A metal detectorist in Norway dismissed a rare 900-year-old silver coin as a button, before researchers realized it was a one-of-a-kind piece linked to Magnus Barefoot (also known as Magnus Berrføtt), the warrior ruler often called Norway's last Viking king.

The coin, found in a field near Utstein Monastery in southwest Norway, dates to Barefoot's reign from 1093 to 1103. It is the first coin of its type ever discovered on Norwegian soil, according to a December 2025 translated statement from the University of Stavanger Museum of Archaeology.

"It is a fascinating thought that we may be just one large treasure find away from having a completely different view of Magnus Berrføtt's coinage as well, and it underlines the importance of all new discoveries that are made," museum representatives said in the statement.

The button that wasn't

The metal detectorist, Morten Eek, found the object in April 2025. It came from the plow layer in the soil, about 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) below the surface.

One side looked bright and silvery, but the other was covered by copper and had a dark spot in the middle, giving it a button-like appearance. Eek took it home and placed it with other buttons, worn modern coins and pieces of scrap metal he had collected.

It was only months later, when Eek showed his treasures to his fellow metal detectorists, that they noticed the silver side looked like a medieval coin. Its design resembled an illustration in the 1865 reference work "Norge's Coins from the Middle Ages," by C.I. Schive.

The detectorists then contacted the University of Stavanger Museum of Archaeology, where researchers took a closer look.

A coin with a second life

To the experts, the coin seemed strange because someone had altered it after it was minted. A copper plate had been placed over one side, and the coin's outer edge had been folded around it. Two rounded notches on the edge show where a chain or loop may have been attached, suggesting the coin was later worn as jewelry.

Researchers could have removed the copper plate to see what was underneath, but doing so would have damaged the object's fragile state.

The artifact's unique transformation reveals "something about people's relationship to what was initially a coin," museum representatives said in the statement.

To investigate the coin's covered side, the team X-rayed it. The scan revealed a griffin, a mythical creature with the body of a lion and features of a bird of prey. The motif has sometimes been interpreted as the lion of St. Mark, a Christian symbol, but the museum noted that the animal on these coins closely resembles a griffin. In medieval Christian art, griffins were used to symbolize Christ's dual nature as both human and divine.

The visible side revealed a "cross-over-cross" motif, with double-lined arms and small semicircles or bowl shapes at the ends. The pairing of the cross and griffin is what makes the coin so rare.

"Two-sided coins with the motif combination of griffin and cross over cross are only known from four copies," the statement said, with one coin from the Sandur hoard, found in the Faroe Islands in 1863, and three others from Denmark's Mørstad hoard, which was found this past spring and contains nearly 5,000 coins.

The rarity of such coins "may tell us something about the extent of Magnus Berrføtt's minting," museum representatives said in the statement.

In total, about 100 coins, spread across 12 discoveries, are known from Magnus Barefoot's reign, according to the museum. That makes every new example valuable for understanding how coins were produced and circulated in Norway in the late Viking Age and early Middle Ages.

Who was Magnus Barefoot?

Magnus Barefoot is sometimes called Magnus Barelegs, thanks to the kilts he wore. He became king in 1093 after the death of his father, Olav Kyrre (also called Olaf III of Norway), whose reign was remembered as a relatively peaceful period. Barefoot followed a different path. Like his grandfather Harald Hardrada, the Norwegian king killed at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, Barefoot built his reputation through warfare.

Barefoot spent much of his reign campaigning overseas. He sought to extend Norwegian power across the western sea routes, including the Isle of Man and parts of the Irish Sea. The museum noted that he was associated with the saying that a king was meant "for honor and glory, and not a long life." His death reflected this, as he died at around age 30, in 1103, when he was ambushed and killed during a campaign in Ireland.

The coin points to more than Barefoot's military ambitions. According to the museum, it also reflected one of his domestic reforms. Earlier Norwegian rulers had reduced the silver content of their coins, but Barefoot restored a high silver standard, with coins that were around 90% silver.

Whether the coin was lost at the Utstein Monastery during Barefoot's lifetime is impossible to know. Because it was turned into jewelry at some point, it may have circulated for years, or even generations, after it stopped being used as money.

See how much you know about ancient norsemen with our Viking quiz!

Some of the earliest Viking "pennies" were made with silver that contained melted-down coins from the Islamic world, a new study reports. The finding confirms the relationship between early Viking and Islamic silver, which was likely the result of long-distance trade.

The silver coins make up the Damhus hoard, a trove of 226 Viking Age pennies found near the town of Ribe on Denmark's Jutland Peninsula in 2018. The trove dates to between A.D. 830 and 850, which makes the silver pieces some of the earliest Viking coins ever discovered, according to the study, which was published June 5 in the journal Archaeometry.

Although the coins are formally called pennies, their weight in silver alone means they were much more valuable than modern pennies when they were made in the ninth century, study first author Thomas Birch, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Denmark, told Live Science. "The word comes from the Old English word 'pening'," he said – similar to "pfennig" in High German. A single pening was enough to buy ale, bread or simple tools.

The ancient coins are also remarkably well preserved after more than 1,000 years in the ground, Birch said. One side shows a face said to represent Wodan or Odin, the chief Norse god, while the other side portrays a stag.

Viking treasure

Crucially, the dies used to stamp the sides of the coins were replaced by similar dies as they wore out, resulting in tiny changes that modern scientists can identify, Birch said.

As a result, Birch and his colleagues saw that at least 30 dies had been used, and they estimate that hundreds of thousands of this type of silver Viking penny were produced by the single mint at Ribe, which was a major settlement at the time.

Early medieval Denmark was a center of the Norse world, and raiders from the coasts of Scandinavia were known as Vikings after the Old Norse word "vikingr," which meant something like "pirate."

The Vikings became notorious in 793 when they raided Christian monks on the English island of Lindisfarne. This event sparked the Viking Age, which ended in 1066 when a Viking army was defeated at Stamford Bridge in England only a few weeks before the Norman Conquest.

Ancient silver

Birch said the Damhus hoard came from a time when Denmark was divided among pagan Norse kingdoms, more than 100 years before their unification and Christianization under Harald Bluetooth.

Examination of 25 of the coins with X-ray fluorescence and other analytical techniques looked at the different isotopes — elements with different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei — of the trace elements mixed in with the silver. The results indicated that, in some cases, more than half of the precious metal had come from Islamic silver coins called "dirhams," he said.

The Viking coins were probably minted from ingots of silver produced outside Scandinavia, in part by melting down Islamic coins in bulk, Birch said, and these ingots had likely been traded to the ancient mint at Ribe.

"This silver has already had a life cycle; it's not coming straight from a mine," he said. "[The silver] has been made into dirhams and then been melted in a pot somewhere."

The coins in the Damhus hoard came from the precise time when silver from the Islamic world was becoming common in the Viking world, he noted; Islamic jewelry from that time has also been discovered in Scandinavia.

"We're right at the juncture of when we can see Islamic silver coming in," Birch said. "If these coins are being minted in the hundreds of thousands, that's a huge quantity of Islamic silver."

See how much you know about ancient norsemen with our Viking quiz!

The Romans controlled much of Britain for nearly 400 years, but they left relatively little genetic evidence of their occupation, new ancient-DNA research reveals.

Instead, the Roman occupation, from A.D. 43 until about 410, seems to have changed the culture of their Britannia province, with most people native to Britain converting to Imperial Roman ways.

A preprint of the study was posted to the bioRxiv server April 29 and has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal yet. Some experts agree with the conclusions, but others are cautious.

However, some of the study's findings agree with the results of earlier genetic studies of the Germanic migration into Britain, Duncan Sayer, an archaeologist at the University of Lancashire in England, told Live Science.

"These results absolutely confirm the data we've had previously," said Sayer, who was not involved in the study.

For their investigations, the researchers looked at the genomes of more than 1,000 individuals who had been buried in Britain between 2550 B.C. and A.D. 1150. They found that Roman DNA — identified as having ancestral origins "outside Britain" — accounted for only about 20% of the genetic profile of individuals buried in Britain during its Roman era. By comparison, in the later Anglo-Saxon era, DNA from "Germanic" sources accounted for about 70% of the genetics of people buried there at that time.

These findings indicate that the native British interbred surprisingly little with people from elsewhere in the Roman Empire but often interbred with people of Anglo-Saxon origin, Sayer said.

"In the Roman period, although people are settling in Britain, it's not in quite the same way as Germanic speakers [Anglo-Saxons] are in the fifth and sixth centuries," James Gerrard, an archaeologist at Newcastle University in England who was not involved in the research, told Live Science.

The team who worked on the latest study said they also found very little genetic evidence of the later Viking Age in the North of England, when most of that region followed Danish traditions and was called the Danelaw: only about 4% of the genetic profiles of people buried in England at this time showed they had Iron Age Scandinavian ancestry, they reported.

Meanwhile, ancestries from Central and Southern Europe rose from the eighth century onward that signified more people migrated into England during the medieval period, the team wrote in the preprint.

Cultural transformation

The authors noted that "previous DNA sampling from Roman Britain has been relatively small-scale and regionally or context specific" and suggested that their "dataset bridges this gap."

But Gerrard, who was not involved in the study, cautioned that the new research might not give an accurate picture of Britain's genetic history.

To begin with, while the new study examined the DNA extracted from 1,039 people buried in Britain between the Bronze Age and medieval times — a span of roughly 3,700 years — only about 200 were from the Roman period.

This is a small sample size compared with archaeological investigations in Britain, where the origins of several thousand people buried during the Roman period have been examined over decades, he said.

In addition, the burials in the new research tended to be from cities, rather than from the countryside, where intermarriage rates may have differed. The results of the study might have also been skewed because the Roman presence would have been greater in the North of England, where many troops were stationed at camps, and in the East of England, where Roman urban settlements were more common, he said.

"We have a problem, I think, of whether ancient DNA is representative of the whole population," Gerrard said.

Celtic women

The Romans invaded and annexed most of Britain at the command of Emperor Claudius in A.D. 43, although his great-great-granduncle (by adoption) Julius Caesar led two short-lived invasions in 55 and 54 B.C. The Roman occupation ended in about A.D. 410, when Roman troops guarding the northern frontier were recalled to the continent to defend Roman territories against Germanic invasions.

Although the study found relatively little genetic evidence of the Roman occupation, the researchers noted that the Romans seemed to have had a marked effect on burial practices. Pre-Roman burials in Britain were often grouped by matrilineal relationships, perhaps reflecting the traditionally Celtic importance of women as the heads of their families, and the researchers found evidence that this practice continued for a time in the West of England — a native stronghold. Under this cultural tradition, women were relatively empowered and stayed in their ancestral homes, and the men they married moved into their communities.

But the DNA extracted from the remains in Roman-era cemeteries in Britain showed no such patterns, the researchers said, which might reflect traditional Roman patriarchal practices.

The authors of the new research declined a request from Live Science to comment, noting that they wanted to wait until the paper is published in a peer-reviewed journal before talking with the media.

What do you know about the Empire's conquest of the British Isles? Find out with our Roman Britain quiz!

Two rare silver coins discovered by metal detectorists in Denmark reveal that the Vikings made jewelry out of Christian coins that were originally designed to prevent Viking raids, according to experts at the National Museum of Denmark.

The coins were minted around 1009, during the reign of English king Æthelred II, nicknamed "Æthelred the Unready," and featured religious motifs that he hoped would protect his people from the Viking scourge. But he didn't count on the Vikings' appreciation of the coins' aesthetics.

"It gave me goose bumps, because these coins are extremely rare," Gitte Ingvardson, a curator at the National Museum of Denmark, said in a statement. "They were made to obtain protection against the Vikings, but ended up instead as jewelry or amulets worn by Vikings. That is almost tragicomical."

Experts have dubbed this style of anti-Viking coin "Agnus Dei," or "Lamb of God," because the front of the coin features a lamb pierced by a cross, which is a symbol of Christ's sacrifice. Alpha and omega — the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet — also appear on the coin's front side, symbolizing that God is the beginning and end. On the back of the coin, a dove symbolizing the Holy Spirit takes flight.

Contemporary English coins also feature a cross on the back but lack the imagery of the lamb, and the fronts of those coins typically include a profile of the king.

Only 30 such "Lamb of God" coins have been found to date, and most were discovered in Scandinavia; they were likely plundered by Vikings who were not actually warded off by the religious symbols. Most of the Scandinavian examples feature metal loops that had been soldered on, presumably so the Vikings could wear the coins on necklaces or as amulets.

"The Vikings soon realized that it was far more practical to use coins than to hack the silver into pieces for trading purposes," Ingvardson said. The rare coins are important artifacts linking English kings, Danish kings, Christianity and the Vikings.

The Viking Age ended in 1066, and people in what is now Denmark began converting to Christianity around then as Norse paganism declined. For example, archaeologists previously found more than 70 burials dating to the 1100s in a medieval Danish cemetery, and it's likely that these Norse people were Christians, although some may have retained some Norse pagan beliefs.

See how much you know about ancient Norsemen with our Viking quiz!

Archaeologists in Norway have uncovered a Viking Age hoard containing 2,970 silver coins minted in England, Germany, Denmark and Norway. It is the largest Viking coin hoard ever discovered in Norway — and archaeologists aren't done digging yet.

Two metal detectorists found the first 19 coins April 10 on a farm near the village of Rena in eastern Norway, according to a translated statement from Norway's Directorate for Cultural Heritage. The detectorists alerted local archaeologists, who joined the search the following day.

"I jokingly said it would be nice if we found a few more coins to make the discovery even bigger," May-Tove Smiseth, an archaeologist at the Innlandet County Municipality, told Science Norway. "But the detectors never stopped beeping!"

Experts at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo are already examining the coins, dubbed the Mørstad Hoard after the farm where it was discovered. Examples include coins minted under Æthelred II (king of England from 978 to 1016), Cnut the Great (king of England, Denmark and Norway from about 1016 to 1035), and Otto III (the Holy Roman emperor from 996 to 1002).

"Foreign coinage dominates the circulation of money in Norway up until Harald Hardrada ([ruled] 1046-1066) established a national coinage," Svein Gullbekk, a numismatist at the Museum of Cultural History, said in a statement. But a few of the coins discovered in the hoard were minted under Hardrada, meaning the hoard was deposited around 1050, just as Norwegian coinage took off, Gullbekk said.

The hoard may represent a stash of Viking wealth made not from raiding but from the industrial-scale processing of natural resources from local bogs in Scandinavia.

"Ore was extracted from the bogs, and the processed iron was exported to Europe," Jostein Bergstøl, an archaeologist at the Museum of Cultural History, said in a statement. "From the 900s until the late 1200s there was an enormous iron production in this area."

The soil conditions likely helped to preserve the coins, according to Smiseth.

"This is a truly unique discovery of the kind that you may only experience once in your career," Smiseth said in a translated statement. Along with the coins, the archaeologists have uncovered pieces of hacksilver — cut fragments of silver jewelry that were used as currency in the Middle Ages.

Archaeologists are still working at the site to see if there are additional items in the hoard or if any evidence of a settlement might be in the area. But the Mørstad Hoard has already made history.

"We have previously found Viking Age coin hoards containing around 2,000 coins, but never more than 3,000," Gullbekk told Science Norway. "They have broken a barrier here. This is truly exceptional."

See how much you know about ancient Norsemen with our Viking quiz!

A gold coin minted more than 1,000 years ago as an imitation of a more famous coin may be a relic of the "Great Heathen Army" that invaded England in 865 — an invasion that led to the Viking kingdom there known as the Danelaw.

According to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, which is run by the British Museum and Amgueddfa Cymru - Museum Wales, a metal detectorist discovered the coin in 2024 in a field near Elsing, a village in Norfolk on England's east coast, which was among the areas first invaded by the Viking army.

The coin had been converted into a pendant or medallion so that it could be worn on a cord around the neck, and independent numismatist Simon Coupland told BBC News that it had probably belonged to one of the invaders.

Importantly, the coin was a solid-gold imitation of earlier "solidus" coins minted by the Carolingian emperor Louis the Pious — the son of Charlemagne — about 50 years earlier.

The original solidi were awarded to high-ranking Carolingian nobles, but the later copies — probably made in Frisia, an area now covered by the northern Netherlands and the western edge of Germany — were used as "portable wealth" throughout Scandinavia, he said.

It is likely this one was worn as an amulet by one of the Viking invaders. "The Norfolk find is a particularly fine specimen compared with most," Coupland said.

Gold pendant

The object is now going through an official inquiry to determine if it is "treasure" that must be given or sold to a museum, and Norfolk's Norwich Castle Museum has expressed interest.

According to its entry on the Portable Antiquities Scheme's website, the gold coin is pierced through twice above the head of the emperor Louis it portrays, which suggests the "head" side was meant to be facing forward when it was worn as a medallion.

The other side of the coin features a Christian cross, which probably wasn't favored by the Viking invader who wore it. (The Vikings and other Norse, beginning in the central Danish kingdom, didn't start converting to Christianity until the late 10th century.)

The Viking force, which the Christian English dubbed the "Great Heathen Army," began their invasion in 865 under the Danish chieftains Ivar the Boneless (it is unclear what his name means), Halfdan and Ubba. All three chieftains claimed to be sons of the legendary Viking hero and king Ragnar Lothbrok, who appeared in Norse sagas.

Experts debate whether the army comprised as few as 1,000 Viking warriors or more than 5,000, but as the fighting continued, they were reinforced from Scandinavia in 871, and in 878, Viking leaders negotiated the Danelaw with the English king Alfred the Great.

The deal kept the invaders out of Alfred's lands and established a Viking kingdom — with unique laws — over much of eastern and northern England for more than 50 years. In the following decades, Alfred's successors once again amalgamated the Viking territories into the English kingdom, which fell to the Norman Conquest in 1066.

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

In 1957, an amateur archaeologist working at a Native American site in Maine discovered a perplexing treasure: a 900-year-old silver Norse coin that dated to the late Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066).

The artifact, sometimes called the "Maine Penny," is now in the Maine State Museum. Its discovery has raised a number of questions — mainly, how did it get there, and does its presence in Maine mean the Viking reached the Pine Tree State?

The Vikings were expert seafarers with outposts from Ukraine to Canada, so it's conceivable that they could have reached Maine. The Vikings and their descendants had colonies in Greenland that existed from the late 10th century to the 15th century. They also had an outpost at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland, Canada, that was in use during the 11th century.

Norse sagas tell of Viking voyages to North America, including trips to a place they called "Vinland" (which means "wine land"), where grapes supposedly grew. While grapes do grow in Maine, archaeologists haven't found any Viking Age settlements or artifacts there, except for the penny. But many experts, through scholarly journal articles and books, have weighed in on the issue.

What is the Maine Penny?

The coin, which researchers generally agree is authentic, was minted during the reign of Olaf III, who was king of Norway from about 1066 to 1093, Gordon Campbell, a professor emeritus of Renaissance studies at the University of Leicester in the U.K., wrote in his book "Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth" (Oxford University Press, 2021). In 1979, the Norwegian numismatist Kolbjorn Skaare dated the coin to sometime between 1065 to 1080, Campbell noted.

The coin is in poor shape and some of its engravings are hard to see. One side of the coin has a cross with what appears to be a circle surrounding it. The other side is badly damaged, with only a few visible lines. The lines might have once formed a human figure that depicted Olaf III.

