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The Oseberg Ship Burial, Norway: New Thoughts On the Skeletons From the
Grave Mound

Article  in  European Journal of Archaeology · August 2006

DOI: 10.1177/1461957107086123

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 HE OSEBERG SHIP BURIAL, NORWAY:
T NEW THOUGHTS ON THE SKELETONS
FROM THE GRAVE MOUND

Per Holck
University of Oslo, Norway

Abstract: In 1904, a Viking Age ship was found and excavated in Oseberg, on the west side of the
Oslo Fjord, south of Oslo, Norway. The skeletal remnants of two females buried onboard were
anthropologically examined during the inter-war years. Questions surrounding their identities
have prompted much speculation, and many people like to believe that one of the women could be
Queen Åsa, the grandmother of Norway’s first king. When the skeletons were reburied in 1948, a
few smaller pieces were held back and stored in the Anatomical Institute at the University of Oslo.
Those fragments have now been radiocarbon dated at 1220±40 and 1230±40 BP. Their similar δ13 =
–21.6‰/–21.0‰ indicates that they both were nourished by a diet consisting primarily of terrestrial
food and only to a lesser degree by fish. To answer the question of whether the two women were
related, Dr Tom Gilbert at the Panum Institute in Copenhagen managed to obtain a DNA profile
from the younger of the two, which profile indicates that her sample falls into the haplogroup U7.
This finding is interesting, as this haplogroup is nearly absent in modern Europeans but is com-
mon in Iranians. Perhaps this could mean that the young lady’s ancestors came from the district
around the Black Sea, as Snorri Sturlusson notes in his Saga. Unfortunately, the bones from the
older woman were too contaminated to provide a clear profile. Because there is reason to fear that
the reburied skeletal material will slowly disintegrate in the coffins, some scholars desired that the
mound be reopened in order to save the remains and to determine whether it is possible to obtain
another DNA profile before such an opportunity is lost.

Keywords: anthropology, DNA, Norway, Oseberg ship, Viking Age

I NTRODUCTION
The Norwegian Oseberg ship is internationally probably the best known monu-
ment from the Viking Age (Fig. 1). Each year, the Viking Ship House in Oslo is vis-
ited by nearly half a million people, most of them foreigners. The moment they
step inside the door, these visitors are met with the overwhelming impression of
the high, slender and elegantly carved stem. Some of them can hardly believe that
this is a genuine ship, more than a thousand years old, and not a modern replica.
Computerized examination of the ship in 2005 has provided new knowledge about
details of the craft of ship building in the Viking Age, and the hope is that extensive

European Journal of Archaeology Vol. 9(2–3): 185–210

Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications ISSN 1461–9571 DOI:10.1177/1461957107086123

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186 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9(2–3)

Figure 1. Bow of the Oseberg Ship. Photo: University of Oslo.

discussion among Norwegian archaeologists about its final destiny and placement
will result in a ‘happy ending’.1

D ISCOVERY OF THE GRAVE MOUND

The Oseberg grave mound is situated on the west side of the Oslo Fjord, about 95
km south of Oslo (Fig. 2), in a district called Slagen. Its previous history as well as
that of the excavation of the mound in 1904, is indeed an exciting chapter of

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HOLCK: THE OSEBERG SHIP BURIAL, NORWAY 187

Figure 2. Norway map showing the site of Oseberg on the west side of the Oslo Fjord. Today the
Oseberg mound is situated c. 4 km from the fjord, as the sea level was 3–4 m higher during the
Viking Age, and the shoreline must originally have been much closer to the mound.

Norwegian archaeology. Johannes Hansen, the last tenant farmer of the Oseberg-
Ødegården farm, also called Lille (Little) Oseberg, signed on as a sailor in his
younger days and travelled to the USA around 1870. It is said that there he met a
fortune teller who told him: ‘You don’t need to go here and struggle. There are
treasures enough on your farm back home. You just need to dig in the mound which
is on your field.’ Following the fortune teller’s advice, Hansen returned to Norway,
and together with a neighbour he started to dig in the mound. But all he discovered
upon digging the moist loam was water so stagnant that local residents believed
bodies of victims of the Black Death were buried there, so he gave up his search
(Larsen 1930). The neighbour, Paul Roberg, had more staying power. He convinced
people to join him and went on with the digging until he felt some woodwork as he
ran his bar into the ground. He did not, however, make much of a discovery.
The mound itself had previously been called ‘Revehaugen’ or Fox Hill. People
from the area soon began to presume that it might cover a ship, especially since the

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188 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9(2–3)

Gokstad Ship2 had been found in a similar mound nearby a few years earlier, and
so constant attempts were made thereafter to uncover parts of the mound. Much of
the soil was removed and spread around the fields of the neighbourhood, and some
was also used to fill up the graveyard of Slagen Church nearby. At last, only the
southern part of the mound held its original shape intact. The new owner of the
neighbouring farm Oseberg, Mr Oskar Rom, now turned his attention to the mound
and subsequently managed to buy Oseberg-Ødegården farm. The first step he took
was to dig a ditch to conduct the water away from the mound. In 1903, immediately
after the mowing season was finished, he started to dig and soon found wet clay. As
he put his arm down in it, he felt some wooden material and broke off a piece which
he afterwards hoped to identify as a part of a ship’s helm (Larsen 1930).
Mr Rom took a ferry to Kristiania (now Oslo3), bringing the 0.2 m long piece of
oak with him. He intended to show his discovery to the manager of the University
Museum of Antiquities, Professor Gabriel Adolf Gustafson (1853–1915), who has
been called ‘the founder of scientific archaeological research in Norway’. Born on
the Baltic island of Gotland, Sweden, he studied archaeology in Uppsala and was
from his appointment in 1881 scientific officer at the Museum of Nordic Antiquities
there. In 1889, he was appointed assistant curator at Bergen Museum in Norway, in
accord with the intent of the Swedish–Norwegian union. He succeeded Oluf Rygh
when he was appointed professor at the University of Kristiania in September
1900, with his special obligation being to manage the collection of Nordic antiqui-
ties. Under his management, the moving of the University Museum from its old
premises in Domus academica, the eastern part of the university block, to the new
Historical Museum was begun in November 1902. The move was protracted,
though, because of all the tasks Professor Gustafson from then on had to deal with,
many of them pertaining to the Oseberg mound.
Already in 1902 Gustafson had been visited by the school inspector in Sem near
Oseberg, Mr Christian Lie, who expressed his concern about all the private
encroachments on the mound and wanted to draw the professor’s attention to its
possible contents and probable relationship to old Norwegian history. But
Gustafson appeared to be rather uninterested – and arrogant, too – on that occa-
sion, and Lie returned home empty-handed. He was, however, asked to draw a
map, to do some preliminary surveying of the mound, and also to provide the pro-
fessor with information about the land register of the ‘Ødegården’ versus Oseberg
farm (Larsen 1930).

