken stream flowed in ancient times,” Kremer said.

She was responsible for the study of the Viking grave, which appeared when archaeologists explored the site. The investigation was prompted by plans to build a new mansion on the Holmendammen site in the Vestre Aker district of Oslo.

The Viking Age is defined as the period between 800 and 1066 AD.

This is a preliminary date. The buckle found in the grave can tell about who is buried here.

“This type of cape brooch was used by men, and along with the discovery of a shield protrusion, it can be assumed that the deceased was a man,” said Zanett Tsigaridas Glorstad, an archaeologist and assistant professor at the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo. She works with the Holmendammen find in the museum.

Much information can be gleaned from archaeological finds. DNA can be extracted from bones and can, for example, reveal relationship, sex, and other inherited characteristics.

One notable example of this is the famous Viking grave at Birka in Sweden. For more than 150 years, the man buried there was believed to be a male warrior, until researchers conducted a genomic analysis in 2017 that showed the remains were actually those of a woman.

But the remains from the grave at Holmendammen may not be able to be examined in this way.

“Right now, the objects are in our conservation lab and we are waiting for them to be ready before we can say anything about the objects. We did not find the remains of unburned bones, so we cannot extract DNA from what we found, ”Glorstad said.

It remains to be seen what information the researchers will be able to uncover about the person who was buried here. The find report is currently being prepared.

She says this is the first artifact-rich Viking grave in Oslo that archaeologists have unearthed.