The coin was found in the coastal town of Brooklin at what is now known as the Goddard site, a Native American trading center that was in use during the late 12th and early 13th centuries, Campbell wrote. The coin has a puncture mark through it, so it could have been used as a pendant. It's also worn and chipped, suggesting it may have passed through many hands over a long period before ending up in Maine.

How did the coin get to Maine?

The scholars that Live Science interviewed tended to think the coin reached Maine through Native American trade networks.

"The position of the Maine State Museum is that the coin reached the Goddard site through down-the-line trade," Andrew Beaupré, curator of archaeological collections at the Maine State Museum, told Live Science in an email. "Goddard has been determined to be a Native American trading center. The Norse coin is not the only artifact that has been traced to the Canadian Maritime sub-arctic," a region that stretches from the Labrador Sea to the Northwest Territories. Other finds at Goddard from this northern area include Indigenous stone tools "that have been traced to Newfoundland/Labrador," he said.

There "is currently no valid archaeological evidence that Norse peoples visited or settled Maine," Beaupré said. However, he noted that the Vikings could have sailed down the coast of Maine from Newfoundland in the 11th century.

Svein Gullbekk, a professor in the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo who has studied the coin extensively, agreed that the likeliest explanation is that it arrived in Maine as Indigenous Americans traded with one another.

"I believe this 11th century Norwegian coin provides solid evidence for cultural and economic contacts between Native Americans and Inuits and Norse people," Gullbekk told Live Science in an email. In "my view, I believe it followed Native American routes, presumably used as a piece of [jewelry], rather than a monetary item."

Joel Anderson, an associate professor of history at the University of Maine, has a similar view. "I think that the 'Native American trade route' hypothesis is the most plausible," Anderson told Live Science in an email. He's not aware of any other evidence for Vikings in Maine. "It's not out of the realm of possibility," he said, "but the available evidence does not support such a conclusion."

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

Archaeologists have unearthed a Viking Age pit filled with the dismembered remains of 10 people in the outskirts of Cambridge, England. The unusual mass grave, which also contained the skeleton of an extremely tall man who had undergone brain surgery, may be related to ninth-century conflicts among the Saxons and the Vikings.

In the summer of 2025, a team of professional and student archaeologists excavated a pit during a training dig in Wandlebury Country Park, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) south of Cambridge. Previous archaeological excavation in the area revealed an Iron Age hillfort that was used in the second century. It was just outside the hillfort that the archaeologists discovered the 13-by-3.3-foot (4 by 1 meter) pit.

There, archaeologists discovered four complete human skeletons, a cluster of skulls without their bodies, and a stack of leg bones, all from young men, according to a Feb. 4 statement from the University of Cambridge. The combination of severed heads and limbs, along with evidence that some of the people had been tied up, suggests these people met violent ends, Oscar Aldred, an archaeologist in the Cambridge Archaeological Unit, said in the statement. But the pit is also highly unusual in having both complete and dismembered remains.

"It may be that some of the disarticulated body parts had previously been displayed as trophies and then were gathered up and interred with the executed or otherwise slaughtered individuals," Aldred said. The individual body parts "may have been in a state of decomposition and literally falling apart when they went into the pit," he added.

During the ninth century, the area that is now Cambridge was a kind of "frontier zone" in the wars between the Saxons and the Vikings, according to Aldred. One skeleton has been carbon-dated to between 772 and 891, so "we suspect the pit may relate to those conflicts," Aldred said.

But the lack of injuries associated with medieval combat means the men in the pit were likely not killed in battle. "Those buried could have been recipients of corporal punishment, and that may be connected to Wandlebury as a sacred or well-known meeting place," Aldred said.

"It was a sobering experience to identify ever more disarticulated bones and realise the extent of the suffering that had taken place," Grace Grandfield, a Cambridge undergraduate student who took part in the dig, said in the statement.

A giant with a hole in his head

One particular skeleton discovered face down in the pit has given researchers insight into the individual's health issues.

The body of a man who was between 17 and 24 years old when he died revealed he may have stood around 6 feet, 5 inches (1.95 meters) — a massive height at a time when men averaged 5 feet, 6 inches (1.68 m). He also had a 1.2-inch (3 cm) oval hole in his skull, which may have been connected to his towering stature.

"The individual may have had a tumour that affected their pituitary gland and caused an excess of growth hormones," Trish Biers, an osteologist at the University of Cambridge, said in the statement.

Pituitary gigantism is a condition characterized by the overproduction of growth hormone during adolescence and is usually caused by a benign tumor called an adenoma. The extra growth hormone causes children to grow extremely tall. This condition can strain the circulatory and skeletal systems, which must maintain a large, heavy body.

"Such a condition in the brain would have led to increased pressure in the skull, causing headaches," Biers said. This may have necessitated a form of brain surgery called trepanation, when a hole is drilled into or scraped out of the skull, exposing the brain's protective membranes.

The hole in the man's skull may have been an attempt to alleviate pressure on his brain, Biers said, which is "not uncommon with head trauma today."

The University of Cambridge Department of Archaeology and the Cambridge Archaeological Unit have conducted student training digs at Wandlebury for several years, but this is the first time human remains have turned up since 1976, according to the statement. The discovery was featured in a recent episode of BBC Two's "Digging for Britain."

Further scientific analysis is planned for the 10 skeletons. Experts aim to use DNA and chemical analysis techniques to investigate the people's health and ancestry. These results should also determine whether the deceased individuals were Vikings.

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

In 1693, a farmer ploughing his field in North Petherton in southwest England found an intriguing medieval jewel made from gold, enamel and rock crystal. But it is the remarkable inscription around the edge that sets the piece apart from others. The jewel reads "AELFRED MEC HEHT GEWYRCAN," an Old English sentence that means "Alfred ordered me to be made."

The Alfred Jewel, which is in the collection of the Ashmolean Museum at the University of Oxford, is assumed to have been made between 871 and 899, during the reign of King Alfred the Great. Alfred initially ruled as king of the West Saxons (Wessex), one of seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms at the time. In 886, he expanded his power to the entirety of England and has thus been considered the first English king.

The jewel measures 2.4 by 1.2 inches (6.2 by 3.1 centimeters). Its design consists of dozens of small cells filled with colorful enamel paste and accented by thin strips of gold. It depicts a person from the mid-thighs up. The Old English inscription in capital letters around the edge of the jewel's bezel connects it to Alfred the Great.

King Alfred had a reputation as a savvy military leader since he helped fight off Viking invasions in the ninth century. He was also a highly educated man who had numerous religious texts translated from Latin into Old English. According to the Ashmolean Museum, Alfred distributed these religious manuscripts to bishops in the Anglo-Saxon kingdom along with an aestel, which was a kind of bookmark or pointer to help keep one's place while reading. The Alfred Jewel is likely the end of an aestel.

At the base of the jewel, in what looks like the mouth of a dragon or snake, experts have noticed a cylindrical socket. This was likely where the pointer itself was once connected.

The Alfred Jewel was found near Athelney Abbey, originally a tiny fortification. Alfred reportedly hid from Danish Vikings for several months at Athelney before launching a successful counter-attack in 878 that helped him expand his influence across southern England. Alfred then returned to establish a monastery at Athelney and to appoint its first abbot.

Because of its ties to England's first king, the Ashmolean Museum has called the Alfred Jewel "among the most significant of royal relics."

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

This round, silver pendant was found in a 10th-century elite woman's burial in Sweden in 1920 and is the only known depiction of a pregnant Viking.

The artifact, known as the Ash Pendant, is in the collection of the Swedish History Museum. It is about 1.5 inches (4 centimeters) in diameter and made out of gilded silver. A ring partially encloses a female figure, who stands with her legs spread and hands clasped under her pregnant belly. Although the top of the pendant is worn down, lines above the woman's head suggest a crown or headdress. The woman wears a cloak buttoned at the neck and a pearl-like beaded accessory.

The pendant was discovered by Swedish archaeologist T.J. Arne in his 1920 excavation of several burial mounds at the site of Aska. Dozens of artifacts were found in the grave, including eight other pendants, four silver rings, a bone game board and an Islamic silver coin. Based on the presence of rivets and nails, the excavators suspected the woman was buried in a wooden casket that decomposed over time, and her bones suggest she was a young or middle-aged adult. It's unknown if she was pregnant or giving birth when she died.

There is some disagreement about what the unique Ash Pendant may signify about the deceased Viking woman.

According to the Swedish History Museum, the pendant may depict the Norse goddess Freyja, who was associated with pregnancy and childbirth. Freyja wore a special necklace called the Brísingamen, the descriptions of which closely match the button clasp and rows of beads on the Ash Pendant. The pendant may therefore have been a talisman for the woman in the grave.

But the Aska site also features a large, flat-topped mound that might have been the foundation for a "royal hall," according to archaeologist Martin Rundkvist, meaning the people buried in the graves were "petty royalty." They appear to have passed down the silver pendants, including the Ash Pendant, as heirlooms over several generations.

Given the range of artifacts discovered in the woman's grave, including a wolf-headed iron staff and the series of heirloom pendants, the woman may have held a prominent role as a practitioner of magic or ritual, archaeologist Neil Price has argued.

And because later graves in the Aska area lack similar ritual objects, according to a study by archaeologist Hide Gustafsson, this may mean that the Viking woman buried in the mound was the last pagan practitioner of her kind before the introduction of Christianity to the region, and that her Freyja pendant was buried with her.

For more stunning archaeological discoveries, check out our Astonishing Artifacts archives.

A metal detectorist in central Norway recently discovered a Viking Age metal brooch. But when he led archaeologists to the site, they found much more: a burial with evidence of an unusual ritual they had never seen before.

"The grave contains what we believe is a woman, buried with a typical Viking Age outfit and jewelry dating to the ninth century," Raymond Sauvage, head engineer at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology's University Museum and the project leader, said in a translated statement. "The most striking feature is two scallop shells placed by the mouth of the deceased, a practice previously unknown from pre-Christian graves in Norway."

The burial was discovered earlier this year when the detectorist, Roy Søreng, was searching a coastal field privately owned by Arve Innstrand in the county of Trøndelag. Søreng hit on a metal, oval-shaped brooch typical of Viking Age jewelry. Innstrand and Søreng alerted archaeologists, who excavated further and found a grave filled with artifacts, bird bones and the shell-covered human skeleton.

"It is very unusual to have such a well-preserved skeleton in old graves," Hanna Geiran, director general for the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage, said in the statement. "This discovery has great cultural heritage value."

The Viking Age woman appeared to have been buried in an outer dress that was fastened near her shoulders with two oval brooches, according to the archaeologists. A small ring brooch closed the neck opening of her inner dress, which was similar to a slip. The woman's jewelry and clothing suggest "she was a free and likely married woman, perhaps the mistress of the farm," Sauvage said.

Although the brooches are typical Viking Age clothing accessories, the shells and bird bones surprised the archaeologists.

Two large scallop shells were positioned on the woman's mouth, with the curved side outward and the straight edge upward, partially covering her jaw. It is unclear if the scallops were part of an artifact, Sauvage told Live Science in an email, as "we have not seen markings such as holes yet." Further analysis may reveal additional clues.

Great Atlantic scallops are common in the northeastern Atlantic Ocean in places like Trøndelag. Sauvage told Live Science that the scallops are probably local in origin. "These parts of Norway are excellent grounds for collecting scallops," he said. "However, you need to dive to catch them; thus, it is uncertain if they were caught via free-diving or if they are dead shells gathered at the beach."

The symbolic meaning of the scallop shells and the bird bones in the burial is currently unknown.

Scallop patterns found on a fourth-century Roman coffin were hypothesized to represent life after death, while in the Middle Ages, which followed the Viking Age, scallop shells were linked to the Christian cult of St. James as a symbol of pilgrimage.

"It is likely that the scallop shells had a symbolic meaning intended to be communicated to those witnessing the burial; unfortunately it is difficult to guess what this meaning could have been," Sauvage said.

Earlier this year, archaeologists found a second skeleton in the same field, but it likely dates to the eighth century, several generations before the woman was buried with scallops. More work is needed to figure out who these people were and why they were buried close together.

"We will examine the skeleton, conserve the objects, and take samples for dating and DNA analysis," Sauvage said in the statement. "The goal is to learn more about the person and, if possible, any kinship with the earlier find from the same site."

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

To say that Christopher Columbus was a latecomer to the Western Hemisphere would be an understatement.

By the time he arrived in 1492, the Native Americans had been there for tens of thousands of years. The Vikings had also been there about 500 years earlier, and it's possible that Polynesians had also ventured into the Western Hemisphere before the voyages of Columbus.

So, who were the first people to discover the Americas?

The first people in the Americas

The first people to arrive in the Western Hemisphere were Indigenous Americans, who were descended from an ancestral group of Ancient North Siberians and East Asians. They likely traveled along the Bering Land Bridge by land or sea.

When the first Americans arrived is a source of ongoing debate. Several studies suggest that a series of fossilized human footprints found at White Sands National Park in New Mexico date to sometime between 21,000 and 23,000 years ago. That dates them to the coldest part of the last ice age, the last glacial maximum (which lasted from around 26,500 to 19,000 years ago), when the northern part of the continent was covered in glaciers and ice sheets.

Other controversial studies suggest even earlier dates. For example, one study dated stone artifacts in Chiquihuite Cave, in Mexico, to more than 30,000 years ago. However, it's unclear if humans actually crafted these rocks or if they formed naturally that way, making the finding uncertain.

Other studies go back much further. In 2017, a controversial study in the journal Nature reported mastodon bones in California that may have been modified by humans around 130,000 years ago. However, other archaeologists have expressed concerns about the excavation of this finding and noted that other natural events or animals could have modified the bones. To put the 130,000-year-old date into context, the earliest evidence for Homo sapiens dates to around 300,000 years ago in Morocco, while the earliest evidence for a successful migration of humans into Asia was more than 100,000 years ago and the earliest evidence of successful human migration into Europe was around 55,000 years ago.

Vikings in the Western Hemisphere

The Vikings journeyed to the Western Hemisphere in the 11th century — about 500 years before Columbus — and even built an outpost at L'Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland. It's unclear which Viking individual was the first to reach North America.

However, there are clues in the Icelandic sagas, which were written by people who were likely the Viking's descendants in the 13th and 14th centuries.

According to "The Saga of Erik the Red," a merchant named Bjarni Herjólfsson and his crew may have been the first Vikings to reach North America in the late 10th century, said Kevin McAleese, a curator at The Rooms provincial museum in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, who has studied the Vikings extensively. The saga says that the crew was blown off course while trying to reach Greenland and ended up sailing down the coast of what was likely North America. Herjólfsson decided not to land, and instead skimmed the coast before heading to Greenland.

In contrast, the Greenlanders' saga suggests that Leif Erikson may have been the first Viking to reach North America in the late 10th century and made multiple voyages there, McAleese told Live Science.

Regardless of which Viking was the first to reach North America, the Norse stories say that any attempt at colonization was thwarted because the Vikings had a hostile relationship with Native American groups and were massively outnumbered by them.

Polynesian voyages?

The Polynesians may have voyaged to the Western Hemisphere centuries before Columbus arrived. In 2020, a DNA study showed that Polynesians and Native Americans — likely from what is now Colombia — paired up around 800 years ago. However, whether this encounter was from Polynesians sailing to the Western Hemisphere or people from the Western Hemisphere sailing to Polynesian islands is unclear.

Crops from the Western Hemisphere, such as sweet potatoes, have been found at many Polynesian sites, giving rise to a debate about whether they were brought to the islands by people or by ocean currents. A 2024 study that analyzed plants from Rapa Nui (also known as Easter Island) found that people on the island were eating plants from South America about 1,000 years ago.

Christopher Columbus

While Columbus is famous for his voyages to the Western Hemisphere, he continued to state that the lands he had visited were in Asia.

"He'd staked his reputation on the expectation that he would reach Asia," Ida Altman, a professor emerita of history at the University of Florida, told Live Science in an email. "This was why people invested in his voyages and that made it difficult [for him] to back down."

Columbus' position may have also been financial. Spain had promised him grand titles and a portion of the wealth that came out of trade from Asia but only if he had, in fact, found a new route to Asia.

Late in his life, Columbus' stance may have changed somewhat. His "position was not entirely consistent, and in some of his later writings, he referred to the Americas as a kind of 'paradise' that he had found, implying that it was a new region for Europeans," Anna Suranyi, a history professor at Endicott College in Massachusetts, told Live Science in an email.

Regardless of Columbus’s own beliefs, the impact his voyage had on the world was immense, with Indigenous groups in the Western Hemisphere being decimated by disease and people from Europe colonizing North and South America, eventually resulting in the creation of new countries.

The 1,000-year-old "king" piece from a Viking board game is one of the few depictions of a ruler from the Viking era, according to a new analysis.

"The figure is depicting a late tenth-century king," Peter Pentz, an archaeologist at the National Museum of Denmark, told Live Science. The piece dates to the reign of one of the most famous Viking kings, Harald Bluetooth (circa A.D. 958 to 986); and it was found within his realm, which included parts of southern Norway and Sweden.

But although it is from the right time and place, Pentz is careful not to claim that it depicts Harald Bluetooth himself. "I don't say that this is a portrait of Harald," he said in an email.

Harald was the son of the early Danish king Gorm "the Old" and was nicknamed "Bluetooth" because he may have had a discolored tooth, although the actual reason is unknown. His nickname is now used for a networking standard that unites different digital devices, just as he united parts of Scandinavia during his reign.

One of the figure's most notable features is its intricate hairstyle — a middle part with a side wave that left the ears visible, and the hair cropped short at the back. It also has a large mustache, sideburns, and a long and braided goatee, according to a statement from the museum.

Most art from the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) featured intricate designs based on fantastical animals, like dragons, and the figure is one of the few known human depictions from that time, Pentz said.

"He is extremely detailed and he is so very expressive, displaying a mischievous — or even malicious — facial expression," Pentz said.

Related: Viking Age burial of chieftain with 'enormous power' found in Denmark — and he may have served Harald Bluetooth

Forgotten figurine

The figurine is just over 1 inch (3 centimeters) tall and carved from walrus ivory.

It was one of the first objects ever cataloged by the museum, in 1798, after it was discovered during excavations in the Viken region of southern Norway, a few miles west of Oslo. But it was placed in storage and forgotten until Pentz rediscovered it more than 200 years later.

"When I came across him in one of our storage rooms a few years ago, I was really surprised — he just sat there, looking directly at me, and I had never before seen such a Viking, not in the many years I've been at the museum," Pentz said in the statement.

Pentz determined that the figurine is the "king" piece from a game of Hnefatafl — sometimes called "Viking chess" — which was popular in Northern Europe before it was displaced by actual chess (which may have come from India or Iran) after the 12th century.

Several button-shaped game pieces made of bone were also found during the excavations, Pentz said. (No "board" was found, but a Hnefatafl board might have been carved on stone.)

Fashionable hair

The figurine is badly damaged, but its facial features and strange haircut are still clearly visible. Pentz suggested that such a hairstyle must have been fashionable among the elite during the Viking Age.

