The saying goes that a dog is a man’s best friend, but an archaeological excavation in Norway proves that women care about their four-legged companions just as much as men do, even 1,100 years ago.
Archaeologists from the Arctic University Museum of Norway have revealed a 10th-century Viking boat grave on the Norwegian island of Senja. The buried individual is likely a woman who belonged to an elite class, as Science Norway first reported. Most notably, the team found a dog carefully buried at her feet.
“It appears to have been placed with real care,” Anja Roth Niemi, a museum archaeologist who presumably took part in the excavation, told Science Norway. “There are stories of prominent people doing everything in their power when their dog became ill. So even back then, people had deep bonds with their animals.”
The woman’s remains. © The Arctic University Museum of Norway, UiT
A metal detectorist first discovered brooches and bone remains at the site just 7.9 inches (20 centimeters) beneath the ground two years ago. Suspecting the presence of a Viking woman’s burial, the Arctic University Museum of Norway applied for permission to investigate and were finally able to conduct a proper excavation when the landowner decided to expand a garage on the property.
“After the upper layer of soil was removed, it became clear that this was a boat grave,” the museum wrote in a social media post. “The decayed wood from the boat was visible as a thin dark strip in the subsoil, with the site where the bowl brooches were found approximately in the middle.”
The work revealed a 17.7-foot-long (5.4-meter) boat in which a Viking woman and a dog were buried alongside objects associated with elite burials, including bone or amber beads, a pendant, and ornate brooches, according to Science Norway. This is not the first time archaeologists have found dog remains alongside Viking ones, but it provides further proof that dogs were prized companions even 1,100 years ago.
The brooches’ design—oval with silver thread—helped the team date the grave to approximately 900 to 950 CE, as reported by Science Norway. They also indicate that the buried individual was a woman, given that oval brooches were usually Viking women’s jewelry, though only bone analysis can confirm this beyond a doubt. Furthermore, the boat grave and grave goods altogether suggest that the woman was a high-class individual.
The excavation in progress. © The Arctic University Museum of Norway, UiT
“Only the elite would receive a burial like this,” Niemi told Science Norway. Niemi and her colleagues also uncovered agricultural tools and textile instruments, the latter of which further associate the burial with Viking womanhood. Further analyses will confirm the individual’s sex and shed light on her age, height, diet, and health, while also offering more insight into Viking burial traditions. Moreover, after discovering another brooch not too far from the burial, the archaeologists hope to continue investigating the area in the hopes of finding another grave.
According to the museum’s post, the last days of the excavation were spent “recording all the contents of the grave and securing them for transport and storage until they can be examined in detail under controlled conditions at the laboratory in Tromsø.”
It is my hope that they keep the woman and her pet together in Tromsø, so that the dog can continue guarding its owner in the afterlife as it likely did when they were both alive.