Top 3 Unbelievable Viking Grave Goods That You Should Know

Long gone are the days that the Vikings went on their voyages for plundering and pillaging. But every time the spade touches the dirt, something mysterious is revealed about the Viking Age. Many believe that a good way to study the Viking culture is to look at the Viking artifact excavated. 

In this blog post, we are to discover the top 3 incredible Viking grave goods which possibly reveal the Viking culture of burying the deceased. 

Slave 

In the Viking belief, a slave was equal to the castle. A Viking slave was completely deprived of their own rights and they had to property. Their life totally depended on their master. They lived with the castle and had to work very hard. If a slave was killed, nothing much would happen because a slave was not considered to be a free man with rights. 

The archaeologists have excavated many graves with remains of at least two individuals. They believe that one of the remains was the master while the other was the slave. The remains of the alleged skeletons were commonly beheaded and placed next to the master. 

Viking slave girl was executed to follow her master in his afterlife (Cre: "Vikings" TV Series)

This also helped to cement the point that the Vikings buried the slave as grave goods. Because the death of the slaves should be as quick as possible so beheading was the best option. 

The Viking slaves who were buried inside the graves were believed to accompany their masters in the afterlife. In the Viking afterlife, the deceased continued to live a life like what they had done when still alive. The slaves buried were expected to continue to serve the masters

Ship

The Viking ship was not only used to carry the Viking warriors to the other side of the globe but to the netherworld as well. 

A number of Viking ships have been excavated from the dirt revealing that the Vikings buried their ships with the deceased. But of course, not everyone was wealthy enough to bury themselves with a ship. Only those who were wealthy or held a high social rank in their society could afford this type of luxurious burial. 

Viking Oseberg ship was being discovered from the grave revealing one of the most beautiful Viking ships ever on the planet

Some famous Viking ships in the list are Oseberg ship, Gokstad ship, and Tune ship. Tune ship is the first Viking ship to be discovered from a grave while the other two ships are among the best preserved Viking ships ever on Earth. 

Drugs

In the two Viking graves, the archaeologists discovered two types of drugs (which we call in modern times). 

The first grave is the Oseberg grave where the archaeologists found out remains of two women lying next to each other and a huge Oseberg ship. They also found a leather pouch with an amount of cannabis. The majority of the archaeologists concluded that this pouch of cannabis was used as the painkiller. Because the old woman inside the grave was quite old (compared with the Viking average age) and she encountered some kinds of serious illnesses prior to her death.

The remains of the woman inside Oseberg burial grave where the archaeologists discovered a leather pouch of cannabis. 

The other grave is the Fyrkat grave where the archaeologists regarded as the grave of a seeress. Inside the grave, the archaeologists found out the remains of an old woman and the grave goods suggested that she was a seeress or a woman with a high social rank and was possibly responsible for carrying out formal celebration in the Viking Age. A small purse with henbane seeds was buried with her. The scholars concluded that this type of seeds originated in the Nordic countries before its global spread. This kind of seeds was believed to cause hallucination. Many scholars believed that the Vikings used this kind of seed to bring the Viking warriors into the "berserk" state of mind.