"It is exceptional that we have such a vivid depiction of a Viking," he said in the statement. "This is a miniature bust and as close as we will ever get to a portrait of a Viking."

The term "Viking" is an exonym (meaning something like "pirate") first used by the English to describe Norse raiders along their coasts.

But only the Norse who lived near their own coasts may have engaged in such raids over the summer, so Norse people farther inland — including farmers, traders and artisans — should not be considered Vikings, archaeologist Neil Price wrote in his book "Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings" (Basic Books, 2020).

The Norse culture seems to have branched off from the Germanic culture as early as the fourth century, but archaeologists consider the "Viking Age" to have started with the raid on Lindisfarne in England in 793 and ended with the defeat of a Viking army at Stamford Bridge in England in 1066, just a few weeks before the Norman Conquest.

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

A Viking hoard unearthed in England contains silver traded from the Islamic world, as well as plenty of silver looted in Europe, a new study reveals.

The 1,100-year-old Bedale hoard offers a glimpse into the substantial wealth that the Vikings had in England during the Viking Age, and includes a gold sword pommel, silver jewelry and 29 silver ingots. The hoard was first discovered in 2012, but archaeologists have only just discovered that some of its riches were acquired through long-distance trade networks that stretched deep into the Middle East.

Following their analysis, published Monday (Aug. 11) in the journal Archaeometry, the researchers concluded that most of the hoard's silver came from western Europe, likely from looted Anglo-Saxon and Carolingian coins. However, a good chunk came from Islamic silver coinage.

The researchers' findings reinforce the Vikings' connections to the Islamic world and highlight that they didn't just loot their way to wealth.

"Most of us tend to think of the Vikings primarily as raiders, who looted monasteries and other wealthy places in search of wealth," study lead author Jane Kershaw, an associate professor of Viking Age archaeology at Oxford University in the U.K., said in a statement. "What the analysis of the Bedale hoard shows is that that is only part of the picture."

Related: Hornelund Brooches: Viking age gold ornaments mysteriously buried in Denmark 1,000 years ago

The Vikings were a diverse and successful people who originated in Scandinavia. They are famous for their sea-borne raiders and explorers, who travelled to diverse lands across at least four continents, including North America, between the 8th and 11th centuries.

The Bedale hoard was discovered by metal detectorists Stuart Campbell and Steve Caswell near the town of Bedale in northern England, which the hoard was named after. In 2014, BBC News reported that the hoard was valued at a little over $70,000 (£51,636) in today's money.

For the new study, researchers used geochemical analysis to identify the original source of the silver used to make the hoard's ingots and jewelry. This analysis revealed that the silver was made from melted-down western European coinage and Islamic dirhams.

A third of the hoard's ingots matched silver minted in the Middle East, mainly from the Abbasid Caliphate, the third caliphate to succeed the Islamic prophet Muhammed that spanned a vast territory encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, much of North Africa, and modern-day Iran and Iraq.

The hoard’s silver would have reached the Vikings via eastern trade routes called the Austrvegr, according to the statement. To obtain the coveted dirhams, the Vikings exchanged fur, amber, swords and slaves, according to the accounts of Arab chroniclers. The Vikings would have then taken this Islamic silver with them when they settled in England.

"I love to think how Bedale – today a quintessentially English market town in north Yorkshire – was, in the Viking Age, at the heart of a much wider, Eurasian Viking economy," Kershaw said. "The Vikings weren't only extracting wealth from the local population, they were also bringing wealth with them when they raided and settled."

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

These two brooches were part of a small hoard discovered along with a gold arm ring in southwestern Jutland, Denmark. Dated to the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066), the brooches are decorated with ornamental wire bent into delicate shapes.

Each gold brooch measures about 3.3 inches (8.5 centimeters) in diameter and weighs between 2.1 to 2.6 ounces (60 to 75 grams), according to a 1994 study by Lene Frandsen, curator at the Varde Museum. The designs on the brooches include examples of both Norse and Christian art, according to the National Museum of Denmark, where the accessories are on display.

One brooch includes four forward-facing animal heads in a Norse style, suggesting it was made locally by a Danish or Viking goldsmith. The other brooch has leaves and vines that may connect to Christianity, as grapevines were used in early Christian art to represent Jesus as the "true vine of life" and the idea of the resurrection.

During the Viking age, Jutland was an advanced center of goldsmithing. Still, the Hornelund brooches are "completely unique in the Danish jewelry collection," archaeologist Władyslaw Duczko wrote in a 1987 study. Some may have been made for export, as several similar brooches have been discovered in Sweden. And it's possible that the Jutland goldsmiths got their decoration ideas from jewelers in Slavic countries like Estonia, Duczko wrote, where similar swirling patterns have been found on accessories dated to the late 10th century.

Related: Meskalamdug's Helmet: One of the world's oldest helmets depicts a Mesopotamian prince's man bun

The Hornelund brooches, however, are somewhat mysterious even today. They were recovered by a servant tilling his landlord's field in 1892. Historical records show that the landowner turned the hoard over to the National Museum of Denmark and was paid 295 Danish krone — worth about $4,000 USD today.

But the farm was not archaeologically investigated at the time, and recent excavations there have yielded no new information on the hoard, according to Frandsen. So experts do not yet know if the jewelry came from a grave, a homestead or a hastily buried cache of wealth. They hope that one day excavations will yield more clues to the meaning of the Hornelund hoard.

Archaeologists in Denmark have discovered 30 Viking Age graves likely of an elite family that may have served under Harald Bluetooth, the famed king of Denmark and Norway who ruled during the 10th century. The remarkable graves contained coins, pearls and ceramics, according to a translated statement from Moesgaard Museum, which ran the excavation.

Burials from the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) are not uncovered very often, Liv Stidsing Reher-Langberg, an archaeologist at the museum and excavation leader at the burial site, told Live Science in an email. Most graves from this time are found with few or no grave goods, she added. These newly unearthed burials in Lisbjerg, near Aarhus, however, came with an unusual number of lavish items, suggesting that the people buried in them were prosperous and of high status.

"The burial site here at Lisbjerg is quite special," Reher-Langberg said.

Inside the "exceptional" graves

The archaeologists had previously found a chieftain's farm nearby, so they associated these graves with him. This nobleman would have been part of the aristocracy at the time, just below King Bluetooth in the social hierarchy. Bluetooth was extremely influential, joining the tribes of the region into one kingdom — which is why the technology that unites electronic devices is named after him.

"The chieftain in Lisbjerg had enormous power — economically, politically, religiously and socially," Reher-Langberg said.

The graves, which likely date to the late 900s, are of varied size and extravagance. This disparity could indicate a mix of social statuses among the buried, possibly the chieftain's family and their enslaved people, the archaeologists said in the statement.

Related: 1,000-year-old Viking Age hoard has a pendant that may be a cross or Thor's hammer

The "most exceptional" grave was a woman's casket, Naja Kjærgård Laursen, a spokesperson at Moesgaard Museum, said in an email. The coffin "had the finest fittings, rivets, and an advanced locking mechanism," Reher-Langberg added.

Using X-ray imaging, the team found that the casket contained ornate personal belongings, including jewelry, a needle and an elegant pair of scissors. They found more goods in other graves, as well as the teeth and bones of some of the buried individuals.

The excavation

Preliminary investigations in the area indicated there were traces of the pre-Roman Iron Age (500 to 1 B.C.). But even after finding the chieftain's farm nearby, they didn't have any reason to anticipate the Viking Age graves were there, too.

It was "a huge surprise," Reher-Langberg said. "We simply had no expectations of finding graves."

Now that the excavations are almost complete, the team has sent many of the objects to be analyzed and preserved by the museum's Natural Science and Conservation department, Kjærgård Laursen told Live Science.

The human remains, wood and soil from the excavation will also be analyzed. "Hopefully, all this will lead to even more studies" in the area, Reher-Langberg said.

These artifacts will go on display at Moesgaard Museum in Denmark this summer.

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

Archaeologists have unearthed what they think are the remains of a Viking Age woman buried with her dog in the far north of Norway.

The remains were found late last month in a well-preserved "boat grave" near the village of Sand on the island of Senja, which lies on the Arctic Circle, at a site first recorded by metal detectorists in 2023.

The archaeologists don't yet know whether ancient DNA or sex-determined proteins can be extracted from the remains. But they suspect it was the grave of a Viking Age woman because it also contained two distinctive brooches, oval in shape and trimmed with silver wire, that have never been found in graves of Viking Age men.

The style of the brooches indicates the grave dates to between 900 and 950, during the heart of the Viking Age. The researchers don't yet know how old the woman was when she died.

A small dog was placed in the grave at the woman's feet, perhaps indicating the strength of the bond between them.

Anja Roth Niemi, an archaeologist at the UiT The Arctic University of Norway who led the latest excavations, told Live Science that graves from this time throughout Europe often held the remains of dogs and horses. But while horse skeletons were often found in parts, suggesting the animals were sacrifices, dogs were usually buried whole. "This suggests that dogs and humans had a close and cherished relationship, even over 1000 years ago," she said in an email.

Related: 7 myths about the Vikings that are (almost) totally false

Boat grave

The researchers were surprised to find that the woman had been buried in a "boat grave" consisting of a "sewn boat" almost 18 feet (5.4 meters) long — the first such grave ever found on Senja.

In these primitive "sewn boats," the wooden planks of the hull were fixed with something other than iron nails, such as wooden plugs, plant fibers or animal sinew. The boat has now rotted away, and only its shape can be seen.

"So-called 'sewn boats' were, until a few years ago, very rare in northern Norway," Niemi said. "However, in recent decades, several such vessels have been found in Iron Age graves in the region." It's thus possible they were fairly common in the area, she added.

Two similar boat graves had recently been excavated on the Norwegian island of Hillesøy, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of Senja, she said. One of those burials was of a man, and the other was of a woman; both had lived a few generations before the woman in the Senja boat grave.

The elaborate burial at Senja and rich grave goods indicate the woman had belonged to the social elite. "We believe the woman buried here held significant status locally, and perhaps even across the region," Niemi said.

Making cloth

The body of the woman was placed in the middle of the boat, with her head facing north, and the dog's body was placed near the woman's feet, Niemi said.

The grave goods included the two brooches; an iron sickle; a slate "whetstone" for sharpening knives; a metal ring with bronze beads, which may have been for tying back hair; two disk-shaped beads, possibly made from amber; a spindle whorl; and what may have been a "sword" or batten used for weaving made from whalebone.

Niemi said the sickle and whetstone suggest arming and harvesting, while the spindle and batten suggest spinning and weaving; tools for making textiles were often found in women's graves in Norway and often indicated that the buried individual held high status.

It would have been important for the mistress of a house to ensure that high-quality textiles were produced. "Textiles were needed for clothing, blankets, and much more, but also for producing sails for boats and ships," she said.

In addition, the mistress of a house also would have been expected to create fine clothes and elaborate tapestries that could be displayed during feasts and other visits, emphasizing the hosts' status, Niemi added.

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

A metal detectorist in Germany has discovered a Viking Age hoard that includes about 200 riches from the European world, including Arabic coins, ingots, and a pendant that may be a cross or an unfinished Thor's hammer.

If the pendant is a cross, it's "possibly an early sign of the onset of Christianisation" in the region, Birte Anspach, a spokesperson for the State Archaeological Office of Schleswig-Holstein, told Live Science in an email.

The hoard was found in northern Germany near Haithabu, an important maritime trading center during the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066). Christianity started spreading at Haithabu when St. Ansgar traveled there in the ninth century.

"However, it was not the case that Ansgar came — and suddenly everyone turned away from the old gods and followed the Christian faith," Anspach said. "Christianisation was a long process that spanned several generations."

For the next century, most people around Haithabu remained pagan. But archaeologists have found Christian symbols in burials there from this time, so this pendant may be one of the few that belonged to an early convert.

The eyelet on the pendant is "located on the longer part of the 'cross', so that the piece hangs upside down when worn," Anspach noted.

It's also possible that the pendant is an unfinished Thor's hammer. Such pendants symbolized adherence to the old Norse gods as Christianity was taking root in Scandinavia and other parts of Europe. In Norse mythology, the divine hammer — known as Mjölnir — was crafted by dwarves for the gods of Valhalla, and Thor later used it in his war against giants.

Related: 32 stunning centuries-old hoards unearthed by metal detectorists

Discovery by the Baltic

The 1,000-year-old hoard was found by Arjen Spießwinkel, who is part of a volunteer detector group in Schleswig-Holstein. All volunteers go through a four-day training course and an exam before getting permission to inspect the area with a metal detector. Spießwinkel, who has already made several historical finds, was recently traveling along the Schlei, an arm of the Baltic Sea next to Haithabu, when he found the hoard and then notified state archaeologists, Anspach said.

In addition to the pendant, ingots and dirhams (Arabic coins), the hoard contained hacksilver, pieces of silver that were used monetarily for their weight; a pottery shard; and a whetstone, a stone used for sharpening tools, which could hint at a nearby unknown settlement.

"These finds offer fascinating insights into the history of the 10th century — a time of intensive trade, cultural exchange and religious change," Anspach said. "It is therefore not surprising to discover a hoard near the Schlei. Whether it is actually a hidden depot or whether there was a settlement nearby cannot be said for certain at this stage."

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

An amateur metal detectorist has discovered a 1,000-year-old gold Viking arm-ring — a piece of craftsmanship created by braiding together eight gold rods — that was snipped apart, likely to help its owner cover costs during financial transactions.

The arm-ring was found by Ronald Clucas this spring on the Isle of Man, an island in the Irish Sea between Britain and Ireland. Numerous artifacts from the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) have been found on the isle, which Vikings initially used for trading and later settled, starting in the 800s.

"It was quite a big shock to discover this lovely piece of gold, I couldn't really believe it at first!" Clucas, a member of the Manx Detectorist Society, said in a statement from Manx National Heritage. "Gold generally gives a very low signal on the detector, so you can't really predict what is going to be uncovered."

The goldsmith who made the arm-ring about a millennium ago was clearly skilled, braiding eight gold rods together. Clucas found the ring folded in two, measuring about 1.5 inches (3.7 centimeters) wide and 3 inches (7.7 cm) long. It weighs nearly 1 ounce (27.3 grams), a "significant weight" for jewelry this size, according to the statement.

On May 29, the Isle of Man Deputy Coroner of Inquests declared that the arm-ring was "treasure," a designation given to U.K. artifacts made of precious metals that are at least 300 years old.

The arm-ring is the second piece of "Viking treasure" found by Clucas, who has been metal detecting for 50 years. Previously, he unearthed a silver ingot and a lead ingot, which he found in 2005.

Related: 2,000-year-old spoon from Isle of Man may have been used in blood rituals for fortune telling

A bracelet that's both bling and bank

The arm-ring, which dates to around A.D. 1000 to 1100, was likely used both as jewelry and as currency, according to Allison Fox, curator for archaeology at Manx National Heritage.

"Jewellery items such as this had several functions in the Viking Age both as prized personal possessions and visible displays of wealth," Fox said in the statement. "They were easily portable and were also used to cover costs in financial transactions."

Often, Viking Age transitions included hacksilver (also known as hacksilber), or pieces of silver that were weighed to calculate their worth for financial deals. On the Isle of Man, there was a dual economy of coins and bullion pieces of silver or gold. However, gold pieces are rarer from the Viking Age, making this intricate bracelet an uncommon find.

The arm-ring has likely been cut twice, possibly from two different transactions, Fox noted.

"One cut removed the terminal end of the arm-ring, the other one cut the original complete arm-ring almost in half," Fox said. "For reasons we will never know, this fragment of gold arm-ring was buried in the ground until discovered. It may have been hidden for safe-keeping, could just have been lost or may even have been buried as an offering to the Viking Gods."

The arm-ring is now on display in the Manx Museum's Viking Gallery, alongside other Viking Age hoards of silver and gold.

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

A Swedish archaeologist has sailed a replica Viking boat for 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers), which helped him to identify what he says are four previously unknown harbors along the coast of Norway that Vikings used more than 1,000 years ago.

The experimental voyage revealed that the boat sailed best on open water, suggesting the Vikings' maritime trade routes took them further from land than previously assumed.

"A lot of the time, we only know about the starting and ending points of the trade that took place during the Viking Age," Greer Jarrett, an archaeology doctoral student at Lund University in Sweden, said in a statement. But Jarrett believed a "network of ports located on small islands and peninsulas was central to making trade efficient during the Viking Age."

For three years, Jarrett sailed a boat called a "faering" — a type of sailboat with oars similar to what Vikings used a millennium ago — to investigate Viking trade routes. With a small crew, Jarrett traveled from Trondheim in central Norway up the coast to the Arctic Circle, and then sailed back.

"This type of boat sails well on open water in tough conditions," Jarrett said, "but navigating close to land and in the fjords sometimes presents challenges."

He also interviewed Norwegian sailors and fishers to learn more about historical maritime routes, using that information and his own experience to reconstruct possible Viking sailing routes.

Related: Weapon-filled burials are shaking up what we know about women's role in Viking society

With this information and a map of what the Norwegian coast and sea level were like in the Viking Age, Jarrett identified four harbors or "havens" located on small islands and promontories. He published his findings May 8 in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory.

The four newly identified havens suggest that the Vikings relied on sheltered and easily accessible ports on islands and promontories, expanding experts' knowledge of Viking Age seafaring previously provided only by large ports like Dublin and Ribe, Denmark, Jarrett wrote in his study.

And because the Vikings navigated using "mental maps" rather than a compass, having places to meet up and share information about the sea was important to the Vikings' maritime success.

"You need a boat that can withstand all kinds of weather conditions," Jarrett said. "But if you don't have a crew that can cooperate and put up with each other for long periods, these journeys would probably be impossible."

So far, Jarrett has not done any excavation at the harbors to confirm their use by Vikings. But evidence such as jetties, ballast stones, cooking pits and temporary shelter at the sites, if found, would demonstrate the Vikings used these "havens" in their trade routes, Jarrett noted in his study.

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

Pregnant women wielding swords and wearing martial helmets, foetuses set to avenge their fathers — and a harsh world where not all newborns were born free or given burial.

These are some of the realities uncovered by the first interdisciplinary study to focus on pregnancy in the Viking age, authored by myself, Kate Olley, Brad Marshall and Emma Tollefsen as part of the Body-Politics project. Despite its central role in human history, pregnancy has often been overlooked in archaeology, largely because it leaves little material trace.

Pregnancy has perhaps been particularly overlooked in periods we mostly associate with warriors, kings and battles — such as the highly romanticised Viking age (the period from AD800 until AD1050).

Topics such as pregnancy and childbirth have conventionally been seen as "women's issues", belonging to the "natural" or "private" spheres — yet we argue that questions such as "when does life begin?" are not at all natural or private, but of significant political concern, today as in the past.

In our new study, my co-authors and I puzzle together eclectic strands of evidence in order to understand how pregnancy and the pregnant body were conceptualised at this time. By exploring such "womb politics", it is possible to add significantly to our knowledge on gender, bodies and sexual politics in the Viking age and beyond.

First, we examined words and stories depicting pregnancy in Old Norse sources. Despite dating to the centuries after the Viking age, sagas and legal texts provide words and stories about childbearing that the Vikings' immediate descendants used and circulated.

