A previously unknown elite Viking ritual centre - including a feast hall, cult house, and ship burial - has been found in 🇳🇴 using ground-penetrating radar.


The discovery was made at Gjellestad, which is is home to the Jell Mound. This is one of the largest Iron Age funerary mounds in all of Scandinavia.


“The site seems to have belonged to the very top echelon of the Iron Age elite of the area, and would have been a focal point for the exertion of political and social control of the region,” said Lars Gustavsen, lead author of the research.

"A full excavation of the ship burial is currently underway, marking the first time a Viking ship burial has been excavated in almost 100 years"

Gjellestad: a newly discovered ‘central place’ in south-east Norway
PDF research article

The Viking Economy:
Trade in the Viking Age


At the height of their influence, the Vikings participated in, or controlled, a network stretching from North America in the West to the Caspian Sea in the West, all the way down to the Islamic world and across Asia.


Article

Viking Religion:
From the Norse Gods to Christianity

Either way, the Vikings were truly born with the first major raid on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, just off the coast of Northern Britain, in 793.
A scholar from Northumbria, Alcuin, wrote:
„ Never before has such terror appeared in Britain as we have now suffered from a pagan race … The heathens poured out the blood of saints around the altar, and trampled on the bodies of saints in the temple of God, like dung in the streets.“


Article