E XCAVATION
The owner of the farm, Oskar Rom, was also received rather inhospitably when he
knocked on the professor’s door in the afternoon of 8 August 1903. But when
Gustafson saw the oak stick, adorned with carvings and furnished with silver, he
suddenly grew much more interested. He immediately went down to Slagen to
form a personal impression of the region. He also conducted a test excavation and,
according to the Norwegian capital newspaper Aftenposten of 10 August 1903, he
came upon the burial chamber and under that some oak planks with rivets:

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HOLCK: THE OSEBERG SHIP BURIAL, NORWAY 189

It all seems extremely solid, much more solid than the Gokstad Ship which
was excavated in 1880. It has also been rather well preserved, as we can see
so far. Unfortunately the grave has been plundered, so it is highly probable
that the most valuable things have been removed.

On top of the mound a signboard with the following inscription was set up to dis-
suade those who would encroach upon the site:

The mound at Oseberg-Ødegården is probably a grave from the Viking Age

which is of great significance for understanding this period. After agreement
with the owner, the University Museum of Antiquities will manage the inves-
tigation. Therefore any intrusion into this place is strictly forbidden, and if this
still happens it will immediately be publicly prosecuted. (Aftenposten 1903)

A few days later, on August 22nd, Gustafson reported his findings to the
Kristiania University Senate, and he also applied for money to carry out the exca-
vation. The Norwegian government obtained 5000 kroner towards this purpose.4
Later on, the Kristiania municipal council contributed 10,000 kroner, and Ringnes
Brewery gave 6000 kroner to the restoration of the ship. Unfortunately, however,
the owner of the mound, Oskar Rom, took advantage of the situation and
advanced a claim, charging nothing less than 12,000 kroner to transfer the owner-
ship to the University – a great sum of money at that time. The Norwegian
Antiquity Law had not yet been passed as an Act, and private owners were free to
make whatever demands they wanted with regard to the sale or treatment of antiq-
uities. Fortunately, the problem was solved when landowner Squire Fritz Treschow
generously placed the total amount needed at the University’s disposal, thus secur-
ing the Oseberg Ship for the Norwegian state and for the future (Larsen 1930).
In May 1904, Gustafson went down to Slagen again, where he took up residence
at the rectory. He enlisted workmen and entered into a contract with the owner of
the mound. Not all the problems had yet been solved, however, and the agreement
was not signed until the 12 of June. The next day, the work began in earnest.
Ditches were constructed to drain the mound and a pump set up to get clear run-
ning water for the work on the ship. The area was fenced off and a watchman with
police authority engaged to secure the work site, maintain the peace, and keep
unwanted visitors at a distance.
On 13 September 1904 Gustafson reported to the Aftenposten an additional and
important discovery:

There seem to be two individuals buried onboard the Oseberg Ship. The
human skeletons are found spread around the pit where thieves in the past
have broken in. They must already at that time have been thrown out of the
grave chamber. Inside this chamber only a few remnants were found, but not
in normal, original position. These bones, of which none form a complete
skeleton, are so thin that they obviously seem to be of female origin, as far as I
as an amateur in this profession can evaluate. Among the bones are, however,
remnants of two skulls and pieces from two lower jaws. (Aftenposten 1904)

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190 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9(2–3)

After 15 weeks of excavation work, the examination was considered finished on

23 September 1904, and the removal of the parts of the Oseberg Ship could com-
mence. It was not until November 5th that the last pieces of the ship were taken up
and removed from the mound. Details of the ship’s excavation and the reconstruc-
tion tell a fascinating story in their own right, but the present article will focus
attention on the human remains of the burial mound.

D ISTURBANCE OF THE GRAVE

Up till now it has been presumed that the grave robbery Gustafson refers to must
have occurred at the beginning of the eleventh century, or at least at a time when
the bodies – which were buried in the ship sometime in the ninth century – were
already skeletonized. Inside the grave chamber, a solitary piece of a skull was
found, together with a finger bone and a broken hip bone, while a number of skele-
tal parts were found outside the chamber in the passage. It must be kept in mind,
however, that a very short amount of time may have passed – perhaps only some
months or a few years – from the moment the burial took place until the bodies
were so far disintegrated that they could be dismembered without difficulty. It was
not necessary for more than a century to pass before the corpses inside the grave
chamber were completely skeletonized. In a modern Norwegian graveyard, for
example, this process will normally take only 15 to 25 years.
The grave robbers had, probably under cover of darkness, approached from the
south side of the mound, digging a rather wide trench to the ship’s bow. In their
efforts to gain entry, they destroyed the stem fashioned with the helical ‘worm’ (the
very same one which today has become the main symbol of the Oseberg find and
of the craft of shipbuilding in the Viking Ages). From there the robbers forced their
way towards the grave chamber behind the mast and simply cut their way through
the roof of the chamber, as if they already knew exactly where to find the most
valuable items on board.
The situation, however, raises some questions. Would it not have been more rea-
sonable for the robbers to have removed the articles of value from the bodies while
they were still inside the chamber? Here they had space enough and they could
also light a fire to see what was worth stealing, confident that no one would
observe their actions. Also, if the bodies had been entombed long enough to have
skeletonized, the robbers could, in that case, simply have picked up the valuables
they desired. There would have been no reason to drag the bodies through the
gallery and there, in the dark and narrow tunnel, remove the items of greatest
value, as has been postulated thus far. The assumption can also be made that the
opening to the passage was only scantily covered afterwards to conceal the bur-
glary, if it was not, alternatively, kept open, making it possible for animals to enter
the grave mound and get hold of the cadaver remnants. It is therefore possible that
animals and not human beings caused the peculiar spreading of the incomplete
skeletal remains. Perhaps there was good reason for calling the mound ‘Fox Hill’?
It is also probable that the grave robbery took place shortly after the burial,

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HOLCK: THE OSEBERG SHIP BURIAL, NORWAY 191

Figure 3. Professor Gustav Adolf Guldberg (1854–1908).

perhaps by some who had learned of the treasures inside the grave chamber by
personal inspection – and who also knew where to find them.

E XAMINATION OF THE SKELETONS

The bones from the Oseberg ship were sent to the Professor of Anatomy, Gustav
Adolf Guldberg (1854–1908) at the University of Kristiania (Fig. 3). The results of
his examination, published in 1907 in the Norwegian Journal of Medical Science
(Norsk Magazin for Lægevidenskaben), were also presented at a meeting of the
Academy of Science (Videnskabs-Akademiet) in Kristiania (Guldberg 1907a).

