Dendrochronological dating of the Viking Age ship burials at Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune, Norway.

Dendrochronological dating of the Viking Age ship burials at Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune, Norway. Dendrochronology dendrochronology:see dating. dendrochronologyMethod of scientific dating based on the analysis of tree rings. Because the width of annular rings varies with climatic conditions, laboratory analysis of timber core samples allows scientists to now provides a date, exact nearly to the year, forthree Viking Age Viking Age is the term denoting the years from about 800 to 1066 in Scandinavian History[1][2][3]. The vikings explored Europe by its oceans and rivers through trade and warfare. burial mounds of special importance for chronology in Scandinaviaand across early medieval northern Europe. Their dating used to dependon the style of the carved wooden artefacts in the grave goods In archaeology and anthropology grave goods are the items buried along with the body.They are usually personal possessions, supplies to smooth the deceased's journey into the afterlife or offerings to the gods. Grave goods are a type of votive deposit. ; now thegrave-goods are exactly and independently dated by the tree-rings, those same links will provide dating bridges acrossthe Viking world. The Norwegian ship-burials and their dating The dating of the important finds in the burial mounds at Oseberg,Gokstad and Tune in southeast Norway (FIGURE 1), now on display in theViking Ship Museum in Oslo The Viking Ship Museum (in Norwegian Vikingskipshuset - The Viking Ship House) is located at Bygd?y in Oslo, Norway. It is part of the Museum of Cultural History of the University of Oslo, and houses the Viking ships from Tune, Gokstad, and Oseberg. , is central to our understanding of VikingAge chronology and stylistic development. In particular the Osebergfind, with its content of unique carved wooden items, surpasses allother single finds from the Viking period. [CHART OMITTED] The Gokstad and Oseberg sites are situated in the county ofVestfold on the western side of the Fiord fiord:see fjord. of Oslo. The two sites wereexcavated in 1880 and 1904 respectively. The Tune site is situated onthe eastern side of the same fiord in the county of Ostfold and wasexcavated as early as 1867. It was a sensation at the time, and althoughthe ships in the Gokstad and Oseberg mounds clearly surpass it, it wasthe first substantial archaeological evidence of a ship used by theVikings. In all three cases we are dealing with burials where the dead layin a grave chamber constructed of wood and placed in a ship along withthe grave goods, the whole covered by a mound. Until now the dating of the three Norwegian ship burials has beenlargely based on evaluations of the decorated wooden artefacts recoveredduring the excavations. Viking Age art can be divided up into several stylistic periods,which replace and overlap each other throughout the three centuries ofthe Viking Age. They are all based on the Nordic animal style which wasinspired by western European, in particular Irish, ornamentation ornamentationIn music, the addition of notes for expressive and aesthetic purposes. For example, a long note may be ornamented by repetition or by alternation with a neighboring note (“trill”); a skip to a nonadjacent note can be filled in with the intervening . Theresult was an independent and original Nordic style. The traditionallyaccepted sequence of Viking Age styles begins with the 'OsebergStyle' around AD 800, continuing with the 'Borre Style',named after another important mound find in the county of Vestfold. Thiswas followed by the 'Jellinge Style', named after a silver cupfound in a Danish mound in Jutland, dated to the second half of the 10thcentury. The style of what is regarded as late Viking art has been giventhe name 'Ringerike Style', after a group of decorated stonesin Norway, and ends with the 'Urnes Style' from the late 11thand early 12th centuries, which is named after an early wooden church inwestern Norway. This is only an extremely brief summary of thechronological sequence Noun 1. chronological sequence - a following of one thing after another in time; "the doctor saw a sequence of patients"chronological succession, succession, successiveness, sequencetemporal arrangement, temporal order - arrangement of events in time of Viking art styles. The definition of thedifferent periods, often with sub-divisions, and their dating are underconstant debate, and differ according to according toprep.1. As stated or indicated by; on the authority of: according to historians.2. In keeping with: according to instructions.3. the background and nationalityof the contributor (Schetelig 1920; Wilson & Klint-Jensen 1966;Karlsson 1983; Roesdahl & Wilson 1992). The stylistic analyses of items from these finds have been carriedout first and foremost by