As the saying goes, dogs are men’s best friends, but archaeological excavations in Norway prove that even 1,100 years ago, women cared about their four-legged companions like men.
Archaeologists at the Norwegian Arctic University Museum revealed that there are 10th-century Viking ship graves on the Norwegian Island. As Norwegian Science first reported, the buried person may be women of the elite. Most notably, the team found a dog that was carefully buried under her feet.
“It seems to be real caution,” museum archaeologist Anja Roth Niemi, who presumably participated in the excavation, told Norway. “There are stories that when their dogs get sick, outstanding people do their best. So even then, people have a deep connection with animals.”
Two years ago, a metal detector first discovered brooch and bones at the scene just 7.9 inches (20 cm). The Norwegian Arctic University Museum suspected the existence of a funeral of Viking women, applied for permission to investigate and was finally able to perform proper excavations when the landowner decided to expand the garage of the property.
“After removing the upper layer of the soil, it was obvious that it was a boat grave,” the museum wrote in a social media post. “The rotten wood on the boat was visible in the underground soil a thin dark strip of strips of color, about where the bowl of brooch was found in the middle.”
Norway’s Science Norway said the work showed a 17.7-foot-long (5.4-meter) boat in which a Viking woman and a dog were buried next to objects associated with elite tombs, including bones or amber beads, pendants and ornate brooches. This is not the first time archaeologists have discovered that dogs remain with the Vikings, but it provides further evidence that dogs were even precious companions 1,100 years ago.
Norwegian reports that the brooch design – with silver thread function, making the team’s grave dates about 900 to 950 CE. They also show that the buried person is a woman, because the oval brooch is usually the jewel of Viking women, although only bone analysis can undoubtedly confirm this. Furthermore, the ship’s grave and grave fully demonstrate that the woman is a productive person.
“Only the elite can get such a funeral,” Nimi told Norwegian Science. Niemi and her colleagues also discovered agricultural tools and textile tools, which linked funerals to Viking women. Further analysis will confirm the individual’s gender and she illuminates her age, height, diet and health while also giving a deeper understanding of the Viking burial tradition. Additionally, after discovering another brooch not far from burial, archaeologists hope to continue investigating the area in a bid to find another grave.
According to the museum’s post, the last few days of excavation were spent “recording everything about the grave and fixing it for transportation and storage until detailed inspections can be performed under controlled conditions in the Tromsø laboratory.”
I want them to put the woman and her pet in Tromso so that the dog can continue to be among the owners of the afterlife, just as they were when they were all alive.