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192 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9(2–3)

Guldberg determined the bones were from the cranium, spine and extremities
(nearly all were fragmented but had been assembled and glued together where
possible). All the bones were dark brown in colour.
The skeletons appeared to be the remains of two individuals, both female –
one elderly and one younger. The age of the older woman, whose bones were
best preserved, was estimated at about 50 years, ‘at least between 40 and 50
years’, according to Guldberg, and with a height of about 1.57 m (Guldberg
1907a). Pathological calcifications in the joints and vertebrae led Guldberg to
conclude that this person must have had an advanced arthritis chronica defor-
mans, or articular arthritis, as had also been the case of the individual whose
skeleton was found on board the Gokstad ship some years earlier. Guldberg
claimed, however, that such deformations did not necessarily indicate a patho-
logical origin, but could also have been caused by extreme physical strain dur-
ing life. On the internal surface of the skull a thickening of the bone was
discovered which was interpreted as a possible result of cerebrospinal meningi-
tis during childhood (a connection made, of course, with some uncertainty). In
the cervical column and in the lumbar region two vertebrae had been fused, and
Guldberg believed that this individual must have suffered some stiffness of the
spine as a result (Guldberg 1907b).
The second individual’s skeleton was not so typically ‘female’, even though the
sexing of the bones was regarded as certain, and consisted merely of a frontal skull
bone and an incomplete right clavicle. The frontal bone was glued together from
four separate pieces. Additionally, Guldberg mentions a left part of the lower jaw,
while a piece of an upper jaw was thought to belong to the older individual. The
age of the younger woman was estimated at 25 to 40 years; her height could not be
estimated. Speculating as to the identities of the women to whom these fragments
belonged, Guldberg wrote:

Which of these two individuals may have been the high-born princess,
buried here with such rich grave goods and magnificence, can not be
decided by means of the skeletal finds alone. We can imagine several possi-
bilities, but these may only have a hypothetic value. In particular there is
reason to believe that the elderly woman with the pathological bone forma-
tions has been the one of rank and the other one her servant who possibly
has sacrificed herself and thus followed her mistress in death. In a way this
is consistent with the account about burials known from Iben Fozzahn in the
10th century.

Indeed, another possibility is that the younger one was the princess and the
older her servant. The few skeletal parts found from the younger person
could be explained by the fact that the grave robbers had taken with them
parts of her body, if they were furnished with valuable jewellery.

The third possibility, that both of them were high-ranked and equal, appears
less plausible to me. (Guldberg 1907b)

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HOLCK: THE OSEBERG SHIP BURIAL, NORWAY 193

Figure 4. Professor Kristian Emil Schreiner (1874–1957). Lithography: Edvard Munch.

The skeletal remains were immediately transferred to the Anatomical Institute in

Kristiania where they were incorporated into the anthropological collection there
and given the register number ‘1515’. Upon a request from the editorial board of the
great five-volume work about the Oseberg find (which was published in the 1920s),
Guldberg’s successor as Professor of Anatomy, Kristian Emil Schreiner (1874–1957),
re-examined the skeletal remnants from the ship (Schreiner 1927a). By that time the
new head of the Museum of Antiquity and Professor Gustafson’s successor there,
Anton Wilhelm Brøgger (1884–1951), had already presented his theory, based on

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194 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9(2–3)

Guldberg’s examination and on the assumption that the name ‘Oseberg’ should be
derived from the female name ‘Åsa’. The high-ranked woman, Brøgger postulated,
was Queen Åsa, mother of the Norwegian chieftain Halvdan Svarte (‘the Black’) and
grandmother of Harald Hårfagre (‘Fairhair’), Norway’s first king (Brøgger 1916).
Professor Schreiner (Fig. 4) did not agree. He believed that both jaw fragments
belonged to the younger individual, and that Guldberg’s misconception that one
had belonged to the elder caused him to estimate the age of the first person as
much too young. Schreiner held that the older woman must have been more than
50, perhaps even 60–70 years of age. Her height was estimated at 1.55 m,5 but
because of her bowed stature he assumed that she had hardly been more than
1.5 m in life. He also claimed that her cephalic shape was uncommon, making it
impossible to determine if she was of the Nordic race, or if she were perhaps
Lappish or even from the southern parts of Europe (Schreiner 1927b).
Schreiner estimated the age of the second individual to be 30 to 40 years, based
on the sutural closure, while the enamel wear of the teeth could indicate her age at
about 25 years. As opposed to Guldberg, he thought that it was more probable that
the old, rheumatic woman had been a servant, unsentimentally sacrificed as ‘use-
less property’, and that the younger lady had been the more distinguished of the
two. Perhaps she had been dressed in fine clothes and jewels, thus the reason for her
skeleton being less preserved after the grave robbers’ devastation (Schreiner 1927b).
Moreover, Schreiner discovered markings in the tooth enamel proving that she
must have used toothpicks, and he therefore posited that ‘it seems to be a refine-
ment of customs which hardly can be presupposed except from a socially high-
ranked person’ (Schreiner 1927a). The young lady must, however, have been
physically injured shortly before her death, because the remaining clavicle showed
a fracture that was incompletely healed.

A CADEMIC CONTROVERSIES

For many years, the skeletal remains from the Oseberg ship were stored at the
Anatomical Institute in Oslo. On 31 October 1946, the Vestfold6 Historical Society, a
private organization, sent a letter to the Senate of the University of Oslo requesting
that the grave mound be reconstructed and the skeletons re-buried in a leaden box,
ostensibly after an idea proposed by a local countrywomen’s association. A similar
request had been addressed in 1928 concerning the skeleton found in 1880 in the
mound of the Gokstad ship, a request which had led to Professor Schreiner’s reluc-
tant return of the skeleton for re-burial, although not without his most energetic
protests.7 In a letter to the Vestfold Historical Society dated 8 November 1946,
Schreiner expressed vehement regret that the Museum of Antiquities approved
undertaking such a project yet again:

which in my opinion has so little to do with sober scientific behaviour.

