Work on investigating the possible discovery of a Viking ship in Østfold began in Halden municipality on Monday.
It’s great to get started, and it will be exciting to see what happens next week. It probably won’t take many days before we encounter something, says excavation leader and archaeologist Christian Løchsen Rødsrud from the Museum of Cultural History (Kulturhistorisk museum) at the University of Oslo to NRK.
The museum and the county conservator in Østfold county municipality are behind the investigations of the Gjellestad site. The excavation will end on September 6th.
The three Viking ship discoveries found earlier in this country are the Gokstad ship found at Sandefjord in 1880, the Oseberg ship found at Tønsberg in 1904, and the Tune ship found at Fredrikstad in 1867.
Whether there is actually a ship under the ground in Halden remains to be seen.
We do not know what we will find or how well preserved it is, says Rødsrud.
On Monday, archaeologists began the two-week long and painstaking work of filtering the soil in Østfold in search of cultural treasures.
What is important to us now is that we do as little damage as possible to the discovery, while at the same time we need to get more information to find out what to do next, says archaeologist Sigrid Mannsåker Gundersen.
Last year, the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU – Norsk institutt for kulturminneforskning) surveyed the ground in Halden with a georadar that showed the outline of a ship. The images also indicate that the earth has tombs and settlements that may be older than the Gjellestad ship.
© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today