the Norwegian archaeologist Haakon Shetelig.As a young man he took part in the excavation of Oseberg and laterplayed an important role in the publication of the find, as well ascontributing extensively to the international discussion about thechronology of Viking art. In publishing the wooden artefacts from Oseberg, Shetelig alsodealt with the Gokstad find as well as the metal artefacts from bothGokstad and Borre. He concluded that what he called the Early OsebergStyle began around AD 800, whilst his Later Oseberg Style was fixed ataround the middle of the 9th century. He dated the Borre Style in theGokstad and Borre finds to after AD 900 (Schetelig 1920). The leader ofthe excavation of the Gokstad mound, Nicolay Nicolaysen Nicolay Nicolaysen (born 1817 — died 1911) was a Norwegian archaeologist. He is most famous for excavating the Gokstad ship burial at Gokstad farm in Sandar, Sandefjord, Vestfold, Norway, in 1880. , had earlierdated the burial to c. AD 900 (Nicolaysen 1882) (FIGURE 2). In a lectureto the Nordic Archaeological Meeting in Helsinki in 1925, Shetelig laterchanged his views with regard to the Oseberg find (FIGURE 3). Based onanalysis of the Irish artefacts in the find he revised the date for thestart of the Early Oseberg Style to between AD 820 and 830 (Shetelig1926), which for him consequently meant that the burial at Oseberg hadto be dated to AD 850 or later. This date was subsequently, and stillis, generally accepted (Roesdahl & Wilson 1992). [CHART OMITTED] In 1917 Shetelig also published the Tune ship-burial. A fewfragments of wood carved in the Borre style, possibly from a saddle,were the only datable artefacts. Shetelig concluded that the Tune burialwas contemporary with that at Gokstad (Schetelig 1917). After the reconstruction of the Gokstad mound in 1930, BjornHougen, later Professor of Archaeology in Oslo, again took up thediscussion concerning its age. Using as evidence some bronzestrap-mounts that were found during the reconstruction work, of whichone was decorated in a pure version of Jellinge Style, Hougen concludedthat the grave was from 'very early in the 10th century'(Hougen 1934). Other methods have also been employed in the efforts to date thesefinds. In 1959 the Radiological Dating Laboratory in Trondheim carriedout the radiocarbon dating of a sample of oak wood from the gravechamber in the Oseberg ship The Oseberg ship is a Viking ship which was found in a large burial mound at the Oseberg farm near T?nsberg in Vestfold county, Norway. It was excavated by Swedish archaeologist Gabriel Gustafson, and Norwegian archaeologist Haakon Shetelig in 1904-1905. . The result in radiocarbon years was 1190[+or -]60 b.p. (T-37) (Nydal 1959), giving a calibrated cal��i��brate?tr.v. cal��i��brat��ed, cal��i��brat��ing, cal��i��brates1. To check, adjust, or determine by comparison with a standard (the graduations of a quantitative measuring instrument): age of AD 880, orwith [+ or -] one standard deviation AD 780--960 (Stuiver & Pearson1993). Results of recent archaeological investigations carried out inRibe, Denmark (Jensen 1991), indicate that a revision of the chronologyof early Viking art styles is necessary; the whole chronology possiblyneeds to be moved further back in time. Thus the precise dating of thesekey Norwegian finds is more pressing than ever. Dendrochronology of the ship-burials Within recent decades dendrochronology has established itself asone of the most important scientific dating methods in northwestEuropean archaeology (for a general introduction to the method seeBaillie 1982). It offers the archaeologist and historian an exact answerto the most important question posed in connection with anarchaeological find -- how old is it? The result is often so precisethat every recognized theory which conflicts with it is immediatelydiscredited (Bonde & Christensen 1982; Christiansen 1982). During the course of the 1980s, several major master chronologieshave been built up for oak (Quercus sp.) in southern Scandinavia,covering the period from the present day back to the Iron Age. Atpresent there is no chronology for oak in Norway, but work is inprogress. Preliminary investigations of the annual rings annual rings,the growth layers of wood that are produced each year in the stems and roots of trees and shrubs. In climates with well-marked alternations of seasons (either cold and warm or wet and dry), the wood cells produced when water is easily available and of living treesin southern Norway show that it is possible to match a regionalchronology for oak from the coastal regions around the Kattegat withmaster chronologies from Denmark and southern Sweden (Kjeld Christensenpers. comm.). This means that under favourable circumstances a'floating' chronology, based on oak material from the southernNorwegian mixed forest region, can be dated using one or more of themaster chronologies which already exist for the areas around