Actually I can not think of something more false than to arrange the bones of
a Viking king or queen in a stone coffin in a reconstructed mound and finally
put a tombstone on top of it. If the skeletons of the two women from the

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HOLCK: THE OSEBERG SHIP BURIAL, NORWAY 195

Oseberg ship must be reburied, I will recommend that they are both placed
where they were found inside the ship, which also should be brought back to
the mound and reburied with all the objects. (The Schreiner Collection)

Once again, the various parties were faced with the same situation confronted in
1928. The Museum’s curator, Professor Brøgger, was of course not very desirous of
bringing the Oseberg ship back to the mound, since it had been placed in the
Viking Ship House at Bygdøy outside Oslo city, within the past 20 years8. However,
he found the Historical Society’s idea splendid and stressed to the Senate in a letter
dated 18 November 1946, that a return of the skeletons could take place ‘safely as
far as preservation is concerned by putting the skeletal parts into a hermetically
sealed leaden coffin’ (The Schreiner Collection). He recommended that the applica-
tion from Vestfold Historical Society, which had already been granted on
November 29th that same year, be carried out. This decision was not unanimously
appreciated, however, as the chairman of the Senate, Professor Otto Lous Mohr
(1886–1967), himself a trained anthropologist, voted against it ‘for reasons of prin-
ciple and because of the consequences of recommending such an application’ (The
Schreiner Collection). Schreiner believed that a re-burial was ‘hardly consistent
with scientific thinking’, and he was unwilling to comply with the Senate’s deci-
sion. He interpreted the Norwegian Cultural Heritage Act of 13 July 1905 as giving
him some rights with regards to the Oseberg skeletons, as Chapter 3 of the Act
gave such rights to ‘. . . institutions that are assumed to practise these rights or
functions with skill and judiciousness’. And he certainly felt that the Anatomical
Institute was fully capable of handling old skeletons. It is also of note that some of
Brøgger’s own colleagues, for example Professor Gutorm Gjessing and Dr Jan
Petersen, actually took Schreiner’s side in the battle surrounding the destiny of the
Oseberg skeletons.
Professor Brøgger was probably acting in good faith when he ordered the skeletal
remnants back from the Anatomical Institute. According to a royal resolution of 30
June 1906 all the archaeological finds from the southeastern part of Norway were his
responsibility, as curator and head of the Museum of Antiquities. And he certainly
did not approve of Schreiner’s personal interpretation of the Cultural Heritage Act.
Schreiner, however, claimed that Brøgger had no right to hand over parts of the
Museum’s collection to the private Vestfold Historical Society without permission
from the Norwegian Church Ministry, and such permission had yet to be given.
The Historical Society, however, moved steadily forward with this matter and
had by the next year entered into negotiations with a company in Oslo to make a
leaden coffin to house the skeletons. The society was also bold enough to apply to
the Anatomical Institute on 24 November 1947 for assistance in assembling the
skeletal remains on a wooden board covered with fabric, as the plan was to conse-
crate the restored mound ‘on Sunday the 6th or the 13th of June’. An answer to this
application was, characteristically, never provided by Schreiner, and several
reminders sent from the county’s curator, Mr Harald Hals, led nowhere as
Schreiner had gone abroad, apparently to Mexico, where he intended to stay for
several months.

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196 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9(2–3)

Figure 5. Skeleton of the older woman mounted on a wooden plank, shortly before closing the alu-
minium box. Photo unknown origin.

It proved, however, to be impossible to obtain all the lead needed to make such
a coffin. Instead an aluminium box was manufactured and donated by the com-
pany ‘Nordisk Aluminiumindustri’ in Holmestrand, after a chemical engineer,
Mr T. Dammenvig Hauge, wrote an account stating that it was ‘completely safe to
use aluminium instead of lead for the internal coffin of the Oseberg queen’ (Fig. 5).
The intent was to place the box inside a sarcophagus of granite, which was to be
designed by the architect Carl Berner.9
Professor Schreiner’s journey lasted eight months and his absence certainly
caused difficulty for those who planned the ‘burial’, which apparently was
arranged to be a public spectacle. Curator Hals, who must have felt as though he
were caught in an impossible position in his role, as a kind of intermediary and
buffer between the two pugnacious professors, tried in a letter of 21 July 1948 to
Schreiner to present an avenue toward reconciliation couched in diplomatic
phrases:

. . . I therefore believe, as the position – and the general mood of the society –
now is, that a protest action against the decided transfer of the ‘Oseberg
Queen’ will only make bad blood between the interested parties and lead to a
lot of quarrelling without any alteration of the decision. I therefore most
humbly and urgently appeal to you, Professor, not to raise such an action.
From your point of view I understand that an appeal like this one sounds
rather candid, but such as the situation has become just now I think we both
have to resign ourselves, because of the one thing even the gods are fighting
against.

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HOLCK: THE OSEBERG SHIP BURIAL, NORWAY 197

Figure 6. Skeletal remains in The Schreiner Collection. Photo: Per Holck.

On 27 July 1948, he wrote to Brøgger that ‘the atmosphere here must be character-
ized as steamed up just now, and the local press threatens to cause a lot of trouble
if there should be any fuss with the extradition’.
Two days later, Professor Brøgger sent a telegram to the Anatomical Institute via
Professor Schreiner, saying:

As manager of the University’s Museum of Antiquities and thus the com-

plete Oseberg find, and with reference to the Senate’s decision of 20
November 1946, the Institute is instructed to hand over the temporarily
deposited skeletal parts to Vestfold Historical Society in the person of its
director, Mr Lindboe, in agreement with my approved reconstruction plan
for the Oseberg grave mound. (Holck 1990)

The next day the skeletons were placed in a cardboard box and picked up by cura-
tor Hals. They were – though it is unknown by whom – installed on a board of oak
covered with linen and put into the assembled aluminium box which was immedi-
ately thereafter soldered, and then brought to the mound. On 29 August 1948 the

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198 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9(2–3)

Figure 7. Second and third cervical vertebra from the older woman, completely fused on the left
side due to an inflammatory process. Photo: Per Holck.

re-burial and the restoration of the mound were celebrated in the presence of the
then Crown Prince Olav, the director of the Vestfold Historical Society, Mr
Christian Lindboe, and Professors Anton Wilhelm Brøgger and Haakon Shetelig,
as well as with numerous others in attendance. From the Anatomical Institute,
however, no one came.

R EMAINING SKELETAL PARTS

Of significance for current research is the fact that Professor Schreiner apparently
failed to give up all of the skeletal material from the Oseberg ship. He kept a few
pieces for the anthropological collection, a sensible action on his part to allow the

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HOLCK: THE OSEBERG SHIP BURIAL, NORWAY 199

Figure 8. Fifth lumbar vertebra of the older woman, severely deformed because of inflammation and
wear. Photo: Per Holck.

