Tapestry Fragment Discovery

Lore & Background

The Oseberg find was excavated in the summer of 1904 on the Oseberg farm at Slagen, not far from Tønsberg, by Professor Gabriel Gustafson and his team from the University of Oslo. The burial mound's clay, soil, and peat allowed for an unbelievable quality of preservation of all wooden objects and organic materials, including the ship itself. It is thought to be the best-preserved grave from the Viking Age. However, the ship and its contents were not left undisturbed; presumably around the Middle Ages, robbers had broken into the grave through a hole in the bow of the ship and into the burial chamber. The ship was in poor shape, as large amounts of stones had caused considerable sinkage, breaking the ship into thousands of pieces that had to be painstakingly put back together. The tapestry was one of a number of textile remains found in the Oseberg ship in 1904, including rolled-up rugs, tapestries, and curtains, most embroidered with mythological and battle scenes. There was no representation of the ship's owner. Most textiles were found in the burial chamber, pressed together in hard 'cakes' due to clay and soil, a difficult job to disintegrate. Some textiles were stuck to large clumps of feathers from the beds.

In Their Own Story

At the entrance the robbers had hacked through the ship's bow, the skeletal remains of two people lay sprawled on the burial chamber's beds. Even before any analysis, Gustafson guessed they were women, based on the textile remnants and tools for weaving scattered nearby. The lavish mound and its treasures suggested royalty—theories label them as queens, queen-consorts, widowed queens, or kings' mothers. Around the mound, the bones of horses, oxen, and dogs were also found, as if the dead needed a whole menagerie for the afterlife. Most artifacts clustered in the ship's forepart: oars, a gangway, a bailing vessel, tubs, and pails. There was also an ornamented cart, decorated sleighs, and a wood sled. Personal effects included chests, buckets, and carved animal-head posts. But no jewelry remained on or near the bodies—likely stolen by the grave robbers, a devastating loss since personal adornment was crucial in a Viking woman's burial.

Reader's Guide

The tapestry is in pitiful condition, assumed to be part of the ship burial's funeral offering. Its extreme decay meant extraction took years, and even today, the work remains unfinished. The surviving fragments show a jumbled procession of people, animals, ships, and wagons—a frozen, fragmented pageant whose full story may never be recovered.

Did You Know?

• The Oseberg tapestry fragments are made from wool, silk, and flax, with no trace of linen surviving due to the condition it was found in.
• The tapestry is dated to about 834 AD, based on the Oseberg ship burial.
• The two largest fragments depict a procession headed toward a great tree with corpses hanging from it, though its meaning is unknown.
• Anne Stine Ingstad interpreted two black birds in the tapestry as Huginn and Muninn, Odin's ravens, flying over a covered cart.
• The tapestry is stylistically similar to the Bayeux Tapestry, though both are actually embroideries, not woven tapestries.

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