theKattegat. As the result of co-operation between the University Museum ofNational Antiquities in Oslo and the National Museum of Denmark, aseries of wood samples have been removed from the Oseberg, Gokstad andTune finds for the purposes of dendrochronological dating. The procedurein the investigation was first to produce a 'floating'regional chronology for the Oslo Fiord area, based on samples from thethree sites. Attempts were then made to match this with existing masterchronologies for southern Sweden (Bartholin 1985; Brathen 1982) andDenmark. Selection of samples The three localities of Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune lie between 20and 50 km apart. We can assume that climatic conditions were more orless uniform over the whole area around the sites. When choosing itemsfor dating, emphasis was therefore placed on samples from trees whichwould be expected to have been felled close to the site of end use, i.e.the burial mounds. In all three cases, samples from the ships themselveswere avoided as there is always some doubt as to the origin of timberwhich has gone into the building of a ship. For example,dendrochronological investigations of samples from Wreck 2 from thefamous Skuldelev find near Roskilde, Denmark, showed that the ship wasbuilt of timber from trees which had grown in the area around Dublin,Ireland (Bonde & Crumlin-Pedersen 1990). The investigation concentrated on timber which had been used inbuilding the grave chambers at the three sites. The oak trees whichproduced the timber for the chambers at Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune weresurely felled for the purpose of building the burial chambers; thefelling dates for these timbers will therefore correspond to the ages ofthe burials. There would not have been any significant storage orseasoning period for the timber after felling, as it was normal to useand work timber in the fresh, newly felled state. Newly cut trees aremuch easier to work with hand-tools, axes, wedges and so on. Presumably pre��sum��a��ble?adj.That can be presumed or taken for granted; reasonable as a supposition: presumable causes of the disaster. we only have to take into account the time it took to transport thetimber from the felling site to the burial mound, traditionally a matterof months, not years, and in this investigation we might be talkingabout weeks or maybe even days. The grave chambers were never meant to be seen. In Oseberg andGokstad they were primitively built. They were made of roughly cleft andhewn hewn?v.A past participle of hew.Adj. 1. hewn - cut or shaped with hard blows of a heavy cutting instrument like an ax or chisel; "a house built of hewn logs"; "rough-hewn stone"; "a path hewn through the underbrush" planks and posts and placed like a tent in the centre of the ships.They were more or less intact, if we ignore the damage done when thegraves were broken into, probably already in the Viking period. The Oseberg grave chamber is now stored at the Viking Ship Museumin Oslo (FIGURE 4) and the material is extremely well preserved,although it has never undergone any extensive conservation treatment inany modern sense of the word. Only the surface of the timber has beenoccasionally treated with linseed oil linseed oil,amber-colored, fatty oil extracted from the cotyledons and inner coats of the linseed. The raw oil extracted from the seeds by hydraulic pressure is pale in color and practically without taste or odor. . The chamber was built completelyof oak. Twelve samples were taken, two from the gables, one from avertical post which bore the ridge pole and nine from planks whichprobably come from the roof. [CHART OMITTED] The Gokstad grave chamber is on display at the Viking Ship Museum Viking Ship Museum may refer to: Viking Ship Museum in Oslo Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde (FIGURE 5) and the timber is also very well preserved. It has probablyundergone the same treatment as the timber from Oseberg. The chamber wasbuilt of timber from both oak and pine. Four samples were taken, alloak, one of which probably derives from the roof of the grave chamberand three from the gable nearest the ship's mast. [CHART OMITTED] The grave chamber in the Tune ship was only rudimentarily preservedand the material is also stored in the Viking Ship Museum (FIGURE 6).Only four small pieces of oak timber from the chamber itself were saved.It seems to be of a totally different construction from those at Gokstadand Oseberg. It has a square chamber with walls made of radically splitplanks and a flat roof, showing closer affinities to other Scandinavianchamber graves from the tenth century. Two samples were taken, both ofwhich probably came from the vertical wall of the chamber. [CHART OMITTED] All of the samples were taken as cross-sections by sawing throughthe timber pieces. These will be restored again after the investigation. Results The tree-ring