possibility for future studies (Fig. 6). Regardless of how solidly constructed and
tightly sealed the aluminium coffin may have been, condensation will most cer-
tainly have formed inside which may have contributed to the complete destruction
of the bones’ substance during the nearly 60 years since the reburial took place.
Schreiner’s own reasons for retaining some small skeletal parts are matters of
speculation. The tangible remains kept in the Anatomical Institute at present are
the left part of a lower jaw with three molars, corresponding to Figures 33–36 in
Schreiner’s 1927 book Menneskeknoklene fra Osebergskibet (Schreiner 1927a), and the
right half of the upper jaw with two premolars and two molars (corresponds to
Figures 30–31), both obviously from the younger woman. From the older woman
only the second cervical vertebra with the fused third vertebra (corresponding to
Figure 9) and the lower lumbar vertebra (corresponding to Figures 10–12 in the
same book) are preserved (see Figs 7 and 8).
It is impossible to give an exact age estimation based on the few skeletal
remains, but there seems to be no reason to disagree significantly with Schreiner’s
determinations. It is obvious that the elder woman suffered from a rheumatoid dis-
ease. The vertebrae display major defects, with formation of cysts in the facet
joints, and there are osteophytes and a fusion between the second and parts of the

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Figure 9. Fifth lumbar vertebra also shows a compression fracture in the anterior part. Photo: Per
Holck.

third cervical vertebra on the left side. The vertebrae exhibit an osteoporotic
appearance, and the fifth lumbar vertebra is wedge-shaped due to an intravital
compression fracture (Fig. 9). Professor Schreiner was probably correct in his esti-
mation of this person’s age at about 60–70 years; actually she may have been older
still.10 In any case, the age of this woman must have exceeded the average for that
epoch considerably.
The two halves of the jaw, even if they do represent one from each side, obvi-
ously belonged to the same younger individual, because of their similar shape and
development. There are no signs of calcifications and the bone structure appears to
be strong and normal. All the remaining teeth are sound without caries and there is
very little loss of bone substance around the roots. The dental attrition seems
insignificant, as all the remaining teeth display only slight enamel polishing with-
out exposure of the underlying dentine. Interestingly, as Schreiner pointed out, is
the fact that this person must have used toothpicks rather frequently, leaving traces
of wear between all the remaining teeth, in both the upper and the lower jaw
(Fig. 10). The breadth of the toothpick had been about 1.5–1.7 mm, and the parallel
traces in the enamel and dentine give reason to believe that the pick must have
been made of metal, rather than wood, as the pictures from the scanning-electron
microscope reveal (Figs 11 and 12). The surface of the tooth crowns show only

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HOLCK: THE OSEBERG SHIP BURIAL, NORWAY 201

Figure 10. Toothpick marks between the molars of the lower jaw. Photo: Per Holck.

Figure 11. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) picture of the toothpick mark between the root and
enamel crown of the lower left third molar. The length of the white line is 1 mm. Photo: National
Criminal Investigation Service (KRIPOS), Oslo.

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202 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9(2–3)

Figure 12. The same area as shown in Figure 11, but enlarged. The length of the white line is 0.5
mm. The grooves in the enamel appear to be made by some metal tool. Photo: National Criminal
Investigation Service (KRIPOS), Oslo.

Figure 13. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) picture of the enamel crown surface of the lower
left third molar of the younger woman, displaying very little wear. The white line represents 0.5
mm. Photo: National Criminal Investigation Service (KRIPOS), Oslo.

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HOLCK: THE OSEBERG SHIP BURIAL, NORWAY 203

Figure 14. Radiocarbon determination of the younger woman.

small grooves in the enamel, verifying that this person’s food had not been hard
and fibrous (Fig. 13).
As already mentioned, Schreiner estimated the age of the younger woman at
30–40 years, based on the closure of the skull sutures. But he also emphasized that
the slight dental wear could mean that she may have been only about 25 years old.
Dental wear is, however, a rather inaccurate criterion for age determination, as it
more closely reflects the diet. Also the suture closure is considered to be an unreli-
able indicator of age.
Determinations of age can, though, be executed with some accuracy by studying
the roots of the teeth. The roots are translucent in the apical area and the relative
length of the root translucency increases with age. Measurement of the translucent
root area of tooth 14 (i.e. the first premolar in the right upper jaw) together with tooth
38 (lower left third molar) indicated both areas appeared to be 7.4 mm, which corre-
sponds with an age up to 50–55 years (Bang and Ramm 1970). The ‘younger’ woman
was therefore not as young as has been previously imagined, but because of ‘fine’
diet and frequent use of toothpicks she had been able to maintain her excellent den-
tal quality. The rest of her skeleton may also have reflected a comfortable upper-class
life. In that case, the age difference between the two women would not be as obvious
as formerly supposed.
After agreement with the University Museum of Antiquity in Oslo, small
pieces of the skeleton were sent to the Ångström Laboratory in Uppsala, Sweden,
for radiocarbon dating. The results of the analysis both confirm previous
assumptions as well as raise new questions. A piece from the skull (0.5 g) of the

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Figure 15. Radiocarbon determination of the older woman.

younger individual was radiocarbon dated at 1230±40 radiocarbon years BP (Ua-

24400). The laboratory results indicate two calibration curve peaks: one with
14.7% probability between the years AD 710 and 750; and another with 53.5%
probability between the years AD 760 and 880. Overall the calibration indicates
there is a 95.4% probability that the younger woman died between the years AD
680 and 900 (Fig. 14).
Another small piece of bone (0.4 g) was taken from the remaining vertebrae
of the older individual and the 14C age was measured at 1220±40 radiocarbon
years BP (Ua-24657). Here also two peaks were indicated: one with an 8.4%
probability between the years AD 720 and 740; and one with a 59.8% probability
between the years AD 770 and 880. Overall there is a 95.4% probability that the
older individual died between the years AD 680 and 900 (Fig. 15). Because of the
striking similarities, there is reason to believe that the two women died at about
the same time.
As this similarity to some extent reflects the accuracy of the radiocarbon dat-
ing, it makes it more puzzling to note the proportional disparity with the den-
drochronology, as this was measured to the year AD 834, based on the timber in
the grave chamber (Christensen et al. 1992). The dendrochronological analysis
was executed in collaboration with the National Museum in Copenhagen. A
sample was taken from the oak timber in the grave chamber, where remains of
bark were still present. It appears most likely that the materials for the grave
chamber were cut during August–September AD 834, about 20 years before the
ship was built (Frost 1997). Is it possible that the two women died some years

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before the grave chamber was built and were buried elsewhere before they
were brought onboard the Oseberg ship, which is the scenario the Arab Ibn
Fadlan relates in his journal about a similar event (Birkeland 1951)?
Another striking similarity can be seen in the simultaneous 13C examination, as
the older woman had a δ13 = –21.6‰, and the younger had a δ13 = –21.0‰, which
means that they both were nourished by a diet consisting primarily of terrestrial
food and only to a lesser degree by fish. Might this indicate that both women were
of high rank?

U NSUCCESSFUL EXAMINATIONS ?

