Thursday 29 April 2021

The Cave Where Vikings Offered Sacrifices To Stop The Apocalypse


The Surtshellir Cave in Iceland was discovered to be a trove full of Middle Eastern artifacts, and the location was used by the Vikings as an offering pit for sacraments to stop the apocalypse. The most noticeable artifact in the cave was a stone, boat-shaped structure that served as the main offering pit, as All That’s Interesting details: 

    As deputy director and chief curator of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University, Kevin Smith was thrilled at the discovery. The Surtshellir Cave in question was formed by a volcano that erupted nearly 1,100 years ago — and gave Smith a window into what might have happened there.

    Smith and his team also found 63 beads made of a mineral common in the Middle East but rarely found in Scandinavia.

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Archeologists discover remains of Viking rituals in Iceland

Volcano has erupted in Iceland near Reykjavik
(photo credit: REUTERS)

A site dating back to the Viking age, approximately 300 meters beyond the Surtshellir cave, located in Iceland, was discovered by archeologists, according to a report by Ancient Origins. 

The report stated that the site in question was used for ancient rituals performed by Vikings. 

Published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, the archeologists, some based in Iceland with others hailing from the US and Norway, recorded many of their findings on the Surtshellir cave - the most notable discovery being a "boat-shaped structure made of rocks."

The Surtshellir cave is the longest lava cave in Iceland, stretching about 1.6 kilometers. It is named after the Viking fire giant Surtur, an integral figure in Norse mythology.  

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Wednesday 28 April 2021

Vikings created a massive boat in this volcanic cave to ward off the apocalypse

Archaeologists found that the Vikings constructed this boat-shaped structure out of rocks. Inside the structure the Vikings burned animal bones at a high temperature. (Image credit: Kevin Smith)

Archaeologists have discovered the remains of rare artifacts from the Middle East in an Icelandic cave that the Vikings associated with Ragnarök, an end-times event in which the gods would be killed and the world engulfed in flames. 

The cave is located by a volcano that erupted almost 1,100 years ago. At the time of that eruption, the Vikings had recently colonized Iceland. "The impacts of this eruption must have been unsettling, posing existential challenges for Iceland's newly arrived settlers," a team of researchers wrote in a paper published recently in the Journal of Archaeological Science. 

Archaeological work shows that after the lava cooled, the Vikings entered the cave and constructed a boat-shaped structure made out of rocks. Within this structure, the Vikings would have burned animal bones, including those of sheep, goat, cattle, horses and pigs, at high temperatures as a sacrifice. This may have been done in an effort to avert Ragnarok. 

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Boat-Shaped Viking Structure Found in Icelandic Cave

© Kevin P. Smith

PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND—Live Science reports that a team of researchers led by Kevin Smith of Brown University has investigated a stone structure in Surtshellir Cave, which is located near a volcano in Iceland. The volcano is known to have erupted about 1,100 years ago, shortly after the island was colonized by Vikings. Smith said that after the lava from the eruption cooled, the Vikings built the boat-shaped structure with rocks. Within the boat’s outline, the researchers unearthed the bones of sheep, goat, cattle, horses, and pigs that had been burned at high temperatures. They also found orpiment, a mineral from eastern Turkey, and 63 beads, three of which came from Iraq.


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Wednesday 21 April 2021

Viking metalwork craft and expertise evolved from 8th to 9th century

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The evolution of metalwork expertise and craftsmanship developed by Viking craftspeople in Denmark in the 8th and 9th centuries has been detailed in a study published in Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences. 

A team of researchers at Aarhus University, Denmark, analyzed tool fragments, raw materials such as metal bars, and complete objects such as keys and brooches, excavated from two sites in the town of Ribe, Denmark, a trading port established by Vikings in the eighth century.

The authors examined 1,126 samples of metalworking tools (crucibles and molds), 24 keys and brooches, and 24 metal bar ingots and fragments of spare metal. By analyzing samples from the surface of tools and identifying metallic traces contained in them, as well as examining the metallic composition of finished objects, the researchers were able to infer which metals were used to make these objects.

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Lidl store builds glass floor to showcase 11th century Viking ruins

The store opened in 2020
(RTE news/YouTube)

A Lidl supermarket in Dublin has put on a show for amazed shoppers, installing glass panels in between the isles that reveal a medieval snapshot of the city,

The store on Aungier Street in the city centre, opened in 2020 and uses glass panelling to showcase 11th and 18th century archeological remains that lie beneath the shop.

When the site was uncovered, Lidl managers invested heavily into preserving the historic structures, reported dublin-news.

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Saturday 17 April 2021

Viking DNA and the dangers of genetic ancestry tests

Just to be clear, these aren’t real Vikings (TM Productions Limited)

Anna Källén, associate professor of archaeology and researcher in heritage studies, Stockholm University; and Daniel Strand, PhD in history of ideas at Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism, Uppsala University 

A Middle-Aged white man raises his sword to the skies and roars to the gods. The results of his genetic ancestry test have just arrived in his suburban mailbox. His eyes fill with tears as he learns that he is ‘0.012 per cent Viking’. These are the scenes from a video advertisement for the TV-series Vikings.

This man is certainly not the only one yearning for a genetic test to confirm his Viking ancestry. A plethora of companies around the world market DNA-tests that promise to provide scientific facts about your identity. These companies often claim to provide a complete view of your ancestry, even though they in reality only compare your DNA with other customers in their database. 

According to recent estimates, over 26 million people from across the world have purchased a genetic ancestry test. In the wake of this hype, researchers have begun to investigate how the tests affect our perceptions of ourselves. How do people make sense of a test result stating that they are, for instance, ’35 per cent Ashkenazi Jewish’, ’27 per cent British’ or ‘4 per cent western Asian’?

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Tuesday 6 April 2021

To Save Norway’s Stave Churches, Conservators Had to Relearn a Lost Art

For more than 800 years, the stave church of Borgund, Norway, has towered over the surrounding village. Conservators face a constant struggle to protect the historic wooden building from the elements. HÅKON LI

TO STEP INTO ONE OF Scandinavia’s surviving stave churches is to enter the past. Shadows shift and tell stories in the elaborate carvings of intertwined beasts that are hallmarks of the churches’ unique architecture. Sounds reverberate off the timber as if traveling across centuries. The air feels dense with the tang of hewn wood, peat smoke, and pine tar.

As early as the 11th century, builders began erecting these churches all over the region. Much of Europe was raising massive cathedrals of stone during this period, but the Scandinavians knew wood best. While each house of worship was unique, all of them had staves, or load-bearing corner posts joined to vertical wall planks with a tongue-and-groove method.

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