Sutton Who?
Archaeologists have unearthed another big ship virtually intact, this one also carrying the body of a chieftain. It's a Viking ship, and it was unearthed in a remote peninsula on the western coast of Scotland. It's the first Viking ship burial found on the mainland that is now the United Kingdom. Experts have dated it to the 10th Century. The site of discovery is on the Ardnamurchan Peninsula, the mainland's most westerly point.
The chieftain was certainly still ready for battle. His sword and spear were by his side, and his shield was on his chest. Nearby were a knife, an axe, and another object thought to be a drinking horn.
Other items in the boat show the metropolitan nature of the chieftain. The ringpin is from Ireland, and the whetstone is from Norway. Like other Viking burials, this one included a large number of rocks.
The boat is rather small, about six feet long and about four feet wide. Such a small craft would have been rather an inappropriate method of sending the chieftain to the afterlife because of the surrounding seas, which were and are usually quite stormy. Perhaps the purpose was a burial at sea.
Other items recovered by the boat and surrounding ground include a few teeth and a fragment of a bone from the chieftain's arm — virtually all that is left after so many hundreds of years underground.
Archaeologists will do more testing on the fragments of wood still attached to the rivets, in order to determine what kinds of trees made up the boat's carcass.
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