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A Viking Age marketplace may be bury on a Norwegian island , new research suggests .
Archaeologists review part of the historic island of Klosterøy , in southwest Norway about 190 mile ( 300 kilometers ) Occident of Oslo , used undercoat - infiltrate radar to detect signals from what appear to be the bury remains of several fossa house and wharfage .
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 corpse suggest the web site could have been a market during theViking Age(A.D. 793 to 1066 ) , and other find soupcon that the place was significant to local people 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 potential that this was a power center during the Iron Age , " or from about 500 B.C. to A.D. 800 in this region , Hillesland told Live Science , notice that several big sepulture mounds from this menstruum are seeable nearby .
The market would have been established later , he say , possibly when the island was a purple farm for thefirst king of Norway , Harald Fairhair(reigned A.D. 872 to 930 ) , and a monastery for Augustinian monks was build 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 preindication that a settlement on the island was a local pith of magnate , because early Christian institutions in Scandinavia tended to be build at such place , he say .
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Klosterøy is also only a few international mile from the island of Karmøy , wherethree Viking ship burialshave been bump .
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 do it as Utstein Abbey , was desert in the 16th century during Norway ’s Protestant Reformation , but the building was later used as a farmhouse . It is now lawfully protected asNorway ’s best - preserved medieval monastery .
Buried ruins
The up-to-the-minute written report surveyed the land beside the monastery , Hillesland say , where numerous metallic element detector obtain of particular like coin and weighting over several years indicated that commercial trade wind had claim place there .
Archaeologists conducted the new inquiry without excavating the kingdom at the website , which is within the lawfully protect historic area . or else , they used ground - penetrating radiolocation to reveal what was eat up there .
Hillesland explained that the squad had detected swallow up traces of several circular stone , measuring between 6.5 and 33 human foot ( 2 and 10 meters ) in diameter , that were very similar to Viking Age " pit sign of the zodiac " excavated at other sites 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 firm were used in many place in Europe and were particularly mutual in Scandinavia until the Middle Ages . They were dug so the floor was below ground storey and then cross with an angled roof typically made from forest , greensward orthatch ; the design aid the building stay nerveless in the summertime and warm in the wintertime .
The corpse of such stone pit houses have often been find at Iron Age and Viking Age marketplaces in Scandinavia , where they seem to have been used as workshops for bodily function such as weaving , Hillesland said .
The sketch also reveal the buried clay of three piers or boathouse near the shore , which may have been where gravy holder tail to get at the market , the purple farm or perhaps the late monastery , he said . It ’s potential that the mart operated there only during the warmer months , and masses may have chatter the market place by boat from other islands or the mainland when it was open .
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))
Taken together , the grounds of the survey and the metal detector discover suggest that a marketplace survive at the site during the Viking Age and early Middle Ages , Hillesland said .
Ancient cairns
Other archeological feature article of the island advise it was an important internet site for some of the early people in the region . Piles of rock called " cairns " have been found near the monastery ; these may be sign of Iron Age burials , and some of the nearby burying agglomerate may have been built even in the beginning , he order .
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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 priming coat - penetrate radar had also designate what may be the remains of cooking pits , which seem to have been related to funeral natural process around the older burial heap at the web site , Hillesland said .
He accent that the remains of a Viking Age marketplace at the site could n’t be confirmed until it had been fully excavate . But the web site and the monastery are on private estate , and no such excavations have been planned , he articulate . still , the ground - penetrating radar signal provide a hint of what future archaeologists may discover .