Since the excavation of the Oseberg mound in 1904, it has been widely discussed
whether or not the two women buried on board were related (Christensen et al. 1992;
Gansum 2004; Guldberg 1907a; Schreiner 1927a). Were they mother and daughter?
Or queen and slave? Is one of them Queen Åsa? An ancient-DNA analysis was,
therefore, desirable but it seemed to be nearly impossible to find a laboratory willing
to undertake this analysis. After several refusals11 from different European laborato-
ries at last Dr Tom Gilbert at the Panum Institute in Copenhagen, Denmark,
indicated his willingness to attempt it.
In accord with an agreement with the Museum of Antiquity, two bone samples
were taken – one was called A (from the older person) and the other B (from the
younger person). Sample A represented a piece of bone from the neural arch of the
cervical vertebra, as this seemed to be the most compact and solid part of the mod-
est and porous remnants from this individual. Sample B was taken from the left
third molar of the lower jaw.
The aDNA from the tooth gave a clear result, indicating that the sample falls
into the mitochondrial haplogroup U7.12 Unfortunately, the bone sample from the
older person was more problematic, as it appeared to be highly contaminated and
contained at least three sources of DNA. Although one of these matched the
sequence from sample B, the other two did not.
Another attempt with bone from the vertebra also yielded poor results, most
likely due to its osteoporotic quality. No aDNA could be amplified from the lumbar
sample. The cervical spine provided DNA sequences, but they differed from the two
former samples, and were also different from the sequences derived from the tooth.
Given these results, it seems that the samples from the older person (sample A)
are, after being handled for more than 100 years, too contaminated with foreign
human DNA to yield true sequences. However, a new examination of the elder
woman, based on aDNA from one of her remaining bones, would be possible if a
future re-opening of the mound is conducted and any remains of her skeleton are
recovered from the aluminium coffin.

Q UEEN Å SA ATTRIBUTION

Those outside Norway may be surprised to see the name ‘Oseberg’ interpreted as
‘Åsa’s berg’ (Åsa’s mountain), as suggested by Brøgger (1916). It is not common to

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refer to a grave mound as a ‘berg’, and even the Old Norse texts use the word
‘haug’ (mound); nor are there any rocks in the mound’s closest surroundings. Still,
the linguist Professor Alf Torp, in his New-Norwegian Etymological Dictionary, says
that ‘Old High German berg and Anglo-Saxon beorg’ also mean hill or grave mound,
roots which can be found in modern English as barrow and bury (Torp 1992).
Likewise, it may be difficult to interpret the name ‘Oseberg’ as ‘hill of the æser’ (Old
Norse gods), as there is no raised ground in the plain other than the grave mound
itself. Nonetheless, Professor Oluf Rygh preferred this interpretation in his work
Norske Gaardnavne (Norwegian Farm Names), though he adds the remark that the
farm Oseberg ‘is not so old that we with certainty can presuppose this source’ (Rygh
1897). The book Oseberg-dronningens grav (The Grave of the Oseberg Queen) men-
tions, however, that on the Klokkerberget Hill behind the mound there may have
existed a King’s or chieftain’s estate very early, and this hill may originally have
been called ‘Oseberg’, or ‘hill of the æser’ (Christensen et al. 1992).
The legend which portrays that a certain ‘Queen Åsa’ was buried inside the ship
and gives her name to the mound and its surroundings has been kept alive for
decades (Brøgger 1916). In actuality, little is known about her existence, with the
exception of that which is revealed in a few words from Snorri Sturluson’s Sagas
from the 13th century. And Snorri is certainly not always reliable as a chronicler of
Norse history. According to him, Åsa was the daughter of King Harald Granraude
(‘red beard’) of Agder (the district around the present city Kristiansand in southern
Norway). A certain King Gudrød the Bold (from what is now the area around
Oslo) had with his first wife a son, Olav Geirstad-Alv. After the king’s wife died, he
proposed to Åsa but was turned down by her father. Perhaps this was foolish of
him, for then King Gudrød set sail and raided Agder to revenge his loss of honour.
And there in battle fell Harald Granraude together with his son Gyrd. Åsa, the
daughter, was taken forcibly and brought back as a sort of spoils of war and mar-
ried to Gudrød against her will. She gave birth to one son with dark hair, Halvdan
Svarte (‘the Black’). Shortly afterwards, she arranged for her husband’s killing by
her servant, as revenge for what he had done to her and her family. As the stepson
Olav Geirstad-Alv settled as king of Tjølling (a district near Oseberg), Åsa took the
one-year-old Halvdan and went back to Agder. As Snorri relates: ‘when he was 18
years old he got a kingdom in Agder, shortly afterwards he went up to Vestfold
and shared the kingdom there with his brother Olav’ (Holtsmark and Seip 1970).
The seventeenth-century historian Mattis Størssøn says Halvdan’s age was 19 then,
and also that ‘Olav had taken the western part and Halfdan the eastern part’, per-
haps the very same district where Oseberg is now situated (Sørlie 1962). It is curi-
ous to note that the two brothers both had posthumous reputations as ‘land
spirits’, attached to supernatural qualities.
It has also been suggested that the younger woman in the Oseberg ship may
have been a so-called ‘hovgydje’ or female priest who was sacrificed, an assumption
based on the broken skull and the fresh fracture of the clavicle (Christensen
et al. 1992). More probably, though, the defects and deformities of the skull are post-
mortem, a result of pressure from the soil masses in the mound, and the fractured
clavicle is certainly neither proof of offering nor of any social relationship. Little is

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HOLCK: THE OSEBERG SHIP BURIAL, NORWAY 207

known about the female priests of that time, and so it remains unknown, too,
whether they enjoyed a social status that could relate to the sumptuousness of the
Oseberg find, as has been pointed out by the historian Magnus Olsen (Olsen 1926).
There are still many unanswered questions. If the grave mound was really built
for Queen Åsa, the question becomes: did she rule over the Agder territory on
behalf of her son Halvdan until she died? Or did she follow him to Vestfold and
lived there as a ‘grand old lady’? In that case, was he the one in charge of the burial
arrangements? Historical scholarship provides no answers, and so, with only
Snorri’s words as accompaniment, Queen Åsa disappears from history.

