1956, Vestfossen, Eastern Norway: Farmer Hans O. Hals stands by a mound of earth in his yard. The year before, he had dug a trench there to install water pipes. Now, he kicks at the ground and hits metal. He picks up a sword.
The sword is old, rusty, and bent. It likely took a hit from the excavator when the trench was dug.
Hans and his son Kjell start digging in the mound of earth, according to the report archaeologist Louis Smedstad wrote in 1956. Half a metre down, they find more. A sword, an axe, a spear, and part of a shield boss. They also find bones.
The vet is visiting the farm, and he determines that the jaws belong to a dog and a horse, and bones from a human. They report it to the sheriff.
A few days later, archaeologists from Oslo arrive at the farm. They continue digging with help from Hans and Kjell.
Annonse
Hans Hals on the left and Kjell on the right. In the middle, an archaeologist from the collection of Norwegian Antiquities in Oslo, now the Museum of Cultural History.(Photo: Unknown photographer)
Boat grave from the Viking Age
Archaeologists believe there was once a burial mound here that was later levelled with the terrain. At the bottom of the pit they are now digging, they come across rivets and nails. They have found the remains of a Viking boat.
The wood has rotted away, but the rivets remain where the boat was once buried. The middle part is damaged, but the rows of rivets are intact at both ends. They find more of the shield, another axe, a comb, a whetstone, some iron, and two bronze rings.
At one end of the boat lay the dead man, the dog, and the horse. At the other end, iron remnants, an axe, a whetstone, and a comb. The original placement of the weapons in the grave is unknown, as they were the first items unearthed.
The discovery of the grave – this Viking buried in a boat – attracts local attention. The newspaper Drammens Tidende interviews Hans Hals. Schoolchildren and local residents come to watch the excavation.
The discovery of the boat grave caused a stir in the village.(Photo: Unknown photographer)
When everything is dug up, the archaeologists take the items to the museum in Oslo. They send photos from the excavation to Hans and Kjell.
Then it becomes quiet.
This was in the boat grave: an iron sword – 70 centimetres long, a spear, shield boss, axes, whetstone, comb, and pieces of iron. And bones from animals and humans.(Photo: Unknown photographer)
70 years later
70 years later, we're sitting in the kitchen of the Hals family, on the farm where a man, a horse, and a dog were buried in a boat a thousand years ago.
Hans and Kjell have passed away, but Kjell's wife, Sigrid, tells the story.
When the boat grave was excavated, she was attending a home economics school and was dating Kjell.
"He came by to tell me what they had found on the farm. He thought it was exciting, but his father wasn't so enthusiastic about it," says Sigrid.
Four generations of the Hals family. From left: Simen with Odin on his lap, Marie, Marit, Amanda, and Sigrid. It was Sigrid's husband and father-in-law who found and excavated the remains of a Viking burial.(Photo: Nina Kristiansen)
Their daughter, Marit, was born a few years later. She grew up hearing about the discovery.
"But there wasn't much talk about it," she says today.
Annonse
Hals farm is now run by Simen Fossen Hals, Sigrid and Kjell's grandson and Marit's son. He also knows about the discovery, but even less than Marit.
"It's only been a couple of years since I saw the photos from the excavation. It's a shame we don't know more," says Simen.
He has his son Odin on his lap.
"It was kind of random that he was named Odin, but it really fits," says Simen.
"It probably has something to do with the burial mounds around here," says Sigrid.
There are burial mounds in Simen Hals' neighbourhood. They are protected but have not been excavated.(Photo: Nina Kristiansen)
Once an island
Hals farm sits at the highest point of what used to be an island a thousand years ago. Back then, the Drammen Fjord extended to Hokksund, at a level up to six metres higher than today.
The area is full of traces from early times. Where Simen lives, there are three burial mounds. And under the neighbour's garage, they found evidence of an Iron Age burial. The longhouse at Sem is only a couple of kilometres away.
"It's strange to think the whole area used to be underwater," says Sigrid.
Simen has taken over Hals farm, where people have lived since at least year 0.(Photo: Nina Kristiansen)
Marit remembers hunting for trilobites as a child. These are fossils of tiny creatures that once lived in the sea.
Boats for the powerful and wealthy
In the Viking Age, only a few in the top echelons of society were buried in large ships, like Oseberg and Gokstad.
Most Vikings were cremated or buried. Not everyone received a burial mound, and even fewer were buried in boats.
It must have been a man of wealth and power whom they chose to honour with the sacrifice of an entire boat.
"It's kind of like burying a tractor today. It's cool to think that the guy buried here might have been a great chieftain and that he possibly lived on this very farm. It's fun to think we're walking the same ground as those Vikings," says Simen.
The Viking grave is part of the family story – a memory that fades with each generation.
But what happened to the things they found on the farm? Where is the grave discovery now?
The Viking's boat at Hals is not so different from this boat found in a grave in Tingvoll in Møre og Romsdal. The boat is five metres long.(Image: Artikon)
"Rare today"
We asked Hanne Lovise Aannestad. She is an archaeologist and curator at the University of Oslo's Museum of Cultural History.
She has examined the find from Hals farm.
Hanne Lovise Aannestad is responsible for the archaeological collections at the Museum of Cultural History.(Photo: University of Oslo)
"It's a beautiful sword, of a type that was common in the period 800-850 CE. It was likely produced in Norway or Scandinavia. It was very rusty, but we can still get information from it through X-rays," she says.
The grave goods were not in good condition.
"From what I've seen of the condition the objects were in, they wouldn't measure up to the Oseberg find. But nothing really does," says Aannestad.
She emphasises that the objects are still valuable for research.