We learned that pregnancy could be described as "bellyful", "unlight" and "not whole". And we gleaned an insight into the possible belief in personhood of a foetus: "A woman walking not alone."

An episode in one of the sagas we looked at supports the idea that unborn children (at least high-status ones) could already be inscribed into complex systems of kinship, allies, feuds and obligations. It tells the story of a tense confrontation between the pregnant Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir, a protagonist in the Saga of the People of Laxardal and her husband's killer, Helgi Harðbeinsson.

As a provocation, Helgi wipes his bloody spear on Guđrun's clothes and over her belly. He declares: "I think that under the corner of that shawl dwells my own death." Helgi's prediction comes true, and the foetus grows up to avenge his father.

Another episode, from the Saga of Erik the Red, focuses more on the agency of the mother. The heavily pregnant Freydís Eiríksdóttir is caught up in an attack by the skrælings, the Norse name for the indigenous populations of Greenland and Canada. When she cannot escape due to her pregnancy, Freydís picks up a sword, bares her breast and strikes the sword against it, scaring the assailants away.

Related: 'If it was a man, we would say that's a warrior's grave': Weapon-filled burials are shaking up what we know about women's role in Viking society

While sometimes regarded as an obscure literary episode in scholarship, this story may find a parallel in the second set of evidence we examined for the study: a figurine of a pregnant woman.

This pendant, found in a tenth-century woman's burial in Aska, Sweden, is the only known convincing depiction of pregnancy from the Viking age. It depicts a figure in female dress with the arms embracing an accentuated belly — perhaps signaling connection with the coming child. What makes this figurine especially interesting is that the pregnant woman is wearing a martial helmet.

Taken together, these strands of evidence show that pregnant women could, at least in art and stories, be engaged with violence and weapons. These were not passive bodies. Together with recent studies of Viking women buried as warriors, this provokes further thought to how we envisage gender roles in the oft-perceived hyper-masculine Viking societies.

Missing children and pregnancy as a defect

A final strand of investigation was to look for evidence for obstetric deaths in the Viking burial record. Maternal-infant death rates are thought to be very high in most pre-industrial societies. Yet, we found that among thousands of Viking graves, only 14 possible mother-infant burials are reported.

Consequently, we suggest that pregnant women who died weren't routinely buried with their unborn child and may not have been commemorated as one, symbiotic unity by Viking societies. In fact, we also found newborns buried with adult men and postmenopausal women, assemblages which may be family graves, but they may also be something else altogether.

We cannot exclude that infants — underrepresented in the burial record more generally — were disposed of in death elsewhere. When they are found in graves with other bodies, it's possible they were included as a "grave good" (objects buried with a deceased person) for other people in the grave.

This is a stark reminder that pregnancy and infancy can be vulnerable states of transition. A final piece of evidence speaks to this point like no other. For some, like Guđrun's little boy, gestation and birth represented a multi-staged process towards becoming a free social person.

For people lower on the social rung, however, this may have looked very different. One of the legal texts we examined dryly informs us that when enslaved women were put up for sale, pregnancy was regarded as a defect of their bodies.

Pregnancy was deeply political and far from uniform in meaning for Viking-age communities. It shaped — and was shaped by — ideas of social status, kinship and personhood. Our study shows that pregnancy was not invisible or private, but crucial to how Viking societies understood life, social identities and power.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

More than a century ago, archaeologists excavated a Viking ship buried in the ground at the Oseberg farm in Tønsberg, Norway. Inside the unusually well-preserved carved oak vessel were the skeletons of two women who had been richly buried with clothes, farm equipment, domestic animals and a detailed tapestry that depicts one of the only known examples of a horned Viking helmet.

Tree-ring dating of timbers from the grave placed the Oseberg ship burial at around A.D. 834. Inside the main burial chamber, excavators discovered fragments of a tapestry that, when reconstructed, measured 6.3 by 9 inches (16 by 23 centimeters). Made of wool, silk and flax, it includes depictions of humans, animals and wheeled vehicles. Fragments of only one part of the full tapestry have survived, and experts are unsure of the original size.

Although the textile appears brown and beige today, it was originally made with yarn colored with a range of natural dyes. Remnants of the original red can be seen, for example, in the rough diamond shape in the middle of this fragment and in the concentric circles below that.

Related: Hatnefer's heart scarab: An exquisite ancient Egyptian gold necklace inscribed with the Book of the Dead

Given the poor condition of the textile, experts are unsure of the exact scene it depicts. The mix of people, animals, wagons and houses suggests a possible funeral procession headed toward a large tree that may represent Yggdrasill, the Norse tree of life. Other human figures — both male and female — hold weapons and wear ritual clothing. Stylistically, the Oseberg textile is similar to the Bayeux tapestry, which was made over two centuries later in what is now France, as both show a narrative in linear fashion similar to a comic strip.

One reason the Oseberg tapestry is famous is its unique depiction of a horned helmet. Horned Viking helmets have long captured the imagination of the modern world, but they are likely a 19th-century myth. Although the fragmentary metal Viking helmets that have been discovered do not have horns, the portrayal of a warrior — possibly a berserker — wearing a horned helmet on the Oseberg textile leaves open the possibility that some Vikings did indeed own horned helmets, perhaps for special occasions.

The Oseberg tapestry is in the collection of the Museum of the Viking Age in Oslo. Experts continue to study the numerous fragments in an attempt to virtually stitch the tapestry back together someday.

In Birka, Sweden, there is a roughly 1,000-year-old Viking burial teeming with lethal weapons — a sword, an ax-head, spears, knives, shields and a quiver of arrows — as well as riding equipment and the skeletons of two warhorses. Nearly 150 years ago, when the grave was unearthed, archaeologists assumed they were looking at the burial of a male warrior. But a 2017 DNA analysis of the burial's skeletal remains revealed the individual was female.

Skeptics scrambled to explain away the evidence, said Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, an archaeologist at Uppsala University in Sweden and first author of the 2017 study.

Even now, despite further studies strengthening the case for the Birka individual's martial profession, some archaeologists still insist she wasn't a warrior.

The Birka controversy highlights the fraught archaeological debate about the existence of Viking women warriors. Viking mythology and lore are filled with tales of women who lived for battle and engaged in violence, but whether these stories reflect real life is unsettled.

Across Scandinavia, at least a few dozen women from the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) were buried with war-grade weapons. Collectively, these burials paint a picture that clashes violently with the hypermasculine image of the bearded, burly Viking warrior that has dominated the popular imagination for centuries. And it's possible that, due to gendered assumptions, archaeologists may be systematically undercounting the number of Viking women buried with weapons.

The finds hint at a nuanced picture of Viking society — one where most warriors were men but a person's class and profession had the biggest impact on who went to war.

"Women can be as strong, as skilled, as fast as men," said Leszek Gardeła, an archaeologist at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and author of "Women and Weapons in the Viking World: Amazons of the North" (Casemate, 2021). "There is nothing in the biology there that would prevent them from being warriors."

Still, the poor preservation of Scandinavian graves, the enigmatic nature of Viking burials and the lack of historical texts leaves the meaning of many female burials up for debate. And even if women warriors existed, their significance in the broader Viking culture is unclear, Ole Kastholm, a prehistoric archaeologist and senior researcher at Roskilde Museum in Denmark, told Live Science.

"It's an area where we can't find a secure answer," he said.

Related: What's the farthest place the Vikings reached?

What the burials hold

Across Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, there are thousands of known Viking burials typically thought to be of male warriors. In contrast, we know of around 30 graves in which women were buried with obvious martial equipment such as spearheads and shields; of these roughly 30, only three have swords.

Of the known Viking Age burials, "statistically speaking, there would be less than 1%" of women buried with weapons among graves of men buried with weapons, Gardeła told Live Science.

But there are many more female burials that included other gear, such as shield bosses (a round protective metal piece at the shield's center), or possible weapons, such as arrowheads and ax-heads. Interpreting the latter burials is especially challenging because axes and arrowheads were used in battle, but they were also tools for hunting and farmwork.

But one of the main reasons the female-warrior question is so controversial is that many Viking burials aren't in great condition.

The Birka burial is one example. In 1878, workers used dynamite to blast open the grave, damaging it in the process. Untrained locals then helped excavate the grave. This poor excavation work has given naysayers room to argue that the chamber once held a double burial with a man.

According to the skeptics, "a woman would never be strong enough to use those weapons" — an argument that was ridiculous to Hedenstierna-Jonson, who had actually handled them.

"There were all these opinions rather than scientific facts," Hedenstierna-Jonson told Live Science.

Yet modern-era damage isn't the biggest obstacle to analysis. In many cases, bones and cremated remains are partially or completely decayed before archaeologists get a peek, largely due to Scandinavia's acidic soil. "We need very good preservation of the skeletons before we can determine the sex" via DNA analysis or bone studies, Kastholm said. "So even though the Viking Age has been investigated for like 150 years or more, it has not been that easy" to assess these graves.

As a result, archaeologists often guessed the deceased's sex based on grave goods, such as mirrors, weaving tools and brooches, which archaeologists assumed were typically buried with females, and battle-related weapons, which archaeologists thought were typically buried with males. If a Viking Age sword was the only item recovered, for example, it was nearly always assumed to be a male grave.

So it's possible archaeologists may be systematically undercounting Viking women who were buried with weapons.

"We could have a lot more of these [female] graves than we know about," said Marianne Moen, head of the Department of Archaeology at the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo, calling the situation a catch-22. "You excavate a grave in Norway, you find a sword and you go, 'Oh, it's a man.' And then, 'isn't it funny how all the swords are buried with men?'"

In some instances, if a burial had both male- and female-associated artifacts, it is assumed, possibly incorrectly, that it was a double burial with a male and a female.

Even with that potential bias, there is strong evidence that some women were buried with war-related objects across Scandinavia. Norway has several of what have been nicknamed "shield-maiden" burials, after the women warriors of Scandinavian folklore. One is the Nordre Kjølen burial in Solør, which had a young adult — likely a female, based on a skeletal analysis — interred with a sword, an ax head, a spearhead, arrowheads, a shield boss, a horse skeleton and tools.

A second is the female boat burial from Aunvoll in Nord Trøndelag, in which a female was interred with a sword, eight gaming pieces, a sickle, a spearhead, shears, a knife and tools. The Klinta burial in Öland, Sweden has the cremated remains of what are thought to be an elite woman with valuable metal artifacts, including an ax-head, knives and an iron staff, causing some to wonder if she was a völva, or a Viking Age sorceress.

And although they're not buried with sharp weapons, "there's quite a few female burials on the west coast of Norway that have shield bosses and nobody likes to talk about them," Moen told Live Science.

Difficult to interpret

Still, many archaeologists struggle to make sense of these graves because the Vikings didn't have a consistent way of dealing with the dead.

"When we look at the Viking Age burials as a whole, they are weird and there's a great variation," Kastholm said. For instance, one had only a foot in it. Another was a triple burial of "a woman, then another woman buried some years later and then a half man buried later."

These mysterious, inconsistent burials make it hard to make straightforward conclusions.

Take the example of a grave discovered in Gerdrup, Denmark, in 1981, Kastholm said. A woman was buried with a spear, with large stones on her body. Her adult son, who had bound ankles and may have been hanged, was also in the grave.

The spear could be a sign the woman was a warrior. But that's not how Kastholm interprets the grave. Instead, he thinks that the son was hanged in devotion to Odin, the stones represent the woman's high status, and the valuable "spear was thrust into the bottom of the grave in a concluding ritual that dedicated the dead to Odin," he co-wrote in a 2021 study. This would have been a form of complex "mortuary theater," a play of sorts that would have been enacted at the grave site, which research suggests may have been common.

As for the Birka burial, Kastholm doesn't dispute that the deceased was biologically female and that she was buried with many weapons. "I'm totally convinced by that," he said. "If that means she was a warrior, I'm not convinced there. But that would go for male graves as well."

What historical texts tell us

To put the burials of women with weapons into context, archaeologists have looked at historical texts.

The Vikings left behind only a few thousand runic inscriptions. So most descriptions of warlike women and "shield maidens" come from semihistorical works written during the post-Viking medieval period. For instance, in "Gesta Danorum," a semifictional history of Denmark by Saxo Grammaticus (who lived circa 1150 to 1220), the warrior woman Lagertha travels with a group of women dressed as men, marries a Viking king who later divorces her, and still fights with him in a pivotal battle.

And some sagas, such as The Saga of Hervör and Heidrek, describe Norse women taking up arms to help protect family property, according to a 1986 analysis. Only men could inherit property, so if a man had only daughters, one was sometimes compelled to step into the role of a warrior as a "functional son" who could protect the family's interests, according to the study.

The Icelandic sagas, written by people who were likely the Viking's descendants in the 13th and 14th centuries, include stories about "women leading troops and engaging in acts of violence," Moen wrote in a 2021 article.

But are these stories evidence that Viking women were warriors in real life? Or did some stories have other mythical or mystical significance?

Some evidence points toward the latter. Sagas in which women wield weapons like axes often have magical overtones. In the Old Norse Ljósvetninga saga, for instance, a cross-dressing Norse sorceress strikes the water with an ax to see into the future. Axes are frequently associated with magic in folk traditions from Scandinavia, Finland and Central Europe, Gardeła noted in a 2021 article.

Gender wasn't destiny

After the Viking Age, the stereotype of the burly and ruthless male Viking warrior arose in the medieval sagas that detailed their exploits, and again in the late 19th century during Scandinavia and Iceland's National Romantic period. But it's possible that Viking Age society was "less governed by binary gendered ideals and more by fluid social obligations," Moen wrote in the 2021 article.

This would mean there wasn't a simple male-female dichotomy in who did what. This is seen in Viking Age grave goods. For instance, at Viking Age cemeteries in Vestfold, Norway, Moen found that although weapons were more common in male graves, they were also found in female burials. Likewise, while jewelry was more pronounced in female graves, 40% of male graves also had them, "hardly a negligible proportion," she wrote in the article.

Given how much violence permeated Viking society, "it would be naïve to think that only one half of the population was invested in it," she wrote in the article.

But people should not see this as female warriors filling a "man's role," Kastholm said. Rather, "warrior" was probably a profession, like modern-day firefighting, in which most were male but some were female.

Even among Viking Age men, being a "warrior" meant different things. Farmworkers, fishers and other peasants may have fought occasionally. But for the most part, the warriors were the social elite.

"Your biological sex was a factor [in your profession], but it was not the main factor," Hedenstierna-Jonson said. "The main factor was your role and your position and your family."

Still, people should be cautious in using information about these burials to infer how gender was perceived in Viking society, Moen said.

"I don't think it even necessarily indicates any kind of gender equality," she said. "What I do think is that you have much evidence women could be warriors and were warriors at certain times and in certain conditions."

"Occam's razor"

Moen splits archaeologists into three groups: those who think the burials clearly show that female warriors existed; people who say, "Yes, obviously women could be buried with weapons, but we need to question what it means"; and naysayers who think there's no way women actually used the weapons they were buried with. "They find it really quite troubling, and they go to very long lengths of explaining it away," she said.

To Moen, the evidence of female Viking warriors is right in front of us.

"Occam's razor, you know — the simplest explanation is usually the best," she said. "If you find a woman with a sword, then you should interpret it the same as you would a man with a sword."

In the end, Kastholm thinks "there will always be a lot of debate. And that debate is more about our time" and our modern-day attachment to gendered stereotypes about the Vikings than it is about the archaeological evidence, he said.

"Of course there were warriors in the Viking Age, and I'm pretty sure that some of them were female," Kastholm said. Yes, many graves are tricky to pin down, but at least a few have an impressive number of hard-core weapons buried with them.

"If it was a man," he said, "we would say 'that's a warrior grave."

Editor's Note: In this article, we are referring to biological sex, as it's impossible to know the gender of these deceased individuals.

Viking quiz: How much do you know about these seaborne raiders, traders and explorers?

Misconceptions abound about Vikings. They are often depicted as bloodthirsty, unwashed warriors with winged helmets. But that's a poor picture based largely on Viking portrayals in the 19th century, when they featured in European art either as romantic heroes or exotic savages. The real Vikings, however, were not just the stuff of legend — and they didn't have wings or horns on their helmets. Here, we debunk seven myths about the Vikings.

Related: Hårby Valkyrie: A 1,200-year-old gold Viking Age woman sporting a sword, shield and ponytail

The Vikings wore helmets with wings and horns.

This idea can be traced to the 19th-century German artist Carl Emil Doepler, who portrayed Germanic gods like Wotan (Odin) wearing winged helmets in his costumes for Richard Wagner's "Ring cycle" of four epic operas, called "Der Ring des Nibelungen" ("The Ring of the Nibelung") in German. Wagner drew on Germanic mythology, but the idea stuck that the related Norse, some of whom were Vikings, also wore helmets with wings. The notion that Viking helmets had horns originated in 19th-century paintings, and it was repeated in Hollywood movies. The myth also may have been inspired by ceremonial helmets with horns found in Denmark in 1942, but those date to about 900 B.C. — over a thousand years before the Vikings.

The Vikings executed enemies with the "blood eagle."

"Blood eagle" execution is described in medieval Scandinavian texts, but it may have just been a gruesome idea, rather than a real practice. According to some Norse sagas, some Viking kings executed their enemies by cutting their ribs from their spine and pulling their lungs out the back to resemble wings; and the sagas give what seemed to be two separate examples of this "blood eagle" punishment. But experts think the sagas may have been exaggerated for dramatic effect, and there is no archaeological evidence to support the notion that this ever happened. Its inclusion in 19th stories about Vikings and in some modern television shows, however, has cemented the idea.

The Vikings were only raiders.

It is undeniable that many Vikings were raiders. But not all of them were, and they were also keen traders and intrepid explorers. Artifacts like Arabic silver coins show that Viking trade networks stretched from Byzantium to the British Isles, and the settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada, shows that Vikings reached parts of the Americas from Europe as early as A.D. 1000, almost 500 years before Christopher Columbus did. The Vikings were famous for their trade in furs, walrus ivory and amber, and some modern historians suggest the economic and cultural reasons for the Viking expansion were as important as raiding and taking slaves.

The Vikings were extraordinarily violent.

It is also undeniable that the Vikings were sometimes violent — OK, often. But they lived in a violent age when many societies were equally violent, and there is no evidence that the Vikings were more violent than anybody else at the time. Famous incursions, like the raid on the British island of Lindisfarne in A.D. 793, assured the Vikings of violent notoriety. But brutal wars and massacres were standard throughout early medieval Europe, and the notion that the Vikings were exceptionally more violent than everyone else seems to have been a Victorian invention.

All Vikings were blond.

The idea that all Vikings looked "Nordic" — that is, tall, blond and blue-eyed — may have originated in the racial theories of 19th-century Europe, but the Vikings were a cultural group rather than an ethnic one. Recent DNA studies of Vikings have revealed an admixture of Scandinavians with Southern Europeans, Slavs and even some Saami (or Lapps, a semi-nomadic people from the very north of Scandanvia who traditionally herded reindeer.) Vikings often traveled far afield, to places like Byzantium and the Islamic world, and it is likely that some Vikings had ancestry from those regions. As well, DNA evidence from the graves of Viking warriors indicates some had dark hair and varied features, rather than sharing a racial uniformity.

