SPLENDOUR OF VIKING BURIAL

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 55, 7 March 1939, Page 12

SPLENDOUR OF VIKING BURIAL

Remains of Ship Found

'4 LITTLE over a year ago a chemist of the town of Odense (where Hans Andersen was born) obtained permission to excavate a large and prominent mound not far from his home, on an inlet of the sea near Vidby, on the east coast of the central island of Fyen in Denmark, said Stanley Basson in a recent BBC. iddress. His researches were sponlored by the National Museum of Copenhagen and resulted In the discovery of the first recorded Viking ship ever found in Denmark. The ship is now revealed in the centre of the mould, lying where it was first placed, but it has. been covered in with a roof and can be visited and examined in detail. Its remains and contents have been preserved by special chemical treatment, and so the complete story of the burial of a Viking in the land of his origin can be studied and examined in situ. The ship belonged no doubt to a raider of British coasts, and on his death he and his property were laid in it, the ship was drawn up from the shore about a hundred yards inland on to a small rise, and a mound was heaped over him, in true Homeric ttyle, and over the ship so that it was buried to a depth of about ten feet. The mound is still almost intact, except for the trench cut through the centre by which the ship and its contents were laid bare. The setting of the burial is as homely and rural as were the activities of the Viking violent and adventourous. Here he lies in his own country, buried ii the fields of his own rich farmland. The low rolling corn-country of middle Denmark stretches wide on every side, and the inlet of the sea along which he made his last journey Ij a peaceful unruffled mere, resembling an estuary of our East Coast, such a., that of the Orwell. It is hard to think that he would set out from this rich and peaceful land to raid the monasteries and churches of Britain and France. But he was a pagan Viking of the full period of Viking enterprise. The burial can be dated to about A.D. 950. The ceremonial of a pagan Viking burial can be studied here in all its detail. Although robbers had at an early date looted the bulk of the wealth and removed the body, all else remained. The ship is nearly seventy feet long and only ten feet wide, clinker-built—as swift and seaworthy a raider s ship as was ever made. The centre was reserved as a burial chamber which had a roof. At the extreme end of the prow was the great iron anchor and its chain. It lies where it was originally put. The forepart of the ship was filled with the bodies of no less than eleven horses, and near them a great iron axe, probably that with which they were killed at the final ceremony. Nearby were the remains of four dogs and the

exquisite bronze-gilt shackle which held their 1.-ash. It is this ornament, which is cut in the "Jelling style," which makes it possible to date the burial. The bulk of the Viking's personal property, his stable of favour:'.. horses and his hunting hounds went to the oth-r wirli to accompany him, a. with the burials of Homeric worriers. The iron rings which held the shrouds and the mast still remain. The curved beak of the ship has largely pe-ished, but a number of small iorn spirals at the prow w.Jicate that here was the mane it the carved wooden dragon-head at is the chief glory of these other rare examples of Viking sh ps, :... ' as the now famous ships of Oseberg and Kokstad in Norway. The i—n spirals were parts of the —.etal mane < f the dragon. There were also found no less than two thousand of the iron rivets of the ship itself. Among the various smaller objects in the ship were fragments of a fine gold filigree ornament, perhaps from the clothing of the buried man. and part of a delicately painted wooden panel which may have served as part of the canopy of the ’--irial chamber. There were also forty-five iron arrowheads. Before the ship and its center ts were finally covered with the mound of earth, a layer of cut turf sods were carefully laid over it. Here, in brief, was the burial of a Danish princelet, a Viking, who in his homeland was also a farmer, a breeder of horses and a hunter. It is a graphic illustration of the type of man who ruled the countryside of Denmark before Christianity reached it, and when England was at last recovering from the full force of the Danish invasions and reaching considerable heights of culture and prosperity. The barbaric splendour of this Danish tomb belongs t. another world. The style of art characterising the finds has a long history. The Danish style at this period is a northern adaptation of a very high order of skill and beauty of a general style of “nomad" art which ultimately reached the west from Central Asia. Anglo-Saxon art owes much t< it both indirectly through Danish ar* and directly. But in Saxon art the Byzantine influence is more evident than in Danish. The only other rich burials of the period are the famous barrows at Jelling, near the city of Vejle on Jutland which, as their Runic inscriptions showed, were the graves of King Gorm and his Queen Thyra. That these Vikings raided our shores is evident enough from the discovery, in the richer Norwegian tombs, of Anglo-Saxon swords, Irish ecclesiastical censers, and other objects obviously looted from towns or monasteries. There was no loot in the Vidby burial, but much had been stolen in early days from the tomb; the ship was of the type which brought the Vikings not only to our own shores but to the remotest parts of the world.