C ONCLUSION
It is easy to understand how patriotic impulses during the post-war years in
Norway could generate the trends towards re-burials. Actually they appear even in
the present time. Still, what happened in 1948 is indeed regrettable. Even if the
intentions were the best, they still resulted from local historical enthusiasm based
on insufficient knowledge. Experiences with attempts to collect data from
re-buried skeletal material are not positive, and in our neighbouring country, for
example, the skeletons from the Vasa ship in Stockholm have clearly demonstrated
that such biological material does not normally endure two burials (personal infor-
mation from Professor Ebba During, University of Stockholm) – it simply decom-
poses, more or less. Whether the coffin has been made of lead or aluminium does
not matter, as there will still be condensation of moisture inside and over time this
will inevitably contribute to slow disintegration of any kind of organic material.
It should, then, be considered if the time has come to reopen the Oseberg mound,
the sarcophagus, and the aluminium coffin and to remove, examine anew, and pre-
serve any the possible remnants of this important Viking Age material.13 There is rea-
son to hope that some of the bone material is still intact. Although initial efforts at
aDNA extraction did not succeed, a new attempt may yield different results, based
on larger and more suitable material – if preserved. Such analysis could also be of
importance as a reference to a possible prospective excavation of the so called
Halvdan’s Mound on Ringerike, 30 km west of Oslo, provided that uncremated bone
material can be found there. If one of the two women in the Oseberg ship really was
Queen Åsa, is it interesting to remember that she was the mother of King Halvdan
the Black, father of the first king of Norway? Perhaps modern scientific methods can
tell the story that history thus far has not, and only then confirm her identity.

N OTES
1. There has been a heated discussion in the Norwegian newspapers lately about
whether the ship will endure the movement from the present museum to another modern
building.
2. The first complete Viking ship found in Norway (1880), now reconstructed and exhib-
ited in the Viking Ship House in Oslo, together with the Oseberg Ship and the objects and
treasures found onboard.
3. The capital of Norway changed its name from Kristiania to Oslo in 1925.

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208 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9(2–3)

4. This is equal to approximately NOK 500,000 today. One Norwegian krone (NOK) is
about €0.125 or US $0.18.
5. This is somewhat below average for women from the Viking Age and Middle Ages in
Norway (based on anthropological measurements of a great number of skeletons).
6. Vestfold is the county where the Oseberg mound is situated.
7. Even this skeleton had been examined several times. Already in 1881, shortly after the
excavation of the Gokstad mound, Professor of Archaeology Oluf Rygh handed it over to the
anatomist Professor Jacob Heiberg, and in 1920 it was again transferred to the Anatomical
Institute for new examinations. After the University Senate decided on a re-burial of the
bones on 22 May 1928, it was returned to the Museum of Antiquities the following month.
8. The reconstructed Oseberg ship was first brought to Kristiania (Oslo) and placed in a
temporary shed in the University’s garden. In 1926 it was transferred to the newly built
Viking Ship House.
9. This is according to the newspaper Verdens Gang of 30 August 1948. It is uncertain
how this agreement might have been arranged, however, as the architect Berner had died
already in 1943.
10. It must be remembered that Schreiner’s age determination was based on a larger sam-
ple of material than that which this author has had access to, as the skeleton was nearly com-
plete before it was taken back to the mound.
11. Partly because of lack of experience with Viking Age material – and partly because
some of the specialists doubted if it was possible to extract DNA from these bones.
12. This result is very interesting, as the subhaplogroup U7 is virtually absent from mod-
ern Europeans and is extremely rare in western Uralic-speaking populations, such as Finns
and Saami, but its frequency climbs up over 4% in the Near East, reaching nearly 10% in
Iranians (Derbeneva et al. 2002). Both the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus (c.1150–c.1220)
and the Icelandic saga writer Snorri Sturlusson (1178–1241) claim that the immigrants to the
Nordic countries came from the Near East, which is already mentioned by the French histo-
rian Dudo of Saint-Quentin (c.965–c.1040). Snorri Sturlusson writes (in the Ynglinge Saga):

On the north side of the Black Sea is Svitjod the Great or Cold . . . From the mountains
in the north, out of all human community, runs a river called Tanais (Don), in older
times it was called Tanakvisl, it falls into the Black Sea . . . The country east of
Tanakvisl in Asia was called Asaland or Asaheim, and the main castle in that country
was called Asgard. A man named Odin was the chieftain in that castle, it was a place
for great sacrifice there . . . At that time the Roman chieftains travelled widely around
in the world and conquered all peoples, many chieftains fled from their properties
because of this strife. But Odin was foresighted and skilled in magic, therefore he
knew that his progeny should build and live in the northern part of the world . . .

Does the result of the haplogrouping mean that the Ynglinge Saga – the saga of the
dynasty of chieftains living in the south-eastern part of Norway – contains some historic
facts, and should not only be considered as mythological fantasy?
13. Since this paper was submitted, archaeologists from the University of Oslo have
re-opened both the Oseberg and the Gokstad mounds, bringing new evidence to light.

R EFERENCES
BANG, G. And E. RAMM, 1970. Determination of age in humans from root dentin
transparency. Acta odontologica Scandinavica 26:3–35.
BIRKELAND, H., 1951. Nordens historie i middelalderen etter arabiske kilder.
Videnskaps-Akademiets Skrifter, HF kl. nr. 2. Oslo: Jacob Dybwad.

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BRØGGER, A.W., 1916. Borrefundet og Vestfoldkongenes graver. Videnskaps-

Akademiets Skrifter, HF kl. nr. 1. Kristiania: Jacob Dybwad.
CHRISTENSEN, A.E., A.S. INGSTAD, and B. MYHRE, 1992. Oseberg-dronningens grav.
Vår arkeologiske nasjonalskatt i nytt lys. Oslo: Schibsted.
DERBENEVA, O.A., E.B. STARIKOVSKAYA, I.C. WALLACE and R.I. SUKERNIK, 2002.
Traces of Early Eurasians in the Mansi of Northwest Siberia Revealed by
Mitochondrial DNA Analysis. American Journal of Human Genetics 70:
1009–1014.
FROST, T., ed., 1997. Gokstadhøvdingen og hans tid. Sandefjord: Sandefjordsmuseene.
GANSUM, T., 2004. Gåten Oseberg. Levende historie 6:32–37.
GULDBERG, G.A., 1907a. Die Menschenknochen des Osebergschiffs aus dem
jüngeren Eisenalter. Eine anatomisch-antropologische Untersuchung.
Videnskabs-Akademiets Skrifter, MN kl. nr. 8. Kristiania: Jacob Dybwad.
GULDBERG, G.A., 1907b. Om Osebergskibets menneskeknokler fra den yngre
jernalder. Norsk Magazin for Lægevidenskaben 12:1385–1397.
HOLCK, P., 1990. Den fysiske antropologi i Norge. Fra Anatomisk Institutts
historie 1815–1990. Antropologiske skrifter nr. 3. Oslo: Anatomisk institutt,
Universitetet i Oslo.
HOLTSMARK, A. and D.A. SEIP, 1979. Snorre Sturlason. Kongesagaer. Oslo: Gyldendal.
LARSEN, A.B. dy., 1930. Åssen Osebergsjibe blæi finne. In Gamalt frå Vestfold,
vol. 1. Sem og Slagen bygdebok. Sandefjord: Vestfoldlaget.
OLSEN, M., 1926. Ættegård og helligdom. Norske stedsnavn sosialt og religionshistorisk
belyst. Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning. Oslo: Aschehoug.
RYGH, O., 1897. Norske Gaardnavne. Oplysninger samlede til Brug ved Matrikelens
Revision. Jarlsberg og Larviks Amt. Kristiania: Fabritius.
SCHREINER, K.E., 1927a. Menneskeknoklene fra Osebergskibet og andre norske
jernalderfund. Osebergfundet, vol. 5, Oslo: Den norske stat.
SCHREINER, K.E., 1927b. Norske skjelettfunn fra folkevandringstid og yngre
jernalder. Videnskaps-Akademiets Skrifter, MN kl. nr. 11. Oslo: Jacob Dybwad.
Sem og Slagen – en bygdebok., 2001. Vol. 2: Kulturhistorie. Høgskolen i Vestfold.
SØRLIE, M., ed., 1962. Mattis Størssøn: Den norske krønike. Oslo/Bergen:
Universitetsforlaget.
THE SCHREINER COLLECTION, letter archive. Anatomical Institute, University of
Oslo.
TORP, A., 1992. Nynorsk etymologisk ordbok. Facsimile ed. Oslo: Ringstrøms
antikvariat.