The Vikings were unhygienic.

The popular image of a Viking is of an unwashed (and smelly) warrior, but the Vikings were actually quite clean for their time. Artifacts from Viking graves show that grooming was a priority, with combs, tweezers and ear spoons for removing wax; while the fragments of Viking bowls indicate soap was often used. Bathing was uncommon at this time, so this Viking custom stood out. The Arab explorer Ahmad ibn Fadlan noted in A.D. 921 that the Vikings in the medieval eastern Slavic region of Rus washed every day — a practice he viewed as odd.

The Vikings were "tamed" by Christianity.

It has sometimes been suggested that the spread of Christianity throughout the Viking world, which supplanted the worship of their Norse gods, eventually made the Vikings less prone to violence — but the idea may just be Christian propaganda. Indeed, the Vikings started out as pagans roughly in the eighth century, and by the 10th century, Harald Bluetooth bragged that he had converted Denmark to Christianity. But the Vikings seem to have been brutal throughout their history, and there is no evidence that Viking violence subsided after their adoption of Christianity; evidence from mass graves indicates that Vikings with Christian beliefs also massacred large numbers of people.

This cast silver figurine of a Valkyrie — a mythological maiden who assists Odin, the Norse god of war — is a unique example of Viking Age metalworking that provides clues about the role of armed women during the time period (793 to 1066).

The naturalistic female figure was discovered by metal detectorists in the Danish village of Hårby in 2012 and is currently on display at the National Museum of Denmark.

The tiny female figurine is just 1.3 inches (3.4 centimeters) tall and weighs 0.4 ounces (13.4 grams). Its body is partly hollow, and much of it has been covered with a thin layer of gold. A black metallic alloy called niello has been used to highlight and decorate the object.

Related: Apulian rhyton: A 2,300-year-old Spartan-hound-shaped cup that was likely used at boozy bashes

The female figurine is depicted with her hair gathered up into a ponytail that cascades down her back. She wears a V-neck dress that ends with a pleated skirt, and a pattern of intricate knots runs around the back and sides. Her left arm is protected by a shield, while her right hand clutches a short double-edged sword.

Because the figure is of an armed woman and likely represents a Valkyrie, Mogens Bo Henriksen, archaeology curator at Museum Odense in Denmark, and Peter Vang Petersen, curator of prehistory at the National Museum of Denmark, wrote in a study of the figurine in the periodical Skalk in 2013.

Valkyries were responsible for choosing which soldiers should die on the battlefield. These assistants to the Norse god of war then accompanied the dead warriors to Valhalla, where they served them plenty of alcohol to tide them over until the end of the world, when Odin needed the dead soldiers' support to defeat the giants at Ragnarok.

The decorative style of the figurine suggests it was made around A.D. 800, or the early Viking Age. It was found in a field where archaeologists and detectorists discovered other metal objects, including Arab coins, silver ingots and discarded jewelry. Experts think the area may have been a noble's farm in the Viking Age, complete with a metal craft workshop.

Armed female figures have been found elsewhere in Denmark and in England, but they are typically two-dimensional pendants or brooches. The partly hollow Hårby Valkyrie, however, may have adorned the top of a magical staff, Henriksen and Petersen wrote. According to the Norse sagas, divination women, or völvas, used similar staffs in their rituals. One of the female residents of the farm may once have owned the Hårby Valkyrie and used it as a symbol of power.

But it is also possible that the statue is not a Valkyrie at all but rather a depiction of a real woman. Norse sagas and poems mention that women sometimes took up arms, and the Oseberg Viking ship textiles also depict women carrying swords and holding spears, archaeologist Leszek Gardeła noted in his book "Women and Weapons in the Viking World: Amazons of the North," (Oxbow Books, 2021). In addition, about 30 Viking Age burials across Scandinavia hold the remains of women who were buried with war-grade weapons, such as swords, spearheads and shields — clues that some elite women from this time may have fought as warriors.

Archaeologist Julia Wihlborg suggested that the sword and shield of the Hårby Valkyrie may represent a woman who had manly qualities or who became a man, raising the question of whether female warriors were actually regarded as men in Viking Age society.

However, because most of the armed female figurines have been discovered as isolated finds rather than in houses or graves, experts have yet to solve the puzzle of weapon-wielding women in the Viking Age.

The Vikings loom large in European history thanks to their impressive seafaring skills and penchant for raiding. For around three centuries, Vikings pillaged and plundered their way around the North Atlantic Ocean, as well as parts of Africa, Eastern Europe and Russia. But historians are still not sure exactly why the Vikings voyaged so far and wide, offering explanations from innovations in sailing technology to trade, and even to lonely Viking men who wanted to secure brides and concubines.

If you think you know a lot about these pillaging people, can you crack our Norse code? Or will you go berserker trying?

Remember to log in to put your name on the leaderboard; hints are available if you click the yellow button. It's time to make like the Vikings and charge ahead!

More science quizzes

—Stonehenge quiz: What do you know about the ancient monument?

—Alexander the Great quiz: How well do you know the famous king and conqueror from the ancient world?

—Neanderthal quiz: How much do you know about our closest relatives?

In medieval Europe, some handcrafted books were bound with skin from an unexpected source: seals.

A new analysis of ancient DNA found in medieval books from European abbeys reveals that these seals came from the northwestern Atlantic Ocean, where they were hunted in the 12th and 13th centuries for their skins. The sealskins were then traded by the Norse descendants of the Vikings before ending up as book covers.

In the study, published Wednesday (April 9) in the journal Royal Society Open Science, a team of researchers subjected 32 medieval books to biocodicological analyses — a series of methods aimed at revealing biological information preserved in codex-style books.

Medieval codices were written on pieces of parchment made of animal skin, that were bound together with wood, leather, cord or thread. Some also had a second protective cover, called a chemise, which was often made from boar or deer skin.

But the new study revealed that some chemises were actually made from seals instead.

The researchers began their investigation at the Library of Clairvaux Abbey in Champagne, France, which holds 1,450 medieval books produced by scribes at this Cistercian abbey, part of a Catholic religious order. Focusing on 19 books created between 1140 and 1275, the experts used mass spectrometry, a technique that can reveal the chemical makeup of an object, and ancient DNA analysis to reveal that they were all bound with skin from pinnipeds, a group that includes seals.

Related: People in Scandinavia may have used boats made of animal skins to hunt and trade 5,000 years ago

The researchers identified an additional 13 "hairy books" from "daughter abbeys" in France, England and Belgium dated to between 1150 and 1250 that were also bound in sealskin.

The ancient DNA analysis helped the researchers narrow down which pinniped species eight of the skins came from, pinpointing harbor, harp and bearded seals. Additionally, they were able to tell that the seals came from a surprisingly diverse geographic area, including Scandinavia, Denmark, Scotland and either Greenland or Iceland.

"The skins were either obtained through trade or as part of the church tithe," study lead author Élodie Lévêque, an expert in book conservation at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, told Live Science in an email. "It is doubtful," she said, that these bindings "would have existed without the availability of sealskins from Norse sources."

All of the sealskin books were made in abbeys located along known 13th-century European trading routes, the researchers noted in their study; these were also Norse trading routes. In particular, the Norse traded walrus ivory and furs from Greenland to mainland Europe, and historical records suggest they used sealskins to pay tithes to the Catholic church in the 13th century.

"The Cistercians had a particular preference for white and discreet forms of luxury, which aligns well with the aesthetic qualities of sealskin," Lévêque said. Another well-known sect, the Benedictines, favored darker hues.

However, the monks may not have known that their prized book-binding skins were actually from seals, she said, since there was no term for the animal in the French language at the time.

The widespread use of sealskins in medieval libraries has challenged previous assumptions about which species were used to bind books, the researchers wrote in their study. It has also revealed that the trade network between the Norse in Greenland and abbeys in France was extensive and robust.

But there is no obvious correlation between the actual contents of the books and the use of sealskin covers, and no written explanation for the use of sealskins in book-binding survives, the researchers noted in their study.

"The distinctive white, furry bindings may therefore have been appreciated solely for their visual and environmental qualities – they're waterproof – rather than for any knowledge of their zoological and geographical origin," Lévêque said.

Newly deciphered Viking Age runes carved inside a 1,100-year-old silver arm ring from Scotland suggest that the ornament and the hoard it was buried with were owned by a community, rather than by an individual.

The discovery provides important insight into the immensely valuable "Galloway Hoard" that contains the arm ring, experts said.

Researchers identified the language of the runic inscription as a type of Old English (a form of the ancient Germanic language). The proposed translation reads, "This is the community's wealth," although the translators noted that the word "wealth" could also be interpreted as "property."

They said the inscription implies that the entire Galloway Hoard, which contains more than 11 pounds (5 kilograms) of silver and gold, was held in common by an early medieval community.

"The idea that the wealth this hoard represents would be communally held is fascinating," Martin Goldberg, an archaeologist with National Museums Scotland involved in recent research into the hoard, said in a statement. But "it does still leave us with unanswered questions around the circumstances in which a community's wealth would come to be buried, and also which particular community."

Related: Massive medieval coin hoard worth 'about 150 sheep' discovered in Germany's Black Forest

Medieval treasure

Metal detectorists found the Galloway Hoard in 2014 near the village of Balmaghie in the Galloway region of southwest Scotland — hence its name.

Experts have determined that the hoard dates to about the year 900 and that it seems to have been buried in four distinct parcels, according to National Museums Scotland, which acquired the hoard in 2017.

The top layer of the buried hoard contained silver bullion and a rare Anglo-Saxon silver crucifix, and four silver arm rings were buried beneath it. Below that was a wooden box containing pieces of gold, and beneath that was a trove of carefully wrapped relics, beads, pendants, brooches and bracelets.

Experts think the careful burial helped preserve several rare organic artifacts, including pieces of silk and other textiles that had been used to wrap some of the items. And they also determined that some of the objects originated from far away, including a silver gilt vessel made with metal that seems to have come from a mine in Iran, possibly when it was part of the Sasanian Empire (A.D. 224 to 651).

Viking Age silver

Many of the objects in the hoard have religious connections, including the silver crucifix, which was probably a bishop's "pectoral cross." The cross, along with the name "Bishop Hyguald" inscribed on a gilded rock crystal jar, suggests the hoard may have been owned by a religious community, Goldberg said. These findings support a theory that Christian clergy buried the hoard to dupe the Vikings.

Each of the four silver arm rings had runic inscriptions cut into their inside faces, but their meanings had confounded experts until now, the statement said.

David Parsons, a runologist at the University of Wales who studied the inscriptions, said the runic spelling used for some words seemed not to correspond to any known languages in use in early-medieval Britain or Ireland.

"However, if we think about both spoken and written English today, there are a huge range of original and idiomatic variations," he said in the statement — and so the translation of the inscription on the silver arm ring seems to have affirmed that the object had been owned in common by a community.

Researchers have identified three major waves of migration in early Europe, using a new technique to analyze human genomes. The analysis revealed that Scandinavia was a crucial hotspot for people as they traveled northward and dispersed elsewhere during the first millennium.

In a study published Wednesday (Jan. 1) in the journal Nature, the researchers detailed a new approach to understanding ancient DNA. They applied the method — called "time-stratified ancestry analysis" using a statistical technique called Twigstats — to over 1,500 previously published genomes. This technique allowed the team to uncover waves of migration and ancestry information that other methods had obscured.

The three major waves of migration encompassed the entire continent, according to the Twigstats analysis. First, the researchers found considerable expansion of people from southern Scandinavia and Northern Europe into the rest of the Roman Empire between A.D. 1 and 500. They identified a second wave of migration from Eastern and Central Europe into Scandinavia that ended around A.D. 800. People then expanded out of Scandinavia once again in the Viking Age (post-800).

The method can identify unknown ancestry not just in whole populations but also in specific individuals, the team noted.

One genome in the study came from a Roman-era man who was buried in a "gladiator" cemetery in York, England, with his decapitated head placed between his knees. Previous research suggested that he had as much in common genetically with modern Dutch people as he did with Anglo-Saxons. The new method validated this suggestion by revealing that the man had roughly one-quarter Scandinavian-related ancestry.

"This documents that people with Scandinavian-related ancestry already were in Britain before the fifth century CE," the researchers wrote in the study.

Related: Attila the Hun raided Rome due to starvation, not bloodlust, study suggests

The "Twigstats" technique

The Twigstats technique is novel because it statistically models genetic mutations that are shared on "twigs" of a genealogical tree. By including the time period as a factor in the analysis, it becomes feasible to identify an ancient person's ancestry more specifically and with greater certainty than previously possible.

Study co-author Pontus Skoglund, group leader of the Ancient Genomics Laboratory at the Francis Crick Institute in London, said in a statement that "the goal was a data analysis method that would provide a sharper lens for fine-scale genetic history."

The researchers applied their new method to hundreds of genomes to answer questions about the history of early medieval Europe. In particular, they wanted to know more about the groups of people who lived just outside the Roman Empire before its fall in the fifth century, since little is known about them historically.

With the information the researchers gleaned from their new method of analyzing ancient genomes, they concluded that migrations in the early first millennium may have been triggered by people in Northern Europe who were attracted by the greater wealth of the Roman Empire, while later migrations spread from Central to Northern Europe.

"Twigstats allows us to see what we couldn't before," such as these three major migrations, study first author Leo Speidel, group leader at RIKEN, a national scientific research institute in Japan, said in the statement. "Our new method can be applied to other populations across the world and hopefully reveal more missing pieces of the puzzle."

Three Viking graves excavated in Norway contain coins from distant lands and an oddly symbolic stone carved to look like female genitalia.

The graves, all of which seemed to belong to women, were found on the west coast of Norway by metal detectorists . They date back to the early 800s A.D., during the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066), head archaeologist Søren Diinhoff of the University Museum of Bergen told sciencenorway.no.

"From a research perspective, this is a small treasure trove," Diinhoff said.

A metal detector survey suggests that the graves are just three of perhaps 20 at the site, which is at a place called Skumsnes in the municipality of Fitjar. Though the bones of the inhabitants have long since disintegrated, their grave goods — broaches, glass beads, coins, and stones arranged in the shape of a boat — remain. Some of the jewelry and coins originated as far away as Ireland, England and the Frankish Empire, which covered much of Western Europe at the time. Most striking was a rare coin from southern Denmark stamped with a Viking boat on one side and a stag on the other.

Related: Why didn't the Vikings colonize North America?

The find reveals the long-distance trade and migration occurring in Viking societies at the time. The women in the graves had some connection to continental Europe, Diinhoff said.

"It's probably no coincidence," he said. "Perhaps they came from abroad and married into the local community."

Skumsnes was a farm at the time, which probably belonged to a local king, according to the researchers. It wasn't far from the coast and may have been a waypoint for travelers. One of the women was buried with rocks in the shape of a 13-foot-long (4 meter) boat to accompany her to the afterlife. At the spot where the mast would be, archaeologists found a stone shaped like a vulva, which may have been used to symbolize the woman buried in the grave. It's possible, Diinhoff said, that the woman wasn't buried there at all, but that the grave was a cenotaph, or a memorial without a body. It's difficult to say, Diinhoff said, because the soil in western Norway does not preserve organic materials very well.

The boat grave also included wool shears, a hetchel (a comb to prepare fibers for spinning and weaving), a spindle whorl and a weaving sword, all items used to make textiles, as well as a bronze key. This suggests that the woman this grave was dedicated to was of high-status: Textile-making was prestigious, and the key indicates she washead of a household.

Unn Pedersen, an archaeologist from the University of Oslo, told sciencenorway that textile-making was a path to wealth and security for Viking-era women.

"If not members of the elite, these women were certainly high up in the social and economic hierarchy," she said.

A shipwreck discovered during a search for dumped wartime ammunition in Norway's Lake Mjøsa has been identified as a local "føringsbåt" from up to 700 years ago. But bad weather has prevented researchers from finding out more.

The wreck, which lies at a depth of around 1,300 feet (400 meters), was found in 2022 by an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) mapping the lake for Norway's military.

The discovery caught the attention of researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) based in the city of Trondheim. But they were not able to revisit the wreck until last month.

NTNU maritime archaeologist Øyvind Ødegård told Live Science that he and his colleagues explored the wreck for about an hour using a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) tethered to a research boat on the surface. But technical issues and encroaching bad weather prevented the researchers from using the underwater drone to take wood samples for radiocarbon dating, so the wreck's exact age will remain unknown until they can return there next spring.

Several visible features of the wreck, however, indicate the vessel was built between 1300 and 1700, Ødegård said.

Related: 32 haunting shipwrecks from the ancient world

Norwegian lake

Lake Mjøsa is the largest lake in Norway and lies about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Oslo. It covers more than 140 square miles (360 square km), but only a few square miles of the lake bottom have been mapped. It was a vital trade route between the many prosperous communities along its shores from at least the eighth century.

Ødegård said the researchers now think the mysterious vessel was a "føringsbåt" used to carry cargo and passengers. Such boats were widely used on Norwegian lakes, but their flat-bottomed construction made them unsuitable for the open sea.

The latest explorations showed this particular føringsbåt was built with an upright stern, a feature introduced in Norway after about 1300; earlier Viking ships were the same on both ends. And there are signs that it may have had a central rudder at the stern for steering, whereas Viking ships used a specialized steering oar on one side, Ødegård said.

The boat was also built with wooden planks overlaid in a "clinker" style. This traditional Scandinavian boatbuilding method was superseded by the flush planks of the "carvel" style, an innovation from the Mediterranean.

Telltale planks

The 33-foot-long (10 m) wreck in Lake Mjøsa is covered with sediments, which Ødegård thinks may have been penetrated by the sonar equipment that located the wreck in 2022. The wooden planks in the hull that can be seen are relatively wide — a sign they were cut with an ax, rather than sawed at a shipyard.

"That is an indication that this wreck is older," Ødegård said.

The 2022 discovery was made with an AUV operated by the Norwegian military, but the latest explorations used an ROV operated by the university spin-off company Blueye.

The wreck now lies on the bottom of Lake Mjøsa in deep and calm waters, but the lake surface in that area has strong currents, Ødegård said.

In addition to preventing the researchers from reaching the wreck on several occasions, the currents may have caused the føringsbåt to founder.

"It's not the calmest spot," he said. "That leads us to guess that someone had an accident while crossing the lake."

What it is: An illuminated manuscript of the four Christian gospels, made in the ninth century

Where it is from: The island of Iona in Scotland's Inner Hebrides

When it was made: About 1,200 years ago

Related: Oracle bones: 3,250-year-old engraved bones and tortoise shells from ancient China were used to foretell the future

What it tells us about the past:

The Book of Kells is a large illuminated manuscript — a handwritten and heavily illustrated document ornamented with paints made from gold and silver. It was made at the beginning of the ninth century, probably by Celtic Christian monks on the island of Iona in Scotland's Inner Hebrides.

The manuscript consists of the four Christian gospels written in Latin and is famed for its rich illustrations and masterful calligraphy, which date from a time before the invention of printing.

Books at this time had to be painstakingly copied by hand, a task often performed by teams of monks. Experts think the Book of Kells was created on Iona in this manner in about A.D. 800 by monks devoted to the sixth-century Irish missionary St Columba, who is credited with spreading Christianity throughout Scotland.