curves from Oseberg can be combined to give achronology covering 299 years. Similarly the curves from Gokstad andTune also fit together, producing chronologies of 340 and 184 yearsrespectively. The chronologies from the three localities fit togethervery well and form the basis for constructing a regional chronologycovering a total of 357 years, using results from a total of 18 samples.This regional chronology, given the name 'Oslo Fiord -- VikingAge', can be dated against the master chronologies from southernSweden and Denmark (TABLE 1). It covers the period from AD 536 to 892. Denmark Scania W. Gotland (1) (2) (3)Oslo FiordViking Age 5.36 4.45 3.52 If the results from the three sites, Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune, aretreated separately the following is evident (FIGURE 7): The local chronology from Oseberg covers the period AD 536--834;all 12 samples were dated. Ten samples had intact sapwood sapwood,relatively thin, youngest, outer part of the woody stem of a tree, the part that conducts water and dissolved materials. In the cross section of a tree, the sapwood is recognizable by its texture and color; it is softer and lighter than the inner heartwood. , of which fivehad bark rings in which only early wood had formed. The last annual ringwas formed in AD 834, which means that the wood samples came from treesfelled in the summer of AD 834. The local chronology for Gokstad covers the period AD 548--887; allfour samples from the grave chamber were dated. None of the samples hadintact sapwood. The outermost out��er��most?adj.Most distant from the center or inside; outmost.outermostAdjectivefurthest from the centre or middleAdj. 1. preserved annual ring was formed in AD887. Finally, the local chronology for Tune covers the period AD709--892; both samples were dated. Neither of the samples had intactsapwood. The outermost preserved annual ring was formed in AD 892. [CHART OMITTED] Datings The result from Oseberg means that the building of the gravechamber can be dated to the summer of AD 834. The identification of thefelling season corresponds well with the results of the botanicalinvestigations which were carried out shortly after the excavation ofthe burial mound in 1904: 'The Oseberg mound was built during thecourse of the late summer or early autumn, in all possibility August orperhaps September' (Holmboe 1917: 205). The date for the construction of the grave chambers at Gokstad andTune cannot be determined with the same accuracy because none of thesamples had sapwood preserved. The relative dating Before the advent of absolute dating in the 20th century, archaeologists and geologists were largely limited to the use of Relative Dating techniques. It estimates the order of prehistoric and geological events were determined by using basic stratigraphic rules, and by observing of the Gokstadsamples shows, however, that the outermost annual ring lies very closeto the border between heartwood heartwood,the central, woody core of a tree, no longer serving for the conduction of water and dissolved minerals; heartwood is usually denser and darker in color than the outer sapwood. and sapwood. In three of the samples thelast annual ring was formed in AD 883 and in the fourth it was formed inAD 887. Three of the samples show no traces of tool marks (from axesetc.) on the surface where the sapwood joins the heartwood; they havenot been worked. The indications are that it is just the sapwood ringswhich are missing. This observation requires further verification, e.g.from samples with sapwood present. The felling date can therefore be calculated by adding an estimatednumber of sapwood rings which have rotted away to the last preservedannual ring in the heartwood. As there is lack of available information about the number ofsapwood rings in Norwegian oak trees, a simple arithmetic average of thenumber of sapwood rings in the five samples from Oseberg with completesapwood preserved has been calculated. The average number is 14, theminimum being 10 and the maximum 16. This is clearly an inadequate dataset on which to base such a calculation and the figure 14 will need tobe confirmed by further work. However, although the number of tree-ringsin the sapwood in oak trees in northern Europe is still open to debate,the small number of sapwood rings in the Oseberg material is supportedby a number of investigations carried out in other regions which, likethe Oslo Fiord area, are close to the limit of the natural distributionof oak in northern Europe (Baillie et al. 1985; Hillam et al. 1987;Wazny 1990; Bonde unpublished). If we use the average number of sapwood rings from Oseberg as abasis for compensating for the missing rings in the samples from Gokstadwe arrive at a felling date of around AD 900, presumably in the range AD900--905; this is the date for the construction of the chamber. The same technique can also be applied to the samples from