S UBMISSION DATA

Received 23 December 2006; accepted 27 May 2007; revised 19 June 2007.

B IOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Per Holck is Professor of Anatomy at the Anatomical Institute, University of Oslo. Born
in 1942 in Oslo, Norway, he is the author of some 150 articles in the subject areas of
anatomy, biological anthropology, forensic anthropology, and medical history.

Address: Anatomical Institiute, Anthropological Department, University of Oslo, PO

Box 1105 Blindern, N-1105 Oslo, Norway. [email: per.holck@medisin.uio.no]

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210 EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF ARCHAEOLOGY 9(2–3)

A BSTRACTS
Le bateau-sépulture de Oseberg, Norvège : nouvelles réflexions sur les squelettes du tertre
funéraire
Per Holck

Un bateau viking fut découvert en 1904 à Oseberg en Norvège, au sud d’Oslo, sur le côté ouest du
fjord d’Oslo. Les restes squelettiques de deux corps féminins enterrés à bord ont été examinés
anthropologiquement entre les deux guerres. Il a beaucoup été spéculé sur leur identité, et nom-
breux étaient ceux qui voulaient croire que l’une d’entre elles était la reine Åsa, la grand-mère du
premier roi de Norvège. Les squelettes furent réenterrés en 1948, mais quelques petits fragments
ont été conservés à l’Institut anatomique de l’Université d’Oslo. Ces pièces ont maintenant pu être
datées au radiocarbone à 1220 ± 40 et 1230 ± 40 BP. Leurs valeurs δ¹³ = −21.6‰ −21.0‰ similaires
indiquent que le régime alimentaire des deux individus consistait principalement en nourriture
terrestre, et seulement à une moindre mesure en poissons. Quant à la question de parenté entre les
deux femmes, le Dr Tom Gilbert de l’Institut Panum de Copenhague a réussi à obtenir un profil
ADN de la femme plus jeune, attribuant son échantillon au haplogroupe U7. Ceci est intéressant
dans la mesure où ce haplogroupe est quasiment inexistant chez les Européens modernes, mais se
retrouve communément chez les Iraniens. Cela pourrait signifier que les ancêtres de la jeune
femme venaient de la région de la Mer Noire, comme décrit par Snorri Sturlusson dans sa Saga.
Malheureusement, les os de la femme plus âgée étaient trop contaminés pour permettre l’obten-
tion d’un profil net. Comme il y a raison de penser que les squelettes réenterrés dans le tumulus
sont en train de se désintégrer lentement dans leurs cercueils, certains scientifiques aimeraient rou-
vrir le tombeau afin de conserver les restes et d’essayer d’obtenir un autre profil ADN avant que
cela ne soit devenue impossible.

Mots clés: anthropologie, ADN, Norvège, navire d’Oseberg, âge des Vikings

Das Schiffsgrab von Oseberg, Norwegen: Neue Gedanken zu den Skeletten des Grabhügels
Per Holck

Im Jahr 1904 wurde in Oseberg (Norwegen) auf der Westseite des Oslofjordes, südlich von Oslo,
ein wikingerzeitliches Schiff entdeckt und ausgegraben. Die Skelettreste zweier weiblicher
Individuen, die mit dem Schiff begraben worden sind, wurden zwischen den Weltkriegen
anthropologisch untersucht. Fragen nach ihrer Identität haben zu vielen Spekulationen geführt
und zahlreiche Menschen glauben, dass es sich bei einer von diesen Frauen um die Königin Åsa,
die Großmutter von Norwegens erstem König gehandelt haben könnte. Als die Skelette 1948
wiederbestattet wurden, wurden einige kleinere Teile zurückbehalten und am Anatomischen
Institut der Universität Oslo aufbewahrt. Diese Knochen wurden mittels der Radiokarbonmethode
auf 1220 ± 40 und 1230 ± 40 BP datiert. Ihr ähnlicher δ¹³ -Wert von −21,6‰ bzw. −21,0‰ deutet
darauf hin, dass sich beide von terrestrischer Nahrung und nur zu einem geringen Teil von Fisch
ernährten. Zur Beantwortung der Frage einer möglichen Verwandtschaft beider Frauen, gelang es
Dr. Tom Gilbert vom Panum Institute in Kopenhagen ein DNA-Profil des jüngeren Individuums zu
erstellen, das eine Zugehörigkeit zur Haplogruppe U7 ergab. Diese Beobachtung ist sehr
interessant, da diese Haplogruppe bei modernen Europäern kaum auftritt, in iranischen
Populationen dagegen sehr verbreitet ist. Möglicherweise könnte das bedeuten, dass die
Vorfahren der jungen Frau aus einem Gebiet am Schwarzen Meer kamen, wie es Snorri Sturlusson
in seiner Saga berichtet. Leider waren die Knochen der älteren Frau für ein klares DNA-Profil zu
stark kontaminiert. Da die Gefahr besteht, dass das wiederbestattete Skelettmaterial langsam in
den Särgen zerfällt, schlagen verschiedene Wissenschaftler vor, den Hügel erneut zu öffnen, um
die Überreste zu sichern und um zu klären, ob es möglich ist, ein weiteres DNA-Profil zu
gewinnen, bevor diese Möglichkeit verloren ist.

Schlüsselbegriffe: Anthropologie, DNA, Norwegen, Oseberg-Schiff, Wikingerzeit

Downloaded from eja.sagepub.com at Universitet I Oslo on December 7, 2015

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