But the British coastline was prey to Viking raids at this time, and dozens of monks had already been killed in raids on isolated islands like Iona and Lindisfarne.

In the early 800s, the monks on Iona relocated to Ireland to avoid such attacks — and they took the manuscript with them. It was then housed for centuries at a monastery in the Irish town of Kells, where it got its name. But it was sent to Dublin for safekeeping during Oliver Cromwell's conquest of Ireland from 1649 until 1653.

In 1661, the Book of Kells was donated to the library of Trinity College Dublin, and it is still on display there today; the college has also made a digitized version.

The Book of Kells is considered the finest example of the "Insular" style of illuminated manuscripts — from the Latin word for island, the island being Celtic Britain — that were produced in Ireland and Britain during the post-Roman period.

Insular manuscripts are characterized by their elaborate initial letters, and are often highly decorated with fanciful designs of legendary animals and Celtic motifs.

The Book of Kells manuscript is written on vellum — usually prepared by scraping calf skin — and spans 680 pages that experts think were written by at least three different monks.

Some of the pages are missing, possibly because of a theft in the 11th century, but it is remarkably complete for a text that is so old.

Vikings are often depicted as brutish, bloodthirsty warriors with battle axes and horned helmets. In popular culture, Vikings are shown raiding, pillaging and murdering anyone in their path and performing grisly executions, like the infamous "blood eagle."

But is the Vikings' ruthless reputation warranted?

"The question isn't, 'Were Vikings violent?'" said Daniel Melleno, an associate professor of medieval and pre-modern history at the University of Denver. "They were absolutely violent. It's just a question of, are they doing something that is out of the norm?"

The Viking Age lasted from about A.D. 793 to 1066, coinciding with Europe's Middle Ages — an already-violent time, Melleno said. In this era, wars, slavery and raids were commonplace, and the Vikings were no exception. With fast and mobile longships, the Vikings were experts at launching surprise attacks from the sea.

Related: Why didn't the Vikings colonize North America?

One of the Vikings' first raids was on a wealthy monastery in the British island of Lindisfarne in A.D. 793. The Vikings frequently attacked monasteries, which were poorly guarded and filled with riches. Because the Vikings were initially pagan and their victims were Christian, their attacks were described as particularly abhorrent and ungodly.

"These are Christians writing, and they talk about these 'heathens' or 'pagans' attacking," Caitlin Ellis, an associate professor of medieval history at the University of Oslo, told Live Science. "Sometimes they even say it's a punishment from God that their own people have sinned or not been good enough."

Unlike their southern neighbors, the Vikings were largely preliterate; they left only a few runes of their activities. Some of the only written evidence of their actions comes directly from their victims or from sagas written hundreds of years later by the Vikings' descendants. Although the Vikings were also merchants, farmers and fishers, their victims were, justifiably, more focused on the violence committed against them, Melleno said. Over the years, stories of Viking brutality were also likely embellished.

"Some of the sources that are most negative in the way they describe the Vikings as being particularly ferocious or barbaric are actually from a bit later," Ellis said, "from the 12th century, so a few hundred years after the raiding had begun. So maybe there's a bit more exaggeration with time that plays into the image that we still have today."

In addition, discrepancies in some sources' writings cast doubt on their legitimacy, Melleno said. For example, an account from the chronicler Prudentius in A.D. 834 describes the Vikings destroying everything in the town of Dorestad, in what is now the Netherlands. But the next year, the village was still standing for the Vikings to "lay waste" to it, Prudentius wrote. The Vikings returned in 836 to destroy the town again, and then again in 837, he reported.

"If we look at the archaeological record, one of the things we don't often see is mass graves or burn layers — the signs of that destruction that we would expect to see if we read the sources and took them at face value," Melleno told Live Science.

The Vikings were not the only group raiding and conquering towns in medieval Europe. Muslim raiders called "Saracens" frequently attacked parts of what are now France, Switzerland and Italy. The Magyars, a group from Hungary, attacked what's now Bavaria. And Charlemagne, king of the Franks, waged a decades-long war against the Saxons that resulted in mass killings, hostage taking and pillaging in what's now Germany.

"What's the difference between Viking raiding and Frankish wars of conquest? Really, not that much," Melleno said, adding that it comes down to state violence versus stateless people committing acts of violence. It's likely that because the Vikings weren't part of a formal kingdom, their victims saw them as more unpredictable and barbaric.

"The Vikings come off as bad because they're not a state waging war," he explained. "The Vikings don't have a country, and they barely have a king … so it's just a bunch of pirates."

While digging to find an ancient settlement in southern Sweden, archaeologists made a completely unexpected discovery: an enormous Viking Age cemetery with more than 100 graves and several ship-shaped mounds.

As soon as excavations began, "we realized that there was a large Viking burial ground that we had to focus on," project leader Petra Nordin, an archaeologist at Sweden's National Historical Museums, said in a statement. "We have only excavated six percent of the burial ground."

The cemetery was initially found in 2017 in the village of Tvååker, in southwestern Sweden, ahead of planned road construction. Although Tvååker is mentioned in historical sagas, the aboveground remains of this particular cemetery were lost to time until recently.

"The problem is that the land has been plowed and leveled to create pastures," Nordin said, "so all the occupation levels, above-ground remains, and burials have been plowed to pieces."

During excavations carried out from 2017 to 2019, archaeologists located the remains of 139 graves, many of which included human and animal bones, metal accessories and ceramic vessels, in addition to large stones that were strategically placed around several graves in the shape of a boat.

Related: 50 Viking Age burials discovered in Denmark, including a woman in a rare 'Viking wagon'

One burial was particularly well appointed, according to Nordin. "In the grave were 17 vessels, human and animal bones, as well as woven weights and iron arrowheads," she said. "We have interpreted the square pit as a construction to help create good airflow for a [cremation] pyre above ground."

In this common Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) burial ritual, the body would have been burned on a funeral pyre. Then, animals such as cows and pigs were placed on top as food sacrifices, and the grave was closed. A ring of large stones in the shape of a ship's outline — known as a stone ship — may also have been erected around the grave.

Archaeologists also discovered a fragment of a silver coin from Arabia, which they dated to between 795 and 806, giving a general time frame for the burial ground. A full report of the cemetery excavation completed to date was published in 2023.

However, the settlement associated with the cemetery has not been found yet.

"Is the village located at the mouth of [the] Tvååker [River] or is it near the burial ground? We do not know," Nordin said. "But it is exciting to see what will emerge in the future."

Following Christopher Columbus' first voyage across the Atlantic in 1492, Spain and other European countries engaged in large-scale colonization that resulted in European settlers and their descendants colonizing most of the Western Hemisphere.

However, they weren't the first Europeans to make the voyage to North America. After establishing settlements in Iceland and Greenland in the ninth and 10th centuries A.D., the Vikings reached what is now Newfoundland, Canada in around A.D. 1000. They built an outpost at L'anse aux Meadows and used it to explore other areas of northeastern North America, with historical records indicating that they created another outpost called "Hop" somewhere in what's now the province of New Brunswick.

However, the Vikings did not colonize North America on a large scale, at least compared to what Europeans did after 1492. So why didn't the Vikings colonize North America?

In short, it's unclear if the Vikings wanted to expand their outposts into colonies, and the Vikings' outposts were sparsely populated when they came into conflict with Indigenous Americans, prompting them to leave it all behind. But other factors, including the arduous ocean route and the level of urbanization in both Europe and North America at the time, also played a role.

Related: What's the earliest evidence of humans in the Americas?

Were the Vikings interested in colonizing North America?

The Vikings may not have had much interest in colonizing North America, Birgitta Wallace, a senior archaeologist emerita with Parks Canada who has done extensive research on the Vikings in North America, told Live Science in an email. "The Norse were not interested in colonizing North America at this time as the Greenland colony was new and expanding, but still very small."

When the Vikings explored south of Newfoundland, in an area they named "Vínland" (which translates as "Wine Land"), they were more interested in finding natural resources they could exploit. "Their real interest was in finding resources that might sustain the new Greenlandic colony," Wallace said. "Vinland was explored because it had been discovered and offered potential resources."

Kevin P. Smith, a research associate at the Smithsonian Institute who specializes in the Vikings, had a somewhat different opinion. He said that Norse texts indicate "there was interest in the first decades of the 11th century A.D. in establishing a colony in the area known as Vínland." The texts indicate that some Vikings believed it offered "opportunities for 'second sons' of the chieftain who had established the Greenland colony to carve out their own areas where they could be leaders/chiefs rather than 'second sons,'" Smith told Live Science in an email.

Christopher Crocker, a research grant facilitation officer at Memorial University in Newfoundland who has researched the Vikings extensively, said that he doesn't think there's sufficient evidence to indicate whether the Vikings wanted to establish permanent settlements in North America.

"Whether they sought to establish long-term/permanent settlements there and to exercise some kind of economic and political control over the area [is] not at all clear in light of the evidence we have," Crocker told Live Science in an email.

Defeat in North America

Smith said that medieval Norse sagas "make it absolutely clear that the reason they gave up trying to establish a colony in Vínland was that the land already had many more inhabitants than the Norse had brought with them." When the Vikings made contact with the Indigenous peoples of North America, conflict broke out quickly.

The "Saga of Erik the Red" mentions a clash between the Vikings and Indigenous people that ended with the Vikings retreating to their ships after suffering a defeat that left a few Vikings dead. The group of Vikings that fought the Indigenous people were "now of opinion that though the land might be choice and good, there would be always war and terror overhanging them, from those who dwelt there before them. They made ready, therefore, to move away, with intent to go to their own land [Greenland]," the text reads (translation by John Sephton).

The Vikings "who tried to establish a colony in North America were defeated, retreated, and saw no possibility of winning or establishing a stable colony in lands that [were otherwise] perfect for colonizing," Smith said.

Related: Columbus 'discovered' the New World … so why isn't America named after him?

Not enough Vikings

The number of Vikings who lived on Greenland was low, and even the total number of Vikings was relatively small, the scholars noted. "The total population of the Scandinavian countries in the late Viking Age was probably less than a million," Jan Bill, curator of the Viking ship collection at the University of Oslo's Museum of Cultural History, told Live Science in an email. Greenland, meanwhile, had "only an initial population of 400-500" Vikings, Wallace said. "At its peak around AD 1300, its maximum population was perhaps 2000-3000."

What the total Indigenous population of Vínland was at the time the Vikings visited is unclear, however it would have been vastly larger. A 2010 paper published in the journal American Antiquity estimated the Indigenous population of eastern North America around 1500 to be somewhere between 500,000 and 2.6 million people.

The North Atlantic route the Vikings used also posed a barrier. "Relatively seen, the cold and the storms of the North Atlantic made this sea a higher barrier than the more favourable conditions found further south," Bill said.

The distance between 'Vínland' and Greenland also posed a major problem for the Vikings. "Greenland was weeks away in terms of getting goods to market [in Europe], which made for a difficult trade network operation," Kevin McAleese, a curator at Rooms Provincial Museum in St John's in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, told Live Science in an email.

Additionally, Scandinavia was less urbanized in the Viking age than Europe was in the time after Columbus sailed, and the states the Vikings ruled were less developed. "In the 15th century, state formation was much more advanced than in the 11th century, especially when comparing Scandinavia with the Iberian Peninsula," said Bill, who noted that "more advanced states could invest more in colonization than the very young states of Denmark, Norway and Sweden."

Other factors against colonization

After the voyages of Columbus, numerous epidemics swept across the Western Hemisphere and decimated Native American populations, which made it easier for European colonists to seize land and natural resources. In 2009, researchers Dr. William Agger and Herbert Maschner published a paper in the book "The Northern World: A.D. 900-1400" (University of Utah Press, 2009) proposing that illnesses from the Vikings may have caused an epidemic among a people in the Arctic that archaeologists now call the "Dorset," but this epidemic didn't spread widely across North America.

Additionally, historical records indicate that there was also internal dissent among the Vikings who traveled to North America, McAleese said. The saga of Erik the Red mentions arguments about religion, which directions to travel and which tactics to use when fighting the Indigenous peoples. With all the problems the Vikings faced, they may have abandoned L'Anse Aux Meadows after about two decades. Any hopes the Vikings had of colonizing North America turned out to be "a bridge too far," McAleese said.

A dogged search for walrus ivory may have brought two unlikely cultures together — the Thule Inuits of the Arctic and the Norse of Greenland — hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus set sail, a new study suggests.

By analyzing samples of Atlantic walrus (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus) tusk ivory collected by Norse explorers in Greenland and later exported to Europe for trade, archaeologists have pinpointed locations where the Norse and Inuit likely overlapped, they reported in a study published Sept. 27 in the journal Science Advances.

The researchers also built and sailed in clinker-built Norwegian boats to understand the long and dangerous journey that the Norse people may have taken from southern Greenland into the High Arctic to hunt walruses.

Previously, archaeologists knew that Norse, or Scandinavian, settlers on Iceland and Greenland had hunted walruses for their ivory starting around A.D. 900, establishing a trade network that extended across Europe.

"Walrus ivory was considered the gold of that time," study first author Emily Ruiz-Puerta, a bioarchaeologist at the University of Copenhagen, told Live Science. "People used walrus ivory to pay church taxes. It was considered a very elite gift."

Related: Epic 11-foot-tall sea level rise drove Vikings out of Greenland

The Norse eventually decimated the walrus population of Iceland, and had to sail to Greenland to keep up the flow of ivory. Archaeologists had assumed that walrus hunting by the Norse had happened only in southern Greenland, where they had settled. But in her 2024 thesis, Ruiz-Puerta studied the genetic fingerprints of walruses across the Arctic, and found that each population had a distinct genetic signature. This meant that if she could extract DNA from a walrus ivory artifact in Greenland or Europe, Ruiz-Puerta could pinpoint where it had come from in North America and Iceland.

"What really surprised us was that much of the walrus ivory exported back to Europe was originating in very remote hunting grounds located deep into the High Arctic," Peter Jordan, a professor of archaeology at Lund University in Sweden and senior author on the study, said in a statement.

By the 13th century, most walrus ivory samples came from hundreds of miles north of Norse settlements, Ruiz-Puerta said. For Norse traders to access walrus ivory so far north, it's possible they developed sailing capabilities advanced enough to survive the sea ice so they could hunt walruses and possibly even trade for ivory with the Thule Inuit, an Indigenous people who lived in what are now parts of eastern Russia, the Canadian Arctic and Greenland. Alternatively, perhaps the Norse stayed put in southern Greenland and traded with the Thule Inuit there.

Also around the 13th century, the Thule Inuit had recently migrated to these same northern hunting grounds. They were experts in Arctic living, and had developed sophisticated "toggling" harpoons that would latch into prey, enabling them to hunt walrus in open waters. They would have been capable of providing the Norse traders with walrus ivory, if the Norse had anything valuable to trade with, the researchers suggested.

Evidence of the Thule Inuit traveling far enough south to contact Norse settlements on Greenland hasn't been found, the study noted. But it's possible that the Norse traveled north to the High Arctic to hunt walruses and interacted with the Thule Inuit there, the researchers suggested. To test this idea, study co-author Greer Jarrett, an archaeologist at Lund University, recreated and sailed in Norse boats to learn about the journey's feasibility and the possible routes Norse voyagers may have taken to the High Arctic.

To pull off this journey, "walrus hunters probably departed from the Norse settlements as soon as the sea ice retreated," Jarrett said in the statement. "Those aiming for the far north had a very tight seasonal window within which to travel up the coast, hunt walrus, process and store the hides and ivory onboard their vessels, and return home before the seas froze again." The Norse likely would have hunted hundreds of walruses in this short period, and only made the treacherous journey every few years, Ruiz-Puerta added.

Jarrett and his colleagues' journeys helped them understand Norse capabilities. It was possible for Norse traders to sail hundreds of miles into the Arctic circle, where they possibly encountered the Thule Inuit, the researchers found.

It's likely that the Vikings, who were largely Norse, met Indigenous Americans even earlier in Newfoundland, Canada, where the Vikings arrived in A.D. 1021. It also appears likely that Greenland's Norse people had encounters with the Tuniit, who preceded the Thule Inuit, the researchers wrote. For instance, a brass pot fragment was found at a Tuniit site by northwest Greenland, the researchers noted. But in the case of the possible walrus-hunting connection, contact between Indigenous North Americans and Europeans could have happened in the 13th century, around 200 years before Columbus landed in the Caribbean.

"I think for human history, that's really important," Ruiz-Puerta said.

An extraordinary Viking burial ground with the almost-complete skeletons of roughly 50 people has been unearthed in Denmark during preparations to lay electrical cables.

The discoveries were made near the village of Åsum on the island of Funen over the past six months by archaeologists from Museum Odense, according to a statement.

Finding any human remains from the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) is rare, in part because Scandinavian soils are acidic and don't preserve bones well. So finding 50 burials from this time is exceptional.

"It is really unusual to find so many well-preserved skeletons at the same time as those found in Åsum," Michael Borre Lundø, an archaeologist who worked on the dig and a Museum Odense curator, said in the statement. "This discovery offers extraordinary opportunities to perform a wide range of scientific analyses, which can reveal more about the general health, diet, and origins of those buried."

"The analyses might even reveal whether the buried vikings were related, which would be particularly significant, as this has never been examined in similar graves," he added.

Related: Vikings in Norway were much more likely to die violent deaths than those in Denmark

Viking graves

The Viking Age graves near Åsum date to the 900s, perhaps to when the Danish king Gorm "the Old" and queen Thyra ruled from the nearby Jutland town of Jelling. Historians disagree on where Gorm ruled, but it is generally accepted that the central island of Funen was part of his kingdom. The new finds show the importance of the region at the time, according to the archaeologists.

Gorm and Thyra were the parents of Harald Bluetooth, who became king after Gorm died in around 958, and for whom the wireless networking standard is named. Harald claimed to have converted the Danes to Christianity. But the Old Norse gods — such as Thor, Odin and Freyr — were worshipped in the Viking kingdom ruled by Gorm and Thyra.

Wealthy dead

Many of the people buried at Åsum were wealthy, their grave goods indicate. One grave, for example, features a woman buried in the distinctive cradle-like bed of a Viking wagon.

"The woman was buried in the wagon she likely traveled in," Borre Lundø said. "She was given a beautiful glass bead necklace, an iron key, a knife with a silver-threaded handle and, most notably, a small shard of glass that may have served as an amulet."

The grave also contained a finely decorated wooden chest, the contents of which are still unknown, he said.

Another grave contains a three-lobed buckle made from bronze, as well as a red glass bead, hung around the deceased's neck; an iron knife; and a small piece of rock crystal.

"Rock crystal does not occur naturally in Denmark and was likely imported from Norway," Borre Lundø said. "Several items from the many graves in Åsum indicate that the buried Vikings were connected to international trade networks that developed during the Viking Age."

Viking age people who lived in what is now Norway were far more likely to be violently killed than Viking age people who lived in Denmark, a new analysis reveals.

The findings were surprising to the research team, as "rates of violence in Viking Age Norway and Denmark were long believed to be comparable," the researchers said in a statement.

