Gokstad Ship Burial – Sandefjord, Vestfold
Gokstadskipet · Gokstadhaugen
Viking Age (late)·Viking Norse (Vestfold chieftaincy)·🇳🇴 Vestfold, Sandefjord Municipality, Gokstad farm, Norway
About
About Gokstad Ship Burial – Sandefjord, Vestfold
The 23.3-m ocean-going clinker longship (c.890 CE dendro, burial c.900 CE) under a 44-m dia. 5-m high turf mound at Gokstad farm, excavated 1880 by Nicolay Nicolaysen. The ship — oak planks (2.6 cm thin), 32 oars, complete rigging and 64 shields lashed to the rail — held a male chieftain (40–45 yr, battle trauma) in a log burial chamber with beds, tent, gaming pieces and sacrificed horses and peacocks. Preserved in blue clay like Oseberg but robbed in antiquity via tunnel. The hull's clinker technique shows fully developed Viking longship engineering ancestral to later skeids; a full-scale replica Gaia crossed the Atlantic in 1991.
Why it mattersDefining Viking longship; demonstration of Atlantic-capable clinker engineering.
Open questions
Mysteries & theories
Mysteries
- 01Chieftain identity (Olaf Geirstad-Alf?)
Theories
- 01Ship-chamber status legitimisation
Theories are interpretations, not findings. The seal above tells you how much scholarly weight the place carries.
History
How it came to be
- Built
- c.900 CE
- Period
- Viking Age (late)
- Culture
- Viking Norse (Vestfold chieftaincy)
- Builders
- Vestfold longshipwrights
- Purpose
- Chieftain ship burial with chamber
- Rediscovered
- 1880 Nicolaysen excavation after sons' probing
- Excavation
- Excavated
890 CE
Gokstad oak felling (dendro)
900 CE
Chieftain burial with longship
1880
Nicolaysen excavates; finds ship under clay
On the ground
Structures & features
59.1400° N · 10.2500° E · 12 m · 2 mapped features
Gokstad Longship Hull
hydraulic23.3-m clinker longship with 32 oars and 64 shields
59.1410° N · 10.2510° EBurial Chamber & Chieftain Bed
tumulusLog burial chamber with chieftain, horses and peacocks
59.1400° N · 10.2490° E
Gallery