Top archaeological discoveries in Norway in 2025: Vikings, gold, and ice finds
As ice melted, soil was dug, and metal detectors signalled, 2025 became an extraordinary year for Norwegian archaeology, revealing Viking graves, medieval gold, and ancient hunting systems unlike anything seen before.
A 1,500-year-old mass trapping facility for reindeer that melted out of the ice on Aurland Mountain became world news in 2024.(Photo: Thomas Bruen Olsen / University Museum of Bergen / University of Bergen)
Over the course of the year, the new Museum of the Viking Age has taken shape. Both the Oseberg Ship and the Gokstad Ship have been moved to their new home with the help of massive cranes that lifted and moved the ships along a track in the ceiling.
Recently, it was also announced that the Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage wants seven Viking ship burial mounds added to Norway's tentative World Heritage list.
As is tradition at the end of the year, Science Norway has asked archaeologists and university museums what they believe should be included on the list of finds from 2025.
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The list features many Viking Age finds, along with discoveries from the Stone Age, Iron Age, and Middle Ages.
This year's finds, in random order:
The mass trapping facility that melted out of the ice
Helge Titland was out walking on Aurland Mountain when he saw something unusual in a patch of ice. A whole lot of logs had melted out of the ice. Titland notified the archaeologists.
The mass trapping facility is dated to the Early Iron Age. The logs are so well preserved that the bark is still attached.(Photo: Thomas Bruen Olsen / University Museum of Bergen / University of Bergen)
Archaeologist Leif Inge Åstveit, project leader for the excavation.(Photo: Thomas Bruen Olsen / University Museum of Bergen / University of Bergen)
In addition to the several hundred wooden logs, archaeologists from the University of Bergen and Vestland County Municipality found wooden objects, arrowheads, and antlers from over 80 reindeer, with cut marks. They also found several oars with clear patterns.
"This find is extremely sensational. Its level of preservation is unlike anything we usually see, so it’s truly remarkable," Leif Inge Åstveit, project manager for the excavation, told Science Norway.
The cold must have come so suddenly that the trapping facility was encapsulated in the ice, the archaeologists believe. Some parts of the facility are still frozen in ice.
Dogs have been found in graves before, according to Niemi. And saga literature show that dogs were valued companions in the Viking Age.
But while boat graves are fairly common, the discovery of the dog is special, according to Håkon Reiersen at the University of Stavanger.
At the top of the boat grave lies the woman, and at her feet rests the little dog.(Photo: The Arctic University Museum of Norway, UiT)
The skeleton of the dog.(Photo: The Arctic University Museum of Norway, UiT)
The grave was first discovered by metal detectorists, lying only 20 centimetres below the surface. Based on the jewellery found inside, it has been dated to between 900 and 950.
Parts of the skeleton are well preserved, and archaeologists will be able to find out a great deal about the woman who lay here once the material is analysed.
The Viking woman buried with scallop shells over her mouth
Once again, it was a metal detector that led to the discovery of a Viking Age grave.
Roy Søreng was out searching in Bjugn, Central Norway, when he found a bowl brooch, a common type of jewellery from the Viking Age. He immediately contacted archaeologists, who quickly realised they were dealing with a skeleton grave. The Directorate for Cultural Heritage allocated extra funds so the grave could be secured.
"The Viking Age grave contains what we believe to be a woman, buried with a typical Viking Age costume and jewellery set from the 800s. This indicates that she was a free and probably married woman, perhaps the mistress of the farm," says Raymond Sauvage at the NTNU University Museum.
But the most sensational aspect of the discovery, according to Sauvage, is two scallop shells placed partially over the woman's mouth.
Researchers will examine body height, gender-determining traits, and any signs of disease.(Photo: Raymond Sauvage / NTNU University Museum)
The shells lay with the curved side facing out and the straight edge up. They partially covered the mouth.(Photo: Raymond Sauvage / NTNU University Museum)
Archaeologists are not familiar with this practice from other pre-Christian graves in Norway and do not yet know what it means.
Here lay Hamarkaupangen, a thriving medieval town
According to The Hamar Chronicle from the 16th century, there was a town east of the cathedral in Hamar, home to merchants, craftsmen, gardens, and houses.
But where exactly was it located? Archaeologists had found objects, but no streets or buildings.
In 2023 and 2024, however, ground-penetrating radar surveys at Domkirkeodden finally showed traces of the town. And in the summer of 2025, it was time to start digging.
The small, white square in the middle of the picture was excavated at Domkirkeodden in Hamar the summer of 2025.(Photo: Jani Causevic / NIKU)
The wooden remains were found exactly where the ground radar had indicated.(Photo: Håvard Hegdal / NIKU)
A four-square metre section was opened, confirming what archaeologists expected to find: walls and a floor, traces of a building, just as the radar image had shown. Beneath it, they even uncovered an older floor layer.
"This is fantastic and important for our understanding of the Middle Ages in Norway," archaeologist Håvard Hegdal from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) told Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation NRK.
That was the first thing Linda Åsheim thought as she stood there holding the special ring in her hand. The archaeologist at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU) was working alone at the excavation site in the medieval town in the centre of Tønsberg, Eastern Norway.
"I started shaking and had to ask the construction guys if they were messing with me. And now I might as well quit as an archaeologist, because I've reached the top," she says in a partner article on forskning.no (link in Norwegian).
