One of the largest viking ships discovered through the help of GPR
One of the more exciting uses of ground penetrating radars is finding historically significant structures and artefacts beneath the ground surface. Not that looking for rebars in concrete isn’t exciting, but we’ll take finding buried objects people used centuries ago to utility mapping any day.
This is why our heart rates increased, when we saw the news of a viking ship, discovered by archaeologists not far from Oslo, Norway. The ship is supposedly one of the largest ever found used for burial — almost 20 metres. It was buried more than 1000 years ago as the final resting place of a Viking king (or queen).
The ship was discovered by a ground penetrating radar at a well-known historical site, but historians say such a finding is extremely rare. The place, where the ship was located is marked by a burial mound and experts thought whatever Viking remains there were in the surrounding area were destroyed by farmers in the 19. century.
Then, recently, a large ground penetrating radar array was used to scan 10 acres of farm land, mounted to the front of an all-terrain vehicle. Underneath, they found not only the largest burial ship, but also ten other Viking graves. The radar scan clearly showed the keel and lines of planking on the ship. There were also a couple of houses and a few more burial mounds visible under the surface.
Further details are yet to be uncovered after proper excavations are done, but the chances of finding a hidden treasure are slim, as those types of Viking Age burials are usually robbed centuries ago.
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