Tune,where the material case is even more scanty. The outermost annual ringsin the two samples, formed in AD 891 and AD 892 respectively, are alsothought to lie close to the heartwood--sapwood boundary. If wecompensate for the missing sapwood rings as above, the felling date forthese trees is found to lie in the first decade of the 10th century,i.e. AD 905--910. Here too, the felling date also gives the date ofconstruction of the chamber. Discussion The dating of the three grave chambers provides us with a terminus Terminus(tûr`mĭnəs), in ancient Rome, both the boundary markers between properties and the name of the god who watched over boundaries. ante quem for the objects in the burial mounds; it reveals thatapproximately two generations elapsed e��lapse?intr.v. e��lapsed, e��laps��ing, e��laps��esTo slip by; pass: Weeks elapsed before we could start renovating.n. between the burial at Oseberg andthe burials at Gokstad and Tune. The result also confirmsShetelig's conclusion in 1917 that the Tune and Gokstad burials canbe regarded as contemporary. Accordingly, the start of the Early OsebergStyle must be fixed at the end of the second half of the 8th century, inagreement with the results of recent archaeological investigations inDenmark. The start of the Viking period has traditionally been linked withthe plundering of the monastery on the English island English Island may refer to: English Island, Isles of Scilly, an uninhabited rocklet in the Isles of Scilly in the United Kingdom English Island (South Australia), an island in the Sir Joseph Banks Group off the coast of Eyre Peninsula in Australia. of Lindisfarne inAD 793. This was clearly an important event in the local community, butin the light of the results from the Norwegian sites presented here andof the results from the last 10--15 years of archaeological researchcarried out in Denmark, this date for the opening of the Viking periodcomes under increasing scrutiny (Hvass 1986; Bonde 1989; Jensen 1991;Christensen 1991; Bonde et al. 1990; 1992). All the indications are that the period which in Nordic archaeologyis referred to as the Viking period has its beginning much earlier thanthe Lindisfarne raid, presumably early in the 8th century. It is onlythe absence of written sources from this time which has until nowjustified the use of the Viking attack on the Northumbrian monastery asthe beginning of the Viking Period. The material evidence tells anotherstory! With the dating of the Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune burials,archaeologists and art historians have been provided with yet anotherfixed point which can be used to date finds from the Early Viking Age.This result is not only of significance for objects from southernScandinavia but also for those which are thought to originate in Verb 1. originate in - come fromstem - grow out of, have roots in, originate in; "The increase in the national debt stems from the last war" Englandand Ireland. Acknowledgements. Dr Thomas S. Bartholin, University of Lund,Sweden, Prof. Dieter Eckstein Dieter Eckstein (born March 12, 1964 in Kehl) is a retired German football player, who played for several German clubs plus clubs in Switzerland and England.He played for the Germany national team, for which he played 7 matches. Eckstein was a participant at the EURO 1988. , University of Hamburg As of 2006, the University of Hamburg supports 6 Collaborative Research Centres (Sonderforschungsbereiche, SFB), 6 Research Groups, 7 Research Training Groups (all funded by the DFG), 2 Max Planck Inter-national Research Schools, 13 Young Scientist Groups (Emmy-Noether-Programme, BMBF, , Germany, and DrTomasz Wazny, Academy of fine Arts, Warsaw, Poland, have kindly madetheir master chronologies available for this study. Thedendrochronological dating of the Norwegian finds forms part of aproject being carried out by the Natural Science Research Unit of theNational Museum of Denmark into the chronology of the Viking Period. The article was translated into English by David Robinson David Robinson or Dave Robinson is a name shared by the following individuals: David Robinson (philanthropist) (1904-1987), British entrepreneur, philanthropist and owner of racing stables who was knighted in 1985 . References BAILLIE, M.G.L. 1982. Tree-ring dating and archaeology. London:Croom Helm. BAILLIE, M.G.L. & J.R. PILCHER. 1973. A simple cross-datingprogram for tree-ring research, Tree-Ring Bulletin 33: 7--14. BAILLIE, M.G.L., J. HILLAM, K.R. BRIFFA & D.M. BROWN. 1985.Re-dating the English arthistorical tree-ring chronologies, Nature 315:317--19. BARTHOLIN, T.S. 1985. Dendrochronology in Sweden, ISKOS 5: 489--97. BONDE, N. 1989. Dendrokronologiske dateringer pa Nationalmuseet1988 -- Dendrochronological datings, The National Museum, 1988,Arkaeologiske udgravninger i Danmark 1988: 229--41. BONDE, N. & K. CHRISTENSEN. 1982. 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