When the Oseberg burial mound was excavated in 1904, archaeologists expected to find the grave of a powerful man, like the Gokstad ship burial 24 years earlier. Instead, they found something entirely different…
By Einar Chr. Erlingsen
The Gokstad mound revealed an impressive ship, containing the skeletal remains of a prominent chieftain.
Thus, it was no surprise that Professor Gabriel Gustafson expected to find something similar in the Oseberg mound. Instead, he unearthed typical “women’s items” like weaving tools, vast quantities of textiles, household objects, and more. His astonishment grew when the remains of two skeletons appeared. Unlike the Gokstad chieftain, who was tall and robust, the individuals in the Oseberg mound were small and slender. Gustafson recorded his revelation in the excavation log: “But these must be women!?”
And they were. This made Oseberg the most significant Viking Age find of all time and a unique glimpse into a woman’s world, which had been virtually unknown until then.
The next questions naturally followed: Who on earth were these women? What merited such extraordinary grave goods? Besides the ship, wagon, tents, beds, and much more, there were also 15 sacrificed horses—alone representing immense wealth—as well as approximately 30 kilograms of eiderdown found in the ship.
Was it the “Mother of the Nation”?
Let’s take a brief historical detour. In 1904, Norwegian-Swedish union dissolution was imminent. What better way to foster national pride than to uncover a royal Viking burial?
Historians proposed a fantastic theory: the mound contained Queen Åsa, grandmother of Norway’s unifier, Harald Fairhair!
However, we know very little about Queen Åsa, as she only appears in 13th-century written sources. We don’t know her birth or death dates. The theory linking her to the Oseberg grave is based mainly on the similarity between the names Åsa and Ose-berg.
Frøya’s Helper?
Other aspects of the find suggest intriguing clues about the women’s identities. Several items point to ritual use, such as the intricately carved animal head posts. The wooden stem ornament may even depict the grave’s main figure: a woman with a beard!
Fragments of the Oseberg tapestry show a scene of men and women in procession—women holding sheaves of grain, men carrying spears, and a wagon bearing two women.
This is significant since a wagon was also found in the burial, among the most elaborately decorated objects. Its carvings are difficult to interpret, but its rear panel undoubtedly depicts cats—a possible reference to Freyja, the Norse goddess of fertility, love, magic, and death, who traveled in a cat-drawn wagon.
The skeletons were reexamined in 2007 at the University of Oslo, led by Professor Per Holck, using methods unavailable during the original study. The findings yielded fascinating new insights.
What Did the Skeletons Reveal?
First, the women’s ages. The younger woman was around 50 at her death, while the elder was about 80—a remarkable age in a time when life expectancy was roughly 30 years.
The elder woman likely appeared ancient to her contemporaries—a figure who had “always” been there, as old as anyone could remember.
Half Woman, Half Man
She had suffered a severe back injury in youth, causing her to walk hunched. A hormonal condition led her to produce high levels of male hormones, resulting in a beard and a deep voice. In essence, she was a figure both male and female, with ties to Freyja, goddess of love and death. She likely seemed both formidable and frightening—a possible volva, a seeress and sorceress known from the sagas.
DNA analyses suggest a potential link between the younger woman and the Black Sea/Iran region, though contamination complicates conclusions.
We may never definitively know who the Oseberg mound concealed. Yet, the mysteries surrounding the find are what make it so captivating.
Final Mystery
On a bucket found in the grave, runes spell out: “Sigrid owns me.” But who was Sigrid? Did she give the bucket to the volva? Another inscription on a wooden stick reads: “Man knows little.”
We can surely agree on that.
