ossamenta

Thanks to Museum.nu, I found out about at Viking Age boatgrave on an Estonian island containing not just one or two bodies, but thirty! Several showed signs of violence and one man had an arrow head stuck in his thighbone! (original article in Swedish). Here are some photos, and to close it off: an article on the finds from a nearby boatgrave.

Over in Ireland, archaeologists may have found a very large longphort (i.e. a fortified temporary base at the shore used by raiding vikings) in Co. Louth. I'm very curious and I hope the finds will be published somewhere easily accessible. It's no use having a very good and detailed article or report if no-one tells you where you can find it.

And since all good things are three, a bit late news on excavations at Danevirke, the defensive wall at the trading port Hedeby (or Haithabu, if you're speaking German). The dig is led by Astrid Tummuscheit, who was one of the supervisors when I was excavating the roughly contemporary trading place Gross Strömkendorf on the German coast in 1998 (?). Archaeology can be a very small world indeed.