Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• Analysis of a monumental ship burial in Norway is rewriting the history of a practice largely associated with the Viking age in Scandinavia.
• Experts believe boat and ship burials predated the Vikings in Norway by at least 100 years and covered a wider area than previously known.
• By researching a well-known mound, experts learned large sea-faring vessels were in use before Viking lore dominated the landscape.

The Vikings weren’t the first to get into the business of monumental ship burial mounds in Norway. It turns out that burying ships under piles of Earth was happening at least 100 years before the Vikings made it famous—and in more widespread areas than archaeologists realized.

According to a new study published in the journal Antiquity, a team of scholars reexamined the Herlaugshaugen mound on the Norwegian island of Leka using metal detectors and radiocarbon dating. They pulled up 29 iron rivets and dated charcoal and wood remains—some still attached to the iron nails—of what was once a mighty ship to 700 C.E., roughly 100 years before Vikings took control of the area.

The new dating of a mound containing a powerful seafaring vessel that spanned 65 feet not only proves the existence of Norwegian maritime expertise prior to the Vikings’ arrival, but also rewrites the legend associated with Herlaugshaugen and fills in gaps in ship-burial lore.

The earliest know ship burials in Europe are those in Sutton Hoo in East Anglia, England, which have been dated to between 600 and 625 C.E., and Swedish burials ranging from the sixth to the eighth centuries. Norway’s oldest previously-known burials were dated to the late eighth century. Now, the clinker nails, charcoal remains, and elm or oak wood of the Herlaugshaugen ship burial have been dated to roughly 700 C.E., filling a historical gap between early ship burials in England and Sweden and the later burials discovered in Norway.

As the authors put it, the new research “provides a chronological bridge between the early seventh-century ship burials of Anglo-Saxon England and Norway’s famous late-eighth and ninth-century ship burials.”

The new findings also put into question a long-held myth about Herlaugshaugen according to which the pre-Viking King Herlaug sequestered himself into the mound and died inside of it, with his remains allegedly exhumed in the 18th century. The new dating of the ship puts its burial roughly 80 years before the death of the king, making the premise of the myth implausible.

What the new research does establish is the Leka site is not only one of the oldest ship burials in Norway, but also a pivotal location in a larger trade network. Leka likely offered a seafaring link connecting northern and southern Scandinavia and serving as a hub for trade across the North Sea to Britain and elsewhere in Europe.

“This article situates Herlaugshaugen and the island of Leka as a node in a regional network that also connected the coast of Trondelag with a larger network reaching the continent,” the authors wrote. “The new discoveries at Herlaugshaugen raise questions concerning the sociopolitical context of ship burials. The mound stands out for its early date and for its location, far north of most well-known ship graves.”

There’s an economic element too. Norwegian farmers weren’t getting rich—that was left to traders. To build a mound of almost 200 feet in diameter and over 40 feet high (not to mention then burying a ship inside) required plenty of expensive labor and social cachet. The wealth associated with Viking trade must have been present, thanks to maritime ingenuity, well ahead of previous estimates, given the size and contents of the mound.

“New excavation at Herlaugshaugen reveals that the phenomenon of monumental ship graves was not restricted to southern Scandinavia, the northern Norwegian coast was also integrated into networks established in the seventh and eight centuries,” the authors wrote. “The monumental ship mound at Leka represents another piece of the puzzle for understanding the social development of northern Europe in the seventh to 10th centuries.”