"Complete burial finds like this are rare today," she says.
What happened to the bones?
The objects were registered at the museum when they arrived. They are now listed in the Unimus portal, including the boat rivets, the sword, and other items.
But not the bones. What happened to them?
Aannestad points to Bergen.
It turns out that the bones were sent to the University Museum in Bergen in 1956. That museum specialises in ancient bones.
Olaug Flatnes Bratbak works with the collections in Bergen. She has reviewed the material from Hals.
Every gram of human and animal remains was analysed and recorded.
Bratbak explains that the bones were not burned. The deceased was a man. There was not much left of him. The largest pieces were vertebrae, a thigh bone, part of an upper arm, and a foot.
The jaws and bones of the horse and dog were also there.
But in the records, it also states that there were remains of ox, sheep, and pig in the grave. This is not mentioned in the Unimus portal.
Hanne Aannestad explains that when the deceased was laid in the grave, the animals were not cremated either. They were placed whole in the grave – or in the horse's case, perhaps only the head.
"It's reasonable to assume that the pig, sheep, and cattle were placed in the grave as food offerings or as part of a ritual meal for the deceased, and therefore not as whole animals," says Aannestad.
This matches the fact that far fewer bones from pigs, sheep, and cattle were found than from the dog and horse.
"The animals were placed in different parts of the boat. The horse and dog at one end, and the rest at the other. This suggests that the animals had different roles in the burial," says Aannestad.
Another discovery at Hals
The museum archive in Oslo has sent over everything they have related to the Hals discovery. But it's not just from 1956.
It turns out that the boat grave was not the first ancient find made at Hals farm.
In 1923, Hans' father, Olaf H. Hals, was digging in a potato field. Olaf is Marit's great-grandfather and Simen's great-great-grandfather.
In the soil, Olaf found eight bronze objects lying in a layer of charcoal. It was a grave where the deceased had been cremated.
An archaeologist came from Oslo. He found nothing more and took the objects to the museum.
In the book Eikers historie (The history of Eiker), written by archaeologist Øystein Kock Johansen, it states that this is "one of the finest graves from this period in Norway" and that the burial is unique in a Norwegian context.
Later generations of the Hals family had never heard of this discovery.
But the researchers have.
A woman from around year 0
Jes Martens is an archaeologist at the Museum of Cultural History. He is an expert on the pre-Roman Iron Age – the period which the grave Olaf found dates from.
"The grave at Hals is from around year 0, or 50 years earlier. It was a unique find in 1923, especially the fibula," he says.
The fibula (brooch) at the top is a kind of 2,000-year-old safety pin. The bottom picture shows parts of a belt buckle. A sickle, an awl, a knife, and a vessel were also found in the grave.(Photo: Museum of Cultural History)
Women used bronze fibulae to fasten their dresses at the shoulders. Men used fibulae to fasten their cloaks.
"It functioned similarly to a modern safety pin. Women typically used two, but only one was found in the grave at Hals," says Martens.
Still, he believes it was a woman who was buried at Hals.
"It's hard to determine if it was a man or woman when the bones are burnt, but the objects suggest it was a woman," says Martens.
The fibula and belt buckle may have been made in Sweden.
Swedish lady at Hals?
"The belt buckle points to Västergötland, where this type was common," says Martens.
Several objects in the grave suggest a Swedish origin, such as the sickle. These are often found in graves in Västergötland.
"This could mean that the deceased woman came from Sweden and married a man at Hals," he says.
Jes Martens was the lead archaeologist for the excavation at Sem, where a massive longhouse from around the year 200 was found.(Photo: Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo)
In 2019, a similar fibula was found near Sem, where the large longhouse once stood.
"The fact that two such fibulae have been found in the same area, from the same time period, suggests close connections between Øvre Eiker and Västergötland in Sweden," says Martens.
The couple at Hals may have represented an alliance between elites from the two regions.
The finds from Hals and Sem show that Eiker, Eastern Norway, held an important and central position as early as the end of the pre-Roman Iron Age. The links to Västergötland reinforce that view, according to Martens.
A disappointing museum visit
A few years ago, the Hals family travelled to Oslo to see the artefacts found on their farm. They went to the Museum of Cultural History.
"But nothing was on display," says Simen.
"They told us everything was stored elsewhere and that we should have contacted them ahead of time. But we never ended up going back," says Sigrid.
The family finds it unfortunate that information about the finds doesn't make its way back to the farms and local communities.
"It's a shame for the interest in this area. Right now, only a closed circle of people hears about it. It would be good if we got more feedback, because then the interest would grow and people would be more motivated if they discovered something in their fields," says Marit.
"I wish I knew more about who these people were and how they lived," says Simen.
The birch was planted on the empty grave in 1956, the family believes.(Photo: Nina Kristiansen)
Hanne Aannestad from the Museum of Cultural History explains that today, much more emphasis is placed on maintaining good relationships with landowners.
"We're coming onto their land to dig, after all. We've heard the stories of archaeologists who took objects and then people never heard anything more. We've become more aware of this in recent years, because we can't expect people to support our work just because a professor says they should," says Aannestad.
If the Hals family were to visit Oslo today, they might have better luck.
"We often have visits from families or others who want to see what's been found on their property. We try to be accommodating. The objects are state property, and we at the museum manage them on behalf of everyone," says Aannestad.
At Hals farm, a birch tree now stands as a kind of memorial to the Viking. The family believes it was planted in 1956 when the excavation ended.
"It's kind of in the way. I considered cutting it down, but maybe the birch should have a plaque or sign about the find made here instead. A lot of people walk past here," says Simen Hals.
