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A Viking Age marketplace may be buried on a Norwegian island , new research suggests .
archaeologist surveying part of the historic island of Klosterøy , in southwest Norway about 190 miles ( 300 kilometers ) west of Oslo , used ground - fathom radar to notice signals from what seem to be the buried remains of several pit houses and piers .
The island of Klosterøy on Norway’s southwest coast is famous for its medieval monastery, but the new research suggests it was an important Viking trading place before that.
The archaeological clay suggest the site could have been a mart during theViking Age(A.D. 793 to 1066 ) , and other regain hint that the place was important to local multitude long before that , according toKristoffer Hillesland , a researcher at the University of Stavanger ’s Museum of Archaeology who took part in the research .
" It was likely that this was a power center during the Iron Age , " or from about 500 B.C. to A.D. 800 in this realm , Hillesland told Live Science , remark that several bombastic burial mounds from this period are seeable nearby .
The marketplace would have been established subsequently , he said , possibly when the island was a imperial farm for thefirst king of Norway , Harald Fairhair(reigned A.D. 872 to 930 ) , and a monastery for Augustinian monks was ramp up beside the site in the Middle Ages .
Historians think the unified nation of Norway was formed from smaller kingdoms in the southwest of the country. In the ninth century A.D., Klosterøy was part of the territory ruled by Harald Fairhair, the legendary first King of Norway.
The monastery , too , could be a sign that a closure on the island was a local center of ability , because former Christian institutions in Scandinavia tended to be build at such position , he say .
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Klosterøy is also only a few miles from the island of Karmøy , wherethree Viking ship burialshave been found .
The archaeological team surveyed the site beside the monastery on Klosterøy after the landowners told them of a local legend that there had once been a Viking trading place there.
The monastery , now sleep together as Utstein Abbey , was give up in the sixteenth century during Norway ’s Protestant Reformation , but the building was later used as a farmhouse . It is now legally protected asNorway ’s best - preserved medieval monastery .
Buried ruins
The latest study surveyed the land beside the monastery , Hillesland say , where legion metallic element demodulator finds of particular like coins and system of weights over several years indicated that commercial-grade patronage had adopt post there .
Archaeologists carry on the new inquiry without excavating the land at the website , which is within the legally protect historic area . alternatively , they used flat coat - penetrating radio detection and ranging to reveal what was immerse there .
Hillesland explained that the squad had detected buried traces of several circular pits , valuate between 6.5 and 33 foot ( 2 and 10 meter ) in diam , that were very similar to Viking Age " orchestra pit menage " excavated at other situation in Norway .
The medieval monastery and the land surrounding it are legally protected as a historic site, so the archaeologists used a noninvasive technique known as ground-penetrating radar to detect buried remains of ancient structures without digging.
Pit houses were used in many berth in Europe and were peculiarly common in Scandinavia until the Middle Ages . They were dug so the floor was below ground grade and then traverse with an angled roof typically made from woods , turf orthatch ; the design helped the building stay cool in the summertime and tender in the winter .
The remains of such nether region houses have often been found at Iron Age and Viking Age marketplaces in Scandinavia , where they seem to have been used as workshops for activities such as weaving , Hillesland enunciate .
The survey also expose the buried cadaver of three piers or boathouse near the shore , which may have been where boats docked to enter the market , the imperial farm or perhaps the later monastery , he said . It ’s possible that the market operated there only during the warmer month , and people may have visited the grocery store by boat from other islands or the mainland when it was clear .
Aerial images of Klosterøy made with Lidar technology, which can reveal the landscape beneath vegetation, have revealed dozens of piles of rocks called cairns that may be the locations of Iron Age burials.(Image credit: © Kartverket;(CC-BY 4.0 Deed))
take together , the evidence of the survey and the metal detector find advise that a market live at the site during the Viking Age and early Middle Ages , Hillesland say .
Ancient cairns
Other archeological feature article of the island propose it was an authoritative site for some of the early people in the region . Piles of sway called " cairn " have been encounter near the monastery ; these may be signal of Iron Age inhumation , and some of the nearby burial mounds may have been built even in the beginning , he say .
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The aerial Lidar images also show burial mounds and what may be the remains of early settlements on Klosterøy, which indicate that the island was an important place in very ancient times.(Image credit: © Kartverket;(CC-BY 4.0 Deed))
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The ground - penetrating radar had also indicate what may be the remains of cooking pits , which seem to have been come to to funeral bodily process around the elderly burial mounds at the situation , Hillesland say .
He stressed that the remains of a Viking Age marketplace at the site could n’t be confirmed until it had been fully excavated . But the site and the monastery are on secret land , and no such excavations have been plan , he said . Nonetheless , the ground - penetrating radar signaling provide a wind of what future archaeologists may find .
