For hundreds of years, Norwegians have thought they knew who or what is buried in a huge mound on the island of Reka, off the country's north Atlantic coast. The overgrown hill is named for the 9th-century Viking king Herlaug, who, according to Norwegian folklore, buried himself and 11 of his companions alive to avoid certain defeat at the hands of a rival ruler.
The story of the mass suicide has been thought to be possibly true ever since three tunnels were dug into the burial mound in the late 1700s, uncovering nails, animal bones, a bronze cauldron and a seated skeleton holding a sword. The skeleton, named Herlaug, along with other artefacts from the burial mound, were exhibited for a time at nearby Trondheim Cathedral School, but disappeared completely in the early 1920s, leaving behind an unsolved mystery. Apparently the cauldron was melted down and turned into shoe buckles.
Archaeologists and metal detectorists carried out a small-scale survey of the burial mound last summer for the Norwegian Cultural Heritage Board. They were trying to determine whether, as scholars have long suspected, a ship was moored in the burial mound, which was originally 41 feet tall and 230 feet in diameter. “These large burial mounds have been barely explored, so we know very little about what's in them,” said Geir Gronesby, an archaeologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, who oversaw the excavation.
The researchers dug three shallow trenches at the site and unearthed wood fragments and rivets on iron plates that are likely part of a ship. Though the ship was largely decayed, radiocarbon dating of the wood around the rivets and two charcoal layers higher in the mound indicates that the burial took place around AD 700, making it the oldest known ship burial in Scandinavia.
“We don't know if this was an ocean-going ship – that is, if it traveled across the North Sea to England,” Dr Gronesby said, “but it was seaworthy enough to travel along the coast to the continent.”
The ship grave predates the Viking Age, which lasted from 793 to 1066, by several generations, and refutes the idea that the site, known as Herlaugshaugen, is the final resting place of King Herlaug and his death squad. But the discovery proves that 8th-century inhabitants of the north-central coast were “expert sailors capable of building large ships,” Dr Gronesby said. It also challenges historical theories by setting back the Norwegian tradition of ship graves and juxtaposing it with earlier, spectacular examples such as the ship burial at Valsgård in Uppland, Sweden, and the ship burial at Sutton Hoo, Suffolk, England. Archaeologists distinguish between Old Norse ships and ships by their length, but disagree on where to draw the line: some say 39 feet, others 46 feet.
Valsgård is now a farm near the River Firis and between the 6th and 11th centuries it was the site of a series of burials in boats complete with cooking utensils, horses, decorative shields, helmets, weapons, feather duvets and pillows – all the necessities a great warrior would need in the afterlife.
Sutton Hoo contains about 20 tombs, one of which contains the remains of an 89-foot clinker rowing boat from the 7th century. Historians generally agree that Sutton Hoo was the burial site of the Uffinga family, an East Anglian royal dynasty, and that the boat burial in Mound 1 commemorates the death in AD 624 of the Anglo-Saxon king Raedwald, who converted to Christianity (although he was not entirely devout, maintaining a temple with altars to both Christian and pagan gods). Mound 2 was destroyed by looters, but may have contained Raedwald's son or nephew, and possibly a small boat.
Jan Bill, curator of the Viking ship collection at the University of Oslo, who was not involved in the Herlaugshaugen project, said that if the timeline is correct, the findings would be “part of a growing body of evidence that suggests that while the earliest examples in Norway date back only to the 8th century, in Scandinavia the use of ship symbolism in royal burials dates back to the late 6th or 7th century.”
Barrow Building
Norway is full of ancient burial mounds. A 2017 survey found about 2,300 burial mounds, some more than 66 feet wide at their base. Some, like one that once stood elsewhere on the island of Inderoy, have a fairy-tale mysticism. According to legend, a king conquered Inderoy in battle and placed a dog named Saurus on his throne. Locals used magic to imbue the animal with the knowledge of three wise men, and his enchanted, or enlightened, reign lasted for years. The dog eventually found his master and was buried in a mound called Saksjaug, which is Norwegian for Saurus' mound.
Dog mounds appear to have been less common than ship mounds, which were once a fairly standard burial structure across Scandinavia. In ship mounds, the dead were laid on a ship and given grave goods according to social rank. It was common for stones and earth to be piled on top of the body to create a grave. Dr Gronnesby said many of the monumental mounds in ancient Norway were built as symbols of wealth and prestige for the power elite, and were in places where passers-by would not miss them.
Herlaugshaugen, located on the coast, was an important stopover in the trade of goods to mainland Europe and was visible to all who sailed there. “The mound was probably built as a display of grandeur and the ship was linked to religious ideas about the afterlife,” Dr Gronesby said. “The ship was a means of transport to the underworld.”
The Herlaugshaugen finds shed new light on the Merovingian period, which lasted from roughly 550 to 793 and was a precursor to the Viking Age. It's a very obscure period in the region's history from which very few archaeological remains have been found, despite it sparking a boom in ship burials. In Norway, many of the farms today are in the same places as they were 1,400 years ago. “But very little excavation has been done in farm gardens,” Dr Gronesby said.
The site unearthed was a huge, multi-purpose Scandinavian tenement house reminiscent of the Old English epic poem Beowulf, which begins by describing Denmark's mythical first king, Syld Sjöffing, being cast out to sea from his birthplace and laid to rest on a richly decorated funeral ship. “These halls often contain small gold plates with pagan motifs called gilt figures,” Dr Gronesby said. “The plates often show a man facing a woman holding a cup.”
Similar decorative plates, larger and featuring sword-wielding designs, have been found on helmets from Valsgård and Sutton Hoo. “These motifs are usually interpreted in terms of Norse mythology,” Dr Gronesby said.
The bronze cauldron at Herlaugshaugen was discovered during the first excavations in 1755. At the time, the mound was thought to contain the remains of a giant named Herlo. Little is known about the ship presumed to have been buried there, but recently discovered rivets suggest that it was probably comparable in length to two 9th-century ships (the Oseberg and Gokstad, measuring 71 and 78 feet long, respectively) found in a burial mound in Vestfold county, Norway. “During the first excavations at Herlaugshaugen in 1755, a hole was found running through the mound,” Dr. Gronesby said. “In the light of the legend, this was interpreted as an air vent.” The current theory is that the hole is the remains of a mast, and in any case, a ship was buried in the mound at least 150 years before the royal burial was supposed to have taken place.
Or not
In his Heimskringla, a bloody and spiteful saga of Old Norse kings, the 13th-century Icelandic sage Snorri Sturluson tells of two brothers, Herlaug and Hrólaug, who co-ruled the small kingdom of Naumdal, which included the island of Reka. The kings had the misfortune of reigning under an ambitious warlord, Harald Fairhair, who vowed not to cut his hair until he had united all of Norway under one monarchy, earning him the nickname “Luffa,” or “Shockhead.”
According to Sturluson, Herlaug and Hrolaug spent three years building a huge tomb out of stone, lime, and wood. They had just finished when news arrived that Harald and his powerful army were on their way. Expecting defeat, Hrolaug joined the enemy. However, Herlaug refused to submit, and instead brought large quantities of meat and drink to the tomb. He then entered the tomb with eleven men and ordered the tomb to be sealed as a final resistance.
Many rulers throughout history have figuratively dug their own graves, but King Hellaug is perhaps the only one to do so literally.