Yggdrasil · Humankind

The Two Women at Oseberg: A Burial Without Secure Names

A ninth-century Norwegian ship burial of two women with rich goods, and no secure names.

Myth and literature

The story

Archaeological interpretation: what follows is a reading of a grave, not a record of the people in it.

In autumn 834 two women were laid in a bed inside a ship at Oseberg, near Tønsberg in Vestfold, and a mound was raised over them. With them went sleds, a wagon, carved animal heads, chests, beds and other furniture, kitchen equipment, food, woollen cloth, silk, and the bodies of many animals, among them horses and dogs. The grave was later broken into, and no precious metal was left.

The scale of the burial shows that these women, or those who buried them, had great wealth and standing. Beyond that, the grave does not say who they were. Over the years people have proposed a queen, a servant, a priestess or a völva. None of these is shown by the finds. Some modern writers link such women to Freyja or the Valkyries. That is a modern interpretation drawn from the myths, and the excavation does not support it.

Myth and literature · Context

What we know, and what we do not

What is recorded: that two women were buried together in a richly equipped ship, that the burial dates to 834, and what objects and animals went in with them. The heritage site notes that weaving tools were found and that the cloth was of very high quality. Tools for textile work, though, do not prove who made the cloth. They may mark a trade, a gift, or only a household that valued such things.

What is not recorded: their names, their family, their roles and their beliefs. The museum says only that the wealth of the grave suggests important political or religious roles, or both. Wikipedia notes that a proposed identity as a named queen is disputed, that a reported DNA result was not confirmed by later studies, and that it is unclear whether one woman was killed to accompany the other. Any single label for them is a guess. A link to Freyja or the Valkyries belongs to modern interpretation only.

Historical evidence

The evidence

The Viking Ship Museum describes the find as a ship built about 820 and used for the burial of two women in 834, in a mound discovered in 1903 outside Tønsberg. Wikipedia reports that the mound was excavated in 1904 and 1905 by Gabriel Gustafson and Haakon Shetelig, and that tree-ring dating of the burial chamber timbers gives autumn 834.

The museum lists sleds, a wagon, five animal heads, textiles, furniture including beds and chairs, tents, kitchenware, food and animals for the journey. Wikipedia counts the animal remains as fourteen horses, an ox and three dogs. The Oseberg heritage site describes over nine hundred fragments of woollen cloth, silk ribbons, remains of a picture tapestry, and looms, weaving tools and scissors.

Wikipedia gives one woman as perhaps about eighty with severe arthritis, and the other as first judged to be in her late twenties and later, from the tooth roots, in her fifties.