The ring was found about seven centimetres down in a cultivation layer that has not yet been dated. A spruce twig in the layer above, however, was dated to 1167-1269.(Photo: NIKU)
It's particularly the design of the ring, made with techniques such as filigree (thin metal threads twisted and bent into intricate patterns) and granulation (soldering on small round beads), that places it from around the 900s-1000s.(Photo: NIKU)
The medieval gold ring is "a beautifully crafted and rare example," according to the excavation project leader Hanne Ekstrøm Jordahl.
According to Professor Marianne Vedeler at the Museum of Cultural History, the ring's design strongly resembles styles from the early Middle Ages, around the 900s-1000s.
The blue stone in the ring is most likely made of glass, with a colour reminiscent of sapphire. Perhaps it was meant to create the illusion that a real gemstone had been used.
University museum collections (UniMus) currently register just over 60 medieval gold rings in total.
Thousands of finds at a unique Stone Age settlement
At the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo, this year's excavations have not necessarily yielded spectacular individual finds. But many excavations have produced discoveries that will give us knowledge about life in the past, according to Marianne Moen, one of the museum's archaeologists.
One example comes from an excavation in Horten, Eastern Norway. At a 9,000-year-old settlement, archaeologists uncovered more than 5,000 finds. In an article on Science Norway, we highlighted the discovery of a so-called shaft-hole club. A rare find that is clearly man-made.
A kind of Stone Age hammer, also known as a shaft-hole club.(Photo: Silje Hårstad / Museum of Cultural History)
The excavation site in the middle. 9,000 years ago, the shoreline was up here.(Photo: Steinar Kristensen / Museum of Cultural Heritage)
But the archaeologists also found fishhooks and bone remains, traces of a hut, tools made from rock crystal, and fragments of different kinds of axes.
"All these finds point to a period of intense activity, enough to build up these layers of artefacts and bone remains. As well as the fact that they invested resources in a solid house construction instead of just putting up a tent," archaeologist Silje Hårstad tells Science Norway.
How milk was kept cool at summer pastures in the Middle Ages
Near Aursjøen lake in Lesja, Western Norway, there was a summer pasture area during the Middle Ages.
We know a great deal about traditional mountain farming in more recent times, but much less about how this was done during the Middle Ages. That's why archaeologists found this mountain pasture by Aursjøen, which they excavated in the summer of 2025, especially exciting.
The house at the mountain pasture had two rooms. At the bottom of the picture, the floor was partially dug down. Towards the top of the picture is a room with a fireplace in the middle.(Photo: Museum of Cultural History / University of Oslo)
Finds from the excavation – a spindle whorl made of soapstone and a clothing buckle.(Photo: Museum of Cultural History / University of Oslo)
The building itself has been dated to the 1300s. In part of one room, the floor was dug partially below ground level.
"Here they were able to store dairy products, keeping them cool partly underground and protected from the sun," says archaeologist Julian Robert Post-Melbye.
In other parts of the building, archaeologists found a central hearth with both burned and unburned bones. Altogether, they uncovered more than 100 artefacts, including soapstone vessels, spindle whorls, jewellery, and a knife.
This site has great potential to provide knowledge about summer pasture farming and daily life in the Middle Ages, according to archaeologists at the Museum of Cultural History.
A burial ground for ordinary people in the Viking Age
At the University of Bergen, it has been a truly special year, according to archaeologists. Among 20 excavations, we find the mass trapping facility, the find of the year. But also a burial site along the E39 road in Ørsta that may challenge established ideas about the Viking Age.
Of the eight graves found, at least three date to the Viking Age. All three were flat graves, meaning they had no visible markers above them. Earlier findings have often suggested that burials from this period usually belonged to people of high status. But based on the material here, archaeologists believe these graves belonged to ordinary people.
At the top left is a man’s grave from the Viking Age, and at the bottom right is a woman’s grave from the same period.(Photo: University of Bergen)
In some of the graves, archaeologists found glass beads.(Photo: University of Bergen)
Five years ago, archaeologists found a pagan cult house, a god temple dated to the late Viking Age, right near the burial site.
The Viking graves confirm that there has been extensive pagan activity in Ørsta, archaeologist Margrethe Hope Langhelle tells Bergensavisen.
"The finds may provide new knowledge about how sacrificial feasts and cult activities related to the Norse religion were organised in the area," she says.
The Vikings' defence system
In Viking Age Norway, people lived in constant fear of being attacked by enemies, according to archaeologists at the University of Stavanger.
A large research project has mapped what researchers call the Vikings' preparedness system. During attacks and war, people lit beacons – signal fires that were erected and lit on high points in the landscape. These were meant to warn people of attacks over great distances. When the beacons burned, it was time to mobilise for defence and get the warships out to sea.
The beacons warned of attack so people could mobilise for defence.(Image: Hege Vatnaland / Museum of Archaeology / University of Stavanger)
The beacon at Atløy in Western Norway. Researchers discovered multiple layers of charcoal left behind from beacons that had been ignited.(Photo: Marie Ødegaard / Museum of Archaeology / University of Stavanger)
According to the researchers, warning beacons are one of Norway's longest-lasting military traditions, used in defence from 950 all the way until 1814.
The researchers encourage people to report if they find remains of what they believe may be such beacons.
Archaeologists in Stavanger also discovered a 40-metre-long house from the Viking Age during the year. And metal detectorist Morten Eek found a unique coin from the last Viking king, a Magnus Barefoot coin.
