A new study has confirmed that the Herlaugshaugen burial mound on the island of Leka, off the coast of Norway, contains one of Scandinavia's oldest ship burials. Dated to around AD 700, the find predates the traditionally recognized start of the Viking Age by nearly a century and provides a vital chronological link between the famous early seventh-century ship burials of Anglo-Saxon England (most notably Sutton Hoo) and the later, well-known Norwegian ship mounds of the Viking Age. The discovery challenges long-held assumptions about when and where monumental ship burial traditions took hold in Scandinavia, and reveals the extent of early medieval maritime networks across the North Sea.
A Mound Steeped in Legend
Herlaugshaugen is one of Norway's largest burial mounds, measuring over 60 meters (almost 200 feet) in diameter and rising to a height of around 12.5 meters (41 feet). For centuries, it has been associated with the legend of King Herlaug, a pre-Viking ruler of the Namdalen region who, according to Snorri Sturluson's thirteenth-century saga of Harald Fairhair, chose to be sealed inside the mound alive rather than submit to Norway's first national king. The legend prompted antiquarian excavations in the eighteenth century, during which a seated skeleton, a sword, animal bones, and iron nails were reportedly found. Those artifacts were later lost, and whether the mound truly contained a ship remained an open question for over two centuries.
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The radiocarbon dates from the 2023 excavation tell a different story from the legend. The burial dates to approximately AD 700, some 80 years before King Herlaug is said to have died, suggesting the mound was not built for him at all. The skeleton found in the eighteenth century has since disappeared, making it impossible to identify the true occupant. What the new evidence does confirm, however, is that whoever was buried here commanded considerable wealth and power - enough to have a large seagoing vessel built and interred beneath a monumental earthwork.
Iron clinker nails recovered from Herlaugshaugen during the 2023 excavation. (Geir Grønnesby / NTNU University Museum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology/Antiquity Publications Ltd, CC BY-ND 4.0)
The Iron Nails That Changed Everything
The 2023 excavation was led by a team from the NTNU University Museum in collaboration with Trøndelag County and the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage. Their primary goals were to retrieve physical evidence of a ship and to obtain material for radiocarbon dating. Working in three carefully placed trenches, the archaeologists uncovered 29 iron rivets, known as clinker nails, along with fragments of preserved wood, possibly elm or oak, still attached to some of the nails. Clinker nails are the characteristic fasteners used to join the overlapping planks of a clinker-built hull, the construction technique that would later define Viking Age shipbuilding.
The size and number of the rivets pointed to a vessel of considerable scale. Based on the spacing and dimensions of the finds, the researchers estimated the ship was likely more than 20 meters (65 feet) in length, placing it firmly in the category of a seagoing vessel rather than a small river craft.
"This tells us that people here had maritime expertise - they could build large ships - much earlier than we previously thought," said Geir Grønnesby, the project manager and lead author of the study.
Radiocarbon dating of the wood preserved in the rivets and of charcoal from the mound's construction layers consistently placed the burial at the end of the seventh or the beginning of the eighth century AD, around AD 700.
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Detail and size of clinker nail from the ship (photograph by Freia Beer, NTNU University Museum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology/Antiquity Publications Ltd)
Bridging the Gap Between England and Scandinavia
Prior to this discovery, the oldest confirmed monumental ship burials in Scandinavia were found on the island of Karmøy in western Norway, dating to the late eighth century. The famous Oseberg ship and the Gokstad ship belong to the ninth century. Meanwhile, the great ship burial at Sutton Hoo in East Anglia, England, dates to between AD 600 and 625, and the Vendel and Valsgärde boat graves in Sweden's Uppland region span the sixth to eighth centuries. Herlaugshaugen, dated to around AD 700, now sits squarely between these earlier English and Swedish examples and the later Norwegian ones, filling a chronological gap that had puzzled researchers for decades.
The authors of the Antiquity study argue that this chronological bridge points to a shared cultural tradition across the North Sea, one that was not simply a Viking invention but had deeper roots in the Merovingian period (AD 550–800 ).
The construction of a monumental ship burial required not only the resources to build a large vessel but also the ideological framework to use it as a symbol of power and status. As the researchers note, "the monumental ship burials of East Anglia and Namdalen speak to the emergence of power with an ideology rooted in maritime activity." The burial at Herlaugshaugen was likely a deliberate statement of authority, visible to all who passed through the narrow strait between Leka and the mainland.
A Node in a Wider Network
The location of Herlaugshaugen is itself significant. Leka sits at the junction of a north-south coastal sea route and an east-west inland valley route, making it a natural hub for trade and communication. The island's distinctive geology - formed by the uplifting of ancient ocean floor during the Caledonian mountain-building event - would have made it a recognizable landmark for seafarers. The researchers suggest that Leka functioned as a "node" in a regional network connecting northern and southern Scandinavia, and potentially extending across the North Sea to Britain and the continent.
"The burial mound itself is also a symbol of power and wealth," Grønnesby noted. "That wealth has not come from farming in Ytre Namdalen. I think people in this area had traded goods, perhaps over long distances."
The presence of such a large and well-constructed ship in the mound supports this interpretation, as only a community with extensive maritime experience and access to significant resources could have built and buried such a vessel. The discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that the coastal communities of Norway were deeply embedded in wider European networks long before the Viking Age began, and that the roots of Scandinavian maritime culture stretch back much further than previously recognized.
Top image: Herlaugshaugen (in the center foreground) from the west, looking towards the strait and the mainland in the background. Source: Hanne Bryn / NTNU University Museum, Norwegian University of Science and Technology / Antiquity Publications Ltd (CC BY-ND 4.0)
By Gary Manners
References
Brandao, R. 2026. Archaeologists in Norway confirm the discovery of a 1,300-year-old burial ship, pushing back the origins of this tradition by several centuries. Earth.com. Available at: https://www.earth.com/news/1300-year-old-burial-ship-norway-pushes-back-origins-of-this-tradition-by-centuries/
Falde, N. 2023. 1300-Year-Old Pre-Viking Ship Burial Rewrites History. Ancient Origins. Available at: /news-history-archaeology/pre-viking-ship-burial-0019808
Grønnesby, G., Bryn, H., Forseth, L., Philippsen, B., Paasche, K., Rødsrud, C. L. & Stamnes, A. A. 2026. The Herlaugshaugen ship burial: closing the gap between the East Anglian and Scandinavian ship burial traditions. Antiquity. Cambridge University Press. Available at: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/antiquity/article/herlaugshaugen-ship-burial-closing-the-gap-between-the-east-anglian-and-scandinavian-ship-burial-traditions/D0300C5E218A904B296286EB52178310
