Viking Funerals: What Archaeology Shows Versus the Myth

A dead warrior on a longship, set alight and pushed out to sea. It is one of the most famous images of death in popular culture. But how much of it is true? Archaeologists and historians say the real picture is more varied, and more interesting.

Was there one kind of Viking funeral?

No. History Revealed says that what is clear from the variety of graves found is that there was no single type of funeral or burial in the Viking Age. The period covers centuries and a wide area, and practices changed over time, especially as Christianity spread. The Cambridge department that studies the Viking Age notes that in some areas the dead were cremated, and in others the body was buried whole. An “age of burning” was later replaced by a preference for burial mounds.

Did Vikings burn ships at sea?

Probably not the way movies show it. Live Science asked several scholars about the fire-arrow image and found that they doubted it. The head of archaeology at the Viking Museum Haithabu in Germany said that at sea the ship would probably sink before the body was properly cremated. Some real evidence exists for burned ships: the ninth-century Myklebust ship in Norway was found burned inside a burial mound. And the closest written source is a 10th-century Arab traveler, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, who described a chieftain’s funeral among the Rus on the Volga. In that account, History Revealed says, the chieftain was placed in a boat on land, with grave goods and animal sacrifices, and burned there. The same account describes the sacrifice of an enslaved woman, and archaeologists have found evidence of sacrificed people in some graves, including on the Swedish island of Gotland.

What about the famous ship burials?

They were land burials. The Cambridge department points to the Oseberg and Gokstad ships in Norway and the Ladby ship in Denmark, each buried under a mound. Funeral.com cites the Museum of the Viking Age. It reports that the Oseberg ship was used in 834 CE as a burial ship for two wealthy women. The Gokstad ship was used for a grand burial around 900. At Oseberg, History Revealed says, one of the largest sets of grave goods ever found was preserved. Another common Viking Age practice was to outline a ship with large stones, called a ship setting.

What did they put in the graves?

Objects. The dead were often buried with grave goods such as weapons, jewelry, and household items, according to History Revealed. The Cambridge department cautions that in many cases the grave goods are all that survives, because the bodies decayed, and that scholars have traditionally drawn conclusions about who was buried from the objects alone.

Where does the sea-burning idea come from?

From stories. The Cambridge department notes that the funeral of the god Baldr in Norse myth involved a burning boat. Live Science points to the poem Beowulf, in which a Danish king’s body is placed on a ship that drifts out to sea. A later retelling can easily treat a myth as a documentary. For how burial at sea works today, see Burial at Sea: What the Rules Actually Allow, and for cremation’s wider history, How Cremation Became Accepted in America and the West.