The Oseberg ship is a Viking Age ship excavated from the Oseberg farm near Tønsberg in Norway. It is most significantly known for being, apart from the Gokstad ship recovered from Sandefjord, "without doubt the most spectacular vessel to have survived from the Viking Age "1, as it "surpasses all other finds from the Viking period "2. A beautiful example of historical Scandinavian shipbuilding design and fine artistic ability, it is not only a cultural artifact to appreciate in a museum but also an important archaeological find: not only as a ship but as a burial site, highly informative of its place in Nordic history. In this essay I will examine how it fits into its Viking Age context, and also what we can learn about the Nordic culture and history of the time, taking evidence from an archaeological perspective. .
The significance of the ship itself to the Viking people is evident. Ships were literally what defined the Viking culture, what allowed them to raid and pillage both domestically and abroad, and to travel to and settle lands to the west " Iceland, Greenland, Vinland, etc. Without their shipbuilding technology the Nordic societies would have only been a (relatively) underdeveloped and isolated group of people fighting each other for small areas of arable land on a cold, remote northern European peninsula. With the ships however they were able to rise, open trading routes to some of the wealthiest cities in the world, discover unknown territories, and bring wealth, glory, and infamy back to their homes in Scandinavia. To put it simply, without ships there would be no 'Vikings', and no 'Viking Age'. In this sense it can be said therefore that the ship is the perfect symbol of the energetic society of the time. Ships could be a symbol of wealth as ship burials can attest to, and pictures of ships can be found on Scandinavian coins, memorial stones, and even Viking graffiti3.