For the study, the team compared two groups ofViking Age skeletons: 30 found in Norway and 82 found in Denmark. They found that "11 of the 30 studied Norwegian individuals, or 37 [%], suffered violent deaths, all when being assaulted with bladed and/or pointed weapons," the team wrote in a study published in the September issue of the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. In Denmark, by contrast, only six individuals — or about 7% — of the people met a violent end, and many of those were executed by hanging or decapitation.

To investigate why more Viking Age people in Norway suffered violent deaths, the team took a deeper look at the archaeological and historical records from that time in Norway and Denmark. The skeletons from Norway are from across the country, although there are no examples from the most northern parts of the country. Many of the skeletons from Denmark come from the eastern or central parts of the country.The date of the skeletons range from the sixth to the 11th centuries. While the exact time frame of the Viking age is debated by scholars it is often dated to around 800-1050, so some of the skeletons used in the study predate the Viking Age.

Historical and archaeological records indicate that Vikings who were killed in raids were buried in the lands they attacked and not brought home, meaning the skeletons in these collections were likely not killed on raids abroad, but were rather killed in their home areas.

Related: What's the farthest place the Vikings reached?

Vikings in Norway were much likelier to be buried with weapons compared with Vikings in Denmark, the team found.

"A notable feature in Norway was the presence of weapons, particularly swords, alongside skeletons in graves," the researchers said in the statement. "The study identified more than 3,000 swords from the Late Iron Age and Viking periods in Norway, with just a few dozen in Denmark. These findings suggest weapons played a significant role in Norwegian Viking identity and social status — further emphasizing the culture's connection to violence."

The team also noted that during the Viking Age, the government in what is now Denmark (an area sometimes called Danmǫrk by the Vikings) seems to have been more centralized than in Norway. Viking Age fortifications in Denmark were larger and more elaborate than those in Norway, the researchers said, suggesting that authorities brought together more people and resources to build them than authorities in Norway could.

In addition, the researchers examined runestones that contain inscriptions in Norway and Denmark. They found that the runestones in Denmark show more evidence of social hierarchy, such as the use of titles.

"More usage of different ranks or even the title 'king' hints at a more stratified society, in which such words were deemed necessary to use," the researchers wrote in the journal article.

The more centralized government in Denmark may have been more successful in limiting violence, the team proposed, and perhaps the violence that did occur often consisted of executions performed by authorities.

While the skeletons were drawn from collections from around Norway and Denmark and dated mostly to the ninth and 10th centuries, it's difficult to know whether they truly reflect the populations they came from, the study authors noted. And though these represent some of the largest bone collections from the Viking Age, the sample size is still relatively small, limiting the conclusions that are possible.

Archaeologists in Iceland have discovered what may be a rare Viking Age toy carved out of stone, but it's anyone's guess as to which animal it depicts.

The figurine, which experts dated to between A.D. 940 and 1000, was found at the Fjörður excavation site in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. It's a small, four-legged animal with a chipped ear carved from local stone.

Most of the team thought the animal was a pig, Ragnheiður Traustadóttir, director of the Antikva archaeological team that unearthed the toy, told Live Science. This isn't far-fetched, since Vikings used domesticated pigs for meat. Two team members, however, interpreted it as a bear, and while bears are not native to Iceland, at least 600 polar bears (Ursus maritimus) have been reported on the island since human settlement began to today. But when pictures of the figurine were posted on Facebook on Aug. 13, many Facebook users became convinced that it represented an Icelandic dog.

"Children are not so visible in the Viking Age, so this is an amazing find," Traustadóttir said. The director sees a pig and is skeptical about the Icelandic dog interpretation, as she says the face doesn't match the animal. "I owned an Icelandic dog for 14 years," Traustadóttir said. "I'm not sure."

The Fjörður excavation, named after the historical Fjörður farm, began in 2020 ahead of the planned construction of avalanche protection walls in Seyðisfjörður and was supposed to last only two years. But the excavation revealed so much that Traustadóttir is now in her fifth summer there.

Related: 1,200-year-old 'Viking graffiti' is the oldest drawing ever discovered in Iceland

In 2021, archaeologists uncovered a farm mound, mill and sheep shed dating to sometime between the 18th and 20th centuries, per Seydisfjord Archaeological Research, a website run by Antikva that publishes findings from the Fjörður excavation. Beneath that, they found medieval remains, and beneath those, they discovered four Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) graves buried beneath an 11th-century landslide.

In other words, a single excavation had revealed 1,000 years of Icelandic history. In 2022, south of the previous site, the archaeologists discovered a Viking longhouse with a weaving room, animal enclosures and a farm midden, or trash heap, dating to between the 11th and 13th centuries. They placed their findings on this historical timeline by dating the layers of ash from the many volcanic eruptions that have impacted the region since the arrival of human settlers.

"There's no other site in Iceland that has so many finds," Traustadóttir said. In five years of archaeological work, they've cataloged up to 4,000 artifacts, including nearly 100 Viking game pieces from a board game called "hnefatafl" that were crafted from the same type of stone as the toy.

While it's impossible to know exactly who carved these objects and why, Traustadóttir offered one possibility.

"Someone sat in the winter night, in the dark, carving chess pieces," Traustadóttir mused, "and then this animal for a child."

The excavation is due to wrap up soon, after which the archaeologists will begin studying the thousands of artifacts they have recovered.

A college student in Denmark has unearthed a "spectacular silver treasure" of Viking Age jewelry that doubled as money.

Gustav Bruunsgaard, a metal detectorist and archaeology student at Aarhus University, was exploring farmland near Elsted, a town north of Aarhus, when his metal detector began beeping. Upon digging into the soil, he discovered a single silver bangle. A few days later, he returned to the field, which was the site of a Viking Age settlement, and dug up six more bracelets, according to a translated statement from Moesgaard Museum in Højbjerg.

Bruunsgaard alerted officials to the finding, and experts dated the items to the 800s, which would have been during the early Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) in Scandinavia.

"The Elsted farm treasure is a fantastically interesting find from the Viking Age, which connects Aarhus with Russia and Ukraine in the east and the British Isles in the west," Kasper H. Andersen, a historian at the museum, said in the statement. "In this way, the find emphasizes how Aarhus was a central hub in the Viking world, which went all the way from the North Atlantic to Asia." 

Related: What's the farthest place the Vikings reached?

The bracelets were a form of money known as hacksilver, an important form of currency during the Viking Age. At one time, the bracelets — which together weighed more than 1 pound (0.5 kilogram) — would have been "adapted to a common weight system" and were used "as a means of payment and transaction" while showcasing "the owner's financial ability," according to the statement.

The accessories were likely produced in Denmark. However, one "coiled ring" resembles a style of bracelets from either Russia or Ukraine and was "imitated in the Nordics." The three "band-shaped, stamped rings" inspired similar bangles in Ireland, "where they became very common."

The silver treasure is currently on display at the Moesgaard Museum.

Dozens of iron rivets scattered around a farmer's field in Norway could be part of a Viking ship burial, archaeologists say.

In 2015, a metal detectorist discovered three of the rivets while exploring Jarlsberg Manor in southeastern Norway. After the detectorist alerted authorities to the find, a team of archaeologists equipped with metal-detecting equipment descended on the field and unearthed seven more rivets, Science Norway reported.

Now, nearly nine years later, archaeologists have unearthed a total of 70 rivets. Based on the size of the metal pieces, researchers think the rivets were used to hold together wood planks measuring about 8 feet (2.5 meters) long, suggesting a fairly large Viking Age ship was buried there.

"We've found a great variation of rivets, with the longer ones so big that they must have come from a large ship," excavation leader Christian Løchsen Rødsrud, an adviser for the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo in Norway, told Live Science. "The larger ones are comparable to other buried ships we've found at Gokstad and Oseberg," two other sites with burial mounds in Norway.

Rødsrud estimates that the ship was between 49 and 75 feet (15 and 23 m) long. However, researchers cannot estimate a date for the ship because there is no surviving organic matter they can radiocarbon-date.

Related: Oldest known ship burial discovered in Norway predates Vikings

"We've tested the topsoil but haven't found anything yet," Rødsrud said. "I would estimate that it's from sometime between A.D. 750 and 1000."

In addition to the rivets, archaeologists discovered two horse crampons — spikes that would have been attached to the animals' hooves for traction in "icy conditions." Researchers aren't surprised that they found equestrian items at the site, considering that horses buried alongside ships is a "recurring theme in Viking Age burial customs and are a typical phenomen[on] one would expect in a ship burial," Science Norway reported.

In fact, there have been numerous accounts of archaeological excavations in which Vikings have been buried with their trusty steeds.

There are about 15 known Viking ship burials in Norway. Although there's no definitive consensus on why Vikings buried their ships, they may have believed that the vessels could be used in the afterlife, according to the University of Cambridge's Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic.

It's too early in the investigation to know who the ship belonged to, Rødsrud said, but some evidence points to a Viking king.

"The ship could have been Bjørn Farmann's, who was the king of Vestfold," Rødsrud said.

Between 1917 and 1918, Norwegian archaeologist A.W. Brøgger discovered a different burial mound on the other side of the field and dubbed it the Farmann mound. He was convinced that a ship was buried here, but he uncovered only spades and a stretcher during his excavation, Science Norway reported.

But whether Brøgger's hunch was right remains to be seen. "It's too soon to tell," Rødsrud said.

A metal detectorist has uncovered a Viking Age silver ingot on the Isle of Man.

John Smart discovered the 1,000-year-old, finger-sized sliver of metal while exploring the island, which sits in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and England, according to a statement from Manx National Heritage.

Smart, who has been a metal detectorist for more than 40 years, said he never tires of the thrill of searching for buried treasure on the island.

"It's the thought of finding something of interest ... you're detecting over a land with nothing, it's soundless, then suddenly there's a little beep," Smart told the Isle of Man's Manx Radio. 

Per the island's Treasure Act 2017, Smart relinquished the artifact to Manx National Heritage, which handed it over to the island's Coroner of Inquests.

Related: Viking sword with 'very rare' inscription discovered on family farm in Norway

The Coroner of Inquests declared the piece of metal, which weighs approximately 0.4 ounce (11 grams), a "treasure." This determination was based on a silver analysis using X-ray fluorescence, which reveals chemical signatures, and a scanning electron microscope, which also gives chemical composition information. The analysis was conducted by the University of Liverpool and Manx National Heritage. 

The results determined that the ingot was 88% silver, according to the statement. (Any artifact that contains at least 10% precious metal and has no traceable owner is considered a treasure, according to the act.)

Ingots were common currency for Vikings and served as a substitute for silver coins to pay for goods and services.

"Ingots like this were used in the Viking world for trade," Allison Fox, curator of archaeology for Manx National Heritage, said in the statement. "The ingots were weighed and tested to make sure of their silver content and they were used in part or in whole to buy whatever a Viking needed. It was a cross-border currency."

This isn't the first time that silver from the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) has been discovered on the Isle of Man. In 2021, an amateur treasure hunter unearthed a "piggy bank" hoard containing numerous artifacts, including 87 coins and 13 pieces of cut-up silver arm rings, which served as "hack silver," or currency that could be broken into different sizes. 

"This ingot may only be a small artifact, but put into context, it helps illustrate how the Isle of Man was a part of the international Viking trade network 1,000 years ago including how the Viking economy operated and where on the island trade was taking place," Fox told Manx Radio. "I often compare it to a credit card, essentially. Because the value is in its silver content ... they could spend that anywhere in the Viking world."

The ingot is now on display in the Viking and Medieval Gallery at the Manx Museum, according to the statement.

While clearing a field on his farm, a Norwegian man discovered a rare Viking Age sword that's thought to be 1,000 years old.

"We were about to start sowing grass on a field that has not been plowed for many years," Øyvind Tveitane Lovra, who found the weapon, said in a translated statement. 

When a piece of old iron turned up, he was about to throw it away. But a closer inspection revealed that it was most of a centuries-old sword, so he contacted archaeologists with the local government, as Norwegian law requires.

"I quickly realized that this was not an everyday find," said Lovra, who is a part-time farmer, ferry engineer and local politician in the Suldal municipality of Norway's southwest Rogaland county. "It's about our history, and it's nice to know what has been here before."

Rogaland government archaeologists recovered the artifact from his farm last week and have now confirmed that it is the remains of an iron sword from the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066).

Related: 1,100-year-old Viking sword pulled from UK river by magnet fisher

Notably, the sword seems to be of the rare type of Frankish origin known as Ulfberht swords, which are distinguished by inscriptions inlaid along their blades.

"This is very rare," said Rogaland archaeologist Lars Søgaard Sørensen. "The sword was the greatest status symbol in the Viking Age, and it was a privilege to be allowed to wear a sword."

Ancient sword

The remnant of the sword is about 14.5 inches (37 centimeters) long and consists of the handle, the cross guard and part of the blade. The rest of the blade is missing — about half its length — but archaeologists consider it surprisingly well preserved for Rogaland, where the soil generally has poorer conditions for preservation than other parts of Norway.

Sørensen said the sword seems to have been embedded in dense clay, which prevented the iron remains from being exposed to more oxygen and rusting away.

When the archaeologists X-rayed the sword in an attempt to find out more about it, the scans revealed the contours of an inscription on the blade.

"This means that it could be a so-called VLFBERHT [Ulfberht] sword from the Viking Age or the Early Middle Ages," Sigmund Oehrl, a professor of archaeology at the University of Stavanger, said in the statement. "These are high-quality swords produced in the Frankish Empire [now Germany and France] that are marked with the weapon manufacturer's name." 

He noted that up to 4,000 swords from the Viking Age have been found throughout Europe, but only about 170 — 45 from Norway — have Ulfberht inscriptions.

"We are not aware of similar swords being found in Rogaland before," he said.

Local lore

The archaeologists estimate that the sword was made between 900 and 1050, which corresponds to the late Viking Age — roughly from 800 to 1066. 

Lovra thinks the sword arrived at the farm, which bears the family name, with Vikings bringing gifts — an event described in local folklore.

"I know that the Vikings sailed into the fjord and decorated the lady of the house at Lovra with nice things, including from Ireland," he said in the statement.

Around 1,000 years ago, pagans living near the Baltic Sea imported horses from their newly Christian northern neighbors and then subjected the animals to gruesome public sacrifice, a new study finds.

Horses were an important component of Balt culture between the first and 13th centuries, evidence shows; numerous ancient equestrian artifacts have been recovered, and travelers have reported that elite Balts drank fermented mare's milk. Because the Balts were not literate prior to their conversion to Christianity, however, most information about their lives, including their pagan religion, comes from archaeological investigation.

In a new study published May 17 in the journal Science Advances, researchers detailed their biomolecular analysis of 80 sacrificed horses from nine archaeological sites in the eastern Baltic region — modern-day Poland, Lithuania and the Russian province of Kaliningrad sandwiched between them — and determined that both male and female horses were chosen for sacrifice and that some horses were imported from quite a distance.

A previous assumption within Baltic archaeology, according to the study, was that stallions were specifically selected for public sacrifice and that this ritual — which often involved decapitation, flaying, quartering the horses or burying them alive — was enacted at the funerals of elite male warriors in Balt culture. To test this, the team analyzed the DNA of the horses and found that roughly 66% were stallions and 34% were mares. 

"Our results suggest that the Balts were not exclusively selecting male horses for this ritual, as previously thought," lead author Katherine French, a zooarchaeologist formerly at Cardiff University in the U.K. and now based at Washington State University, told Live Science in an email. 

Related: 2,700-year-old leather saddle found in woman's tomb in China is oldest on record

Because horses were common in the Balts' territory, researchers did not previously question whether the animals were sourced locally or from somewhere else. But the new study did a strontium isotope analysis of the horses' tooth enamel to identify the origin of the horses — and found that three were not born locally. The strontium present in tooth crowns comes from the animals' early diet; by measuring the ratio of two variants of strontium in one tooth or between teeth that grew at different times, researchers can match where the animal grew up or see where it moved when it was growing up.

"Results confirm that there is no possibility that the horses originated in the territory of the Baltic tribes and that the region of the highest likelihood for these horses is the Fennoscandian Peninsula, specifically east-central Sweden or southern Finland," the researchers wrote. 

All three horses were carbon-dated to about the 11th to 13th centuries, a time when trade networks across the Baltic Sea, particularly with Sweden, were well established. It was also a period when there was still pagan resistance within the kingdom of Sweden, which officially converted to Christianity in 1164. 

The fact that one nonlocal horse in Kaliningrad was buried with a Scandinavian-influenced artifact — a weight, possibly involved in trading — may suggest that its Balt owner was a pagan trader, the researchers wrote in the study. But it is also possible, they noted, that the imported horses arrived with their Scandinavian owners, who were buried in the Baltic style. 

"In either case," the researchers wrote, "our results prove that horses were crossing the Baltic Sea on ships, a level of mobility not previously recognized archaeologically."

Flint Dibble, a zooarchaeologist at Cardiff University in the U.K. who was not involved in the study, told Live Science in an email that the new research is both innovative and impactful, and demonstrates how scientific methods can be applied to study ancient animal populations. 

"The impressive sample size — 80 individual horses — reveals the importance of applying these methods to a significant, localized dataset in order to tease out relevant archaeological patterns," Dibble said, and "the long distance trade in horses in Northern Europe is now a topic that needs additional investigation."

French plans to address this topic further with new research. "I'm currently working on a separate project looking at contemporary ship technology to determine how — and how many — horses could have been transported on Viking Age cargo ships."

The elongated, cone-shaped skulls of Viking Age women buried on the Baltic island of Gotland may be evidence of trading contacts with the Black Sea region, a new study finds.

The women's skulls were most likely modified deliberately from birth by wrapping their heads with bandages. This practice is attributed to the nomadic Huns, who invaded Europe from Asia in the fourth and fifth centuries, and it was followed in parts of southeastern Europe until the 10th century.

But the modifications have been found only on the skulls of three Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) women buried on the now-Swedish island of Gotland and nowhere else in Scandinavia, which indicates it was a foreign practice, said study lead author Matthias Toplak, an archaeologist at the Viking Museum Haithabu in Germany.

While it's unclear if the skull modifications were disguised by a distinctive hairstyle, "I assume that the foreign (or rather alien) appearance of these females was visible," Toplak told Live Science in an email. "It might have been a token of a certain elite or some other social group."

Related: 12,000 years ago, a boy had his skull squashed into a cone shape. It's the oldest evidence of such head-shaping.

It's likely the modified skulls were restricted to a few women from one family across a few generations, perhaps to highlight their connection with a distant region where the modifications were more common, he said; at least one of the women may have originated in that region.

"I suggest that the skull deformations on Gotland were regarded as evidence of far-reaching trading contacts, and thus as tokens of influence and success in trading," he said.

Filing down teeth

In the study, published Feb. 24 in the journal Current Swedish Archaeology, Toplak and his co-author Lukas Kerk, an archaeologist at the University of Münster in Germany, looked at the evidence of skull modification from Gotland and filed teeth found on skulls around Scandinavia.

The authors suggest the practice of filing teeth may have been used as a sign of identification — perhaps clandestine — for certain groups of Viking Age merchants and may have been conducted as an initiation rite.

Previous research has proposed that the marks may have resulted from teeth used as tools — while leatherworking, for example.

But the new study shows the marks were made deliberately. "The filings observed in Viking Age Scandinavia must be intentional," Toplak said. "Modern experiments indicate that an iron file is necessary to achieve these distinct grooves."

