Thus, in this context we can view the burial of the Oseberg ship to be a testament to some great person (though not necessarily a Viking), their wealth and their legacy. .
The ship was first uncovered by archaeologists Haakon Shetelig and Gabriel Gustafson, in an excavation period spanning 1904-1905. 'Archaeological wood'4 is the term for man-made wooden objects excavated by archeologists and the Oseberg ship, found embedded in waterlogged clay, was luckily preserved very well. So, while it is difficult to date how old the Oseberg ship is exactly, modern dendrochronology (the science of dating archaeological wood by the tree's age rings) estimates that the ship was built in the summer of 8345. This corresponds with the other major Viking Age ship finds: the outermost preserved annual tree ring for the Gokstad and Tune ships are from 887 and 892, respectively. This can perhaps therefore be seen as the 'middle' or the heyday of what we call the Viking Age. The Norse peoples had grown wealthy enough (presumably from a century of raiding the European coasts) to be able to afford lavish burials such as the one at Oseberg, and the effects of Christian missionary practice had not yet taken root in Norse society which would have significantly changed the way burial rites were performed, in which case the practice of pagan ship burials and things like that would have been put to a stop. The artistic style of the carvings also puts the date around the early 9th century. There are six main recognized stylistic periods in Viking Age art, the earliest one of them being known as the 'Oseberg style' after the multitude of artistic findings attributed to the Oseberg ship burial. The Oseberg style beings around the year 800 and overlaps with the Borre style around 850. Nordic art during the Viking Age is characterized by its animal designs, though it is difficult to give an exact definition of the 'Oseberg style' in particular because "the definition of the different periods, often with sub-divisions, and their dating are under constant debate, and differ according to the background and nationality of the contributor "6.
