From USA Today, 20 July 2011: Viking women may have equaled men moving to England in medieval invasions, suggests a look at ancient burials. Vikings famously invaded Eastern England around 900 A.D., notes Shane McLeod of the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Western Australia in the Early Medieval Europe [...]
Read more →From The Guardian, 11 July 2011: Teeth with neat parallel grooves have been found in Viking graves in Sweden, Denmark and England, and farther afield. Filed Viking teeth are piling up. Caroline Arcini, an osteologist at the archaeology department of the Swedish National Heritage Board, was fascinated to learn from Oxford Archaeology of the men [...]
Read more →From the BBC, 5 May 2011: Aerial surveys are being carried out over Skye to help archaeologists investigate a 12th Century Viking shipbuilding site. Boat timbers, a stone-built quay and a canal have already been uncovered at Loch na h-Airde on Skye’s Rubh an Dunain peninsula. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments [...]
Read more →From Views and News from Norway, 10 March 2011: The largest archaeological project in Norway in nearly 10 years will begin in June to recover property of the Viking king Harald Hårfagre (alternatively known as “Harald Fairhair,” “Harald Finehair” or, simply, “Harald I”). He was, at any rate, the first king of Norway. Newspaper Aftenposten [...]
Read more →Volunteers are aiming to complete and sail a full-scale replica of Norway’s famed Oseberg ship, one of the best-preserved and most celebrated Viking relics in the world, later this year. The original Oseberg ship can be found in Oslo’s Viking Ship Museum. Builders hope the replica can be used at sea later this year. Enthusiasts working [...]
Read more →From News & Views from Norway, 2 February 2011: New archaeological findings suggest that the Vikings considered Stone Age objects to have magical qualities, and that such “antiques” were more important in Viking culture than previously understood. Examinations of around 10 Viking graves found in Rogaland, southwest Norway, revealed Stone Age items, such as weapons, [...]
Read more →From the BBC, 3 February 2011: Now genealogists from the University of Leicester are using DNA tests to trace Manx ancestry back to the Viking era. Local men with popular Manx surnames are being asked to give a DNA sample to help researchers explore the links between Y chromosomes, surnames and common ancestry. The investigation [...]
Read more →From the New Scientist, 31 Jan 2011: Viking sagas may have been more truthful than we realised. Crystal “sunstones” could have helped Viking sailors to navigate even when cloud or fog hid the sun. Vikings navigated using sundials calibrated to show the direction of the North Pole. While there is no physical evidence for the [...]
Read more →From Unreported Heritage News, 23 December 2010: New archaeological discoveries show that Iceland was inhabited around AD 800 – nearly 70 years before the traditional dating of its Viking settlement. One possibility is that these early inhabitants may have been related to Irish monastic communities found throughout the Scottish islands at that time, and described [...]
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