The practice seems to have originated in Sweden's Uppland region, but the latest study suggests a concentration of filed teeth in skulls buried on Gotland show the island's importance for trade. "Gotland is the central hub for all trading activities in the Baltic from the later Viking Age, on through the entire Middle Ages," he said.

But tooth filing seems to have died out in Scandinavia after the 12th century. "The decline of this custom corresponds with the development of the classical merchant guilds in the Middle Ages," Toplak said.

Viking body mods

The study attempts to explain the filed teeth and the cone-shaped skulls from Viking Age Gotland by placing them in the cultural context of the time.

The Viking Age Scandinavians were famous for their tattoos, which were described in a 10th-century travelogue written by the Arab diplomat Aḥmad ibn Faḍlān. But until now, there had been little discussion of other forms of Viking Age body modifications, the authors wrote.

Kurt Alt, an archaeologist at Danube Private University in Austria who wasn't involved in the study, said such artificially modified skulls were found in numerous contexts throughout the world and usually among women. Such skulls were not always signs of foreign-born women, because some native-born women also imitated the custom, he said.

"The skull, face and teeth are particularly well suited to reflecting an identity," Alt said. "Other parts of the body are not visible enough."

In 2022, we reported the DNA sequences of 33 medieval people buried in a Jewish cemetery in Germany. Not long after we made the data publicly available, people started comparing their own DNA with that of the 14th-century German Jews, finding many "matches." These medieval individuals had DNA fragments shared with thousands of people who have uploaded their DNA sequence to an online database, the same way you share DNA fragments with your relatives.

But what type of a relationship with a medieval person does a shared DNA fragment imply?

It turns out, not too much that will help with your family roots research.

We are population geneticists who work with ancient DNA. We understand how exciting it can be to find a genetic link to particular people who lived many generations ago. But these DNA matches aren't the tight ties you may be imagining. Here's how it works.

Sequencing DNA from those who lived long ago

Ancient DNA is a new and rapidly growing field, with a Nobel Prize awarded in 2022 to Svante Pääbo for his foundational work.

Using samples taken from skull bones or teeth, aDNA researchers can sequence the DNA of people who lived as far back as 100,000 years ago. More than 10,000 ancient DNA sequences, or genomes, are currently available. These genomes, which come from all corners of the world, have dramatically revolutionized scientists' understanding of human origins.

A new trend in ancient DNA is sequencing the genomes of "historical" individuals: those who have lived during the past millennium.

Examples include genomes from Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Poland, Southeastern Europe, and London, Cambridge and Norwich in the U.K. Outside Europe, scientists have sequenced historical genomes from East Asia, the Swahili coast, South Africa, the Canary Islands, Lebanon, Machu Picchu, the Caribbean and the San Francisco Bay area. Genomes of enslaved Africans from Delaware, Maryland, South Carolina and St. Helena are also available.

Some historical genomes belong to named individuals, including Ludwig van Beethoven, the family of the last Russian czar, medieval Hungarian royals, the Lakota Sioux leader Sitting Bull and King Richard III of England.

How could you compare your own DNA with that of these historical people?

Several direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies, such as 23andMe, MyHeritage or Ancestry, make reading your own genome sequence simple and affordable. They compare your DNA with that of their other customers. They identify relatives who share with you long, continuous stretches of identical DNA and report to you these matches — from the closest to the more distant.

After initial deliberation, 23andMe now lets customers compare their genomes with historical people. Other genetic testing companies don't yet, but passionate genealogists can take matters into their own hands. For example, the service GEDmatch lets users upload their own DNA data, along with published DNA sequences of any historical people. Once uploaded, GEDmatch will identify any user with whom you share genetic material.

So, what does a genetic match with a medieval person mean for your genealogy?

Surprisingly, very little.

Where genealogy and genetics diverge

The first thing to understand is how many ancestors you have in each past generation. One generation back, you have two ancestors. Two generations back, that doubles to four. Then eight, and 16. By 30 generations ago, around the 12th century, you have over one billion ancestors.

Clearly, at this point, your ancestors include most people from your population who lived back then, excluding a small fraction who left no long-term descendants. This includes, if you have European origins, notable people such as Charlemagne or Edward I, but equally also people of every medieval social class. Your family tree reaches each of these ancestors through numerous lines.

Mathematical research demonstrates the following surprising fact. In any given population, the number of lines in your family tree that reach any specific medieval person is about the same between you and everyone else who belongs to the same population you do. In other words, everyone alive today is equally related, genealogically, to all medieval people from that population.

The next step is to understand how many ancestors you actually inherit DNA from. Surprisingly again, very few.

Despite your millions or more medieval ancestors, you inherit DNA from only a tiny fraction of them. So, we're sorry, you probably didn't inherit any DNA from Charlemagne or Edward I. For example, you have only about 2,000 genetic ancestors from the 12th century. In other words, your DNA sequence is a mosaic of approximately 2,000 "fragments," each tracing back to a single 12th-century person.

Who are the medieval people whose DNA you inherited? Each fragment of your DNA descends from a random line up your family tree — father's mother's mother's father and so on — at each generation in the past, selecting at random one of two parents. The more lines in your family tree that reach a certain medieval person, the more likely you are to inherit DNA from that person.

But remember, the number of family lines that reach a medieval person is about the same for all present-day individuals from a given population. Therefore, all individuals inherit DNA from any medieval person with very similar probabilities. So, sharing genetic material with one particular medieval person or another is just a matter of chance, and everyone is playing the same game.

Here's an analogy. Going to a casino and rolling a roulette ball onto 24 does not mean 24 is your special number. Anyone else might have rolled 24 as well. Similarly, sharing a DNA fragment with any one out of your millions of medieval genealogical ancestors does not mean any special relationship — beyond sharing a DNA fragment.

And if you don't have a shared segment, you just didn't get lucky. It doesn't mean you're any less genealogically related to that medieval person than anyone else from your population who does have a shared segment.

As a side note, a "population" is not always well defined, but these arguments hold generally for people with similar origins.

How to interpret a historical DNA match

Consider again the medieval German Jews. Some present-day Ashkenazi (European) Jews will share DNA with one particular medieval Jew. Some will share with another. Some will share with none. It's a lottery draw. And given that most Ashkenazi Jews today are genealogically related in a very similar way to the medieval German Jews, seeing that shared DNA fragment does not imply any unique genealogical relatedness.

On the other hand, if you're willing to consider more recent ancestors, DNA matches can be informative. The same mathematical models show that the number of family lines reaching a particular historical person living around 200 or 300 years ago will be very different across present-day people. Therefore, a DNA match with an 18th-century person implies a more specific genealogical relationship, one that most other present-day individuals do not have.

This pattern was demonstrated in a recent 23andMe study. Comparing the genomes of 18th-century enslaved Africans from Maryland to more than 9 million of their customers, 23andMe discovered over 41,000 living relatives, including a few nearly direct descendants.

How far back in time does a DNA match still have genealogical meaning? For example, are DNA matches informative in the period between the late Middle Ages and the 17th century? We don't know yet. Future research will be needed to clarify this question, as well as deviations from the simple model of a single, freely mixing population.

In the meantime, as scientists rapidly accumulate more and more historical genome sequences, keep the quirky behavior of human genealogies in mind when interpreting a DNA match.

This edited article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A corroded sword pulled from an English river by a magnet fisher is a Viking weapon dating to between A.D. 850 and 975, experts have confirmed.

Trevor Penny was searching for lost and discarded objects in the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire in November 2023 when he made the discovery. The magnet fisher had been down on his luck that day and only pulled scaffolding poles from the water, he told Live Science in a message on Facebook. When Penny lugged out the sword, he didn't immediately recognize what it was.

"I was on the side of the bridge and shouted to a friend on the other side of the bridge, 'What is this?'" Penny, who is a member of the Thame Magnet Fishing Facebook group, recalled in the message. "He came running over shouting, 'It looks like a sword!'"

Related: Early medieval sword fished out of Polish river is in 'near perfect' condition

Penny immediately uploaded images of the sword to Google to try to identify it. "Whatever photo angle I tried was coming up with Viking sword," Penny said. The magnet fisher then contacted the Oxfordshire county liaison officer responsible for recording archaeological finds made by the public, and took the sword to be examined by experts.

The sword, only provisionally dated until now, has been authenticated as Viking and estimated to date as far back as 1,200 years ago.

The weapon dates to a period when the Vikings, who were originally pagans from Scandinavia, traveled to the British Isles to plunder, conquer and trade with the ruling Saxons. The Vikings set foot on British soil in the eighth century, having raided a monastery on Lindisfarne, an island off Britain's northeast coast, in 793. Similar raids in Britain occurred for several centuries and escalated after 835, when larger Viking fleets started arriving and fighting royal armies. British kings gradually reconquered territory seized by the Vikings throughout the 10th century and unified what was a patchwork of kingdoms into a new realm called Englalond.

Viking incursions and periods of rule continued until the 11th century, but the Viking Age ended following the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066, with the defeat of the king of Norway, Harald III Sigurdsson, by the Saxons.

The newly discovered Viking sword is in the care of Oxford museum services and may eventually be put on display, the Oxford Mail reported.

"The officer said it was archaeologically rare to find whole swords and treasure of historical importance still intact," Penny told the regional newspaper last week. "There was a little dispute with the landowner and the rivers trust who don't permit magnet fishing. The latter sent a legal document saying they wouldn't take action on the condition that the sword was passed to a museum, which I had done."

A Viking Age marketplace may be buried on a Norwegian island, new research suggests.

Archaeologists surveying part of the historic island of Klosterøy, in southwest Norway about 190 miles (300 kilometers) west of Oslo, used ground-penetrating radar to detect signals from what appear to be the buried remains of several pit houses and piers.

The archaeological remains suggest the site could have been a market during the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066), and other finds hint that the place was important to local people long before that, according to Kristoffer Hillesland, a researcher at the University of Stavanger's Museum of Archaeology who took part in the research.

"It was likely that this was a power center during the Iron Age," or from about 500 B.C. to A.D. 800 in this region, Hillesland told Live Science, noting that several large burial mounds from this period are visible nearby.

The marketplace would have been established later, he said, possibly when the island was a royal farm for the first king of Norway, Harald Fairhair (reigned A.D. 872 to 930), and a monastery for Augustinian monks was built beside the site in the Middle Ages.

The monastery, too, could be a sign that a settlement on the island was a local center of power, because early Christian institutions in Scandinavia tended to be built at such places, he said.

Related: What's the farthest place the Vikings reached?

Klosterøy is also only a few miles from the island of Karmøy, where three Viking ship burials have been found.

The monastery, now known as Utstein Abbey, was abandoned in the 16th century during Norway's Protestant Reformation, but the building was later used as a farmhouse. It is now legally protected as Norway's best-preserved medieval monastery.

Buried ruins

The latest study surveyed the land beside the monastery, Hillesland said, where numerous metal detector finds of items like coins and weights over several years indicated that commercial trade had taken place there.

Archaeologists conducted the new research without excavating the land at the site, which is within the legally protected historic area. Instead, they used ground-penetrating radar to reveal what was buried there.

Hillesland explained that the team had detected buried traces of several circular pits, measuring between 6.5 and 33 feet (2 and 10 meters) in diameter, that were very similar to Viking Age "pit houses" excavated at other sites in Norway.

Pit houses were used in many places in Europe and were particularly common in Scandinavia until the Middle Ages. They were dug so the floor was below ground level and then covered with an angled roof typically made from wood, turf or thatch; the design helped the buildings stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter.

The remains of such pit houses have often been found at Iron Age and Viking Age marketplaces in Scandinavia, where they seem to have been used as workshops for activities such as weaving, Hillesland said.

The survey also revealed the buried remains of three piers or boathouses near the shore, which may have been where boats docked to access the market, the royal farm or perhaps the later monastery, he said. It's possible that the market operated there only during the warmer months, and people may have visited the market by boat from other islands or the mainland when it was open.

Taken together, the evidence of the survey and the metal detector finds suggest that a marketplace existed at the site during the Viking Age and early Middle Ages, Hillesland said.

Ancient cairns

Other archaeological features of the island suggest it was an important site for some of the earliest people in the region. Piles of rock called "cairns" have been found near the monastery; these may be signs of Iron Age burials, and some of the nearby burial mounds may have been built even earlier, he said.

The ground-penetrating radar had also shown what may be the remains of cooking pits, which seem to have been related to funeral activities around the older burial mounds at the site, Hillesland said.

He stressed that the remains of a Viking Age marketplace at the site couldn't be confirmed until it had been fully excavated. But the site and the monastery are on private land, and no such excavations have been planned, he said. Nonetheless, the ground-penetrating radar signals provide a hint of what future archaeologists may find.

A giant, enigmatic carving of a naked, bald man wielding a hefty club likely depicts the mythical Hercules, a new study finds.

The early medieval artwork, carved into the chalk bedrock on a hillside above the village of Cerne Abbas in Dorset, England, was likely created to mark a meeting point for West Saxon armies that were readying to fight the invading Vikings, according to the study, published in the January issue of the journal Speculum. Later, monks in Cerne Abbas — who likely didn't want a pagan figure in their midst — reinterpreted the huge carving to be the local saint, Eadwold, the team said.

"The monks of Cerne wouldn't have portrayed their patron saint as naked if they were carving him from scratch, but they were happy to co-opt him as an image of Eadwold for their own purposes," study co-author Tom Morcom, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo in Norway, said in a statement.

Related: Statue of slain Roman emperor dressed as Hercules found near sewer in Rome

Archaeologists have known about the Cerne Abbas giant for centuries, but many thought it dated to prehistoric times. That changed in 2021, when research revealed that the giant was much younger, dating to between A.D. 700 and 1110. This time window, based on optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating — a technique that calculates the last time crystalline materials in the artwork, such as minerals, were exposed to sunlight or heat — showed that the giant's emergence in the Anglo-Saxon period coincided with the Viking Age (793 to 1066).

The giant is an impressive site to behold, standing 180 feet (55 meters) tall with a club clenched in his right hand. His left hand is outstretched, and it's likely that it originally held Hercules' iconic lion skin, which he obtained from slaying the beast as part of his 12 labors, the researchers said. Medieval artists also included the bald man's nipples, ribs, belt and phallus.

During the Middle Ages, the myth of Hercules was well known and experienced a spike in interest during the ninth century, the researchers said. The prominent knotted club is one clue that the carving depicts the hero, as this weapon "acted as an identificatory label, like the keys of Saint Peter or the wheel of Saint Catherine," the researchers wrote in the study.

They added that the carving is just 16 miles (26 kilometers) south of Portland, the site of the first recorded encounter between an Anglo-Saxon and Viking raiders, which occurred a few years before the 793 Viking attack on Lindisfarne. There are other early medieval chalk carvings in the region, and this one might have served as a rallying point for local forces gathering to fight the Vikings, as the spot was close to fresh water and supplies from local estates, the researchers said.

"It's become clear that the Cerne Giant is just the most visible of a whole cluster of early medieval features in the landscape," study co-author Helen Gittos, an associate professor of early medieval history at the University of Oxford, said in the statement. 

In the 11th century, local monks gave Hercules a makeover, rebranding him as Eadwold of Cerne, a ninth-century hermit said to be the king's brother and a miracle worker.

"The Giant has long been loved and looked after, and such reidentifications continue into the present day," Morcom said.

In less than 300 years, the Vikings raided and explored land in at least four continents, spreading out in every direction from Scandinavia to invade and trade with civilizations across Europe and beyond. But just how far did the Vikings get, and why were they so adventurous?

Fundamentally, the Vikings' biggest motivations were power and wealth. "The Vikings were very aware of what was happening in England and on the continent at the time," said Alexandra Sanmark, a professor of medieval archaeology at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland. "They knew there was wealth to be had, and they had been trading with these people for a long time. Then it seemed to dawn on them that they didn't have to trade anymore. They could just take."

Initially, organized fleets of young men during the Viking Age (A.D. 793 to 1066) would sail from Scandinavia during the summer months for a campaign of raids and return in autumn with their spoils, Sanmark said. Over time, these conquerors began to settle in the new territories, gradually bringing families to create permanent settlements and stopover points on important routes.

"There were some periods when the Vikings controlled huge areas of land, but except for King Cnut's North Sea Empire, it was not an empire," said Ellen Nӕss, an archaeologist at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, Norway. "Archaeologists call it a pirate kingdom — there were many separate warlords or leaders who sometimes worked together as huge armies, and other times in smaller independent groups, as benefited both parties. It was nothing to do with national pride; it was all personal power and personal wealth."

The earliest westward expeditions would have taken raiders to northern Scotland, where they quickly overtook the native population and established Viking settlements, Sanmark said. From there, further short voyages to the nearby Hebrides and Faroe Islands were possible, ultimately enabling the Vikings to island-hop as far as Iceland by 870.

Related: What's the earliest evidence of humans in the Americas?

Perhaps most impressively, around 1000, they made their first voyages across the Atlantic to southwest Greenland, before finally reaching L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada, a staggering 2,400 miles (3,900 kilometers) from Norway. But while this achievement was a testament to the Vikings' exceptional skills as sailors and navigators, evidence suggests that they didn't stay long at their North American settlement.

"Greenland was undoubtedly important for the Vikings to travel back and forth to Newfoundland," Nӕss told Live Science. "One important resource they found at Greenland was the walrus that they hunted for the valuable ivory teeth and hide." An April 2023 study in the journal Antiquity found that these explorers even brought large trees from North America for construction in their Greenland settlements.

"We do not know for sure why the settlement at Newfoundland ceased, but it was far away from the 'homeland' and the resources were more or less the same as they found at home, so there was no real motivation to go further," Nӕss said.

However, their eastward expansion had a completely different character. Sticking with convenient water travel, Viking warriors crossed the Baltic Sea and traveled along inland rivers in Eastern Europe and Russia, passing through modern-day Kyiv, Ukraine, and Novgorod, Russia, during the 900s and all the way down to Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire and Baghdad around 1000.

"There was a massive difference in the type of civilization, and I'm sure they would have been mightily impressed seeing the buildings, the clothing and artifacts, and the Arabic coinage," Sanmark told Live Science. "Here, the Vikings focused on trading rather than raiding, and they settled into the local population and became very powerful.

In fact, the Vikings probably went even further east than archaeologists can conclusively prove. "We can trace them through burials, settlements or written sources, but when that stops, we can only see what they brought back to Scandinavia," Sanmark continued." In Sweden, there's silk from China, but we don't know how far they went to get this material. But they definitely had connections all the way to China and India; there's no question about that."

Lesser-known is the Vikings' southward expansion, around the northern coast of Francia (now France), the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and, finally, along the north coast of Africa in the early 11th century. However, because of the challenging arid conditions and lack of waterways, they never attempted to cross the Sahara and expand further into Africa.

The Viking Age came to a gradual end around the mid-11th century, with political development from contact with other cultures and the spread of Christianity leading to a shift in social attitudes. But during their 300-year heyday, the Vikings certainly made their mark on the world.

"In terms of distance, the settlement in Newfoundland is probably the furthest they reached," Nӕss said. "But culturally, Baghdad was perhaps an even greater journey into the unknown for the Vikings."