Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

(wind whistling)

For nearly 250 years, from the 9th century

to the 11th, the Vikings ruled Northern Europe.

They were formidable warriors

who swept through the Middle Ages,

plundering everything in their path.

(Vikings yelling)

(metal clanging)

But the Vikings were great seafarers, too.

They developed ingenious ship building techniques,

and they were skills navigators.

(ship creaking)

These skills allowed them to have a widespread impact

through exploration and trade.

(dramatic music continues)

Ships were the beating heart

and the lifeblood of every Viking Village.

Kings journeyed to the afterlife

aboard their revered vessels to reach Valhalla.

But the Vikings' complex burial rights

remain shrouded in mystery.

The discovery of a new vessel

in Gjellestad, Norway immediately fueled

international fascination with the Vikings.

It was a ship of extraordinary size,

and it was buried not far from the capitol of Oslo.

(dramatic music continues)

Who was buried here, and why?

What is the story behind this extraordinary find?

It's a great offer to, in a way,

sacrifice a boat like that,

so I think it must have been a very powerful person.

The Gjellestad site

is like a 1,000-year-old crime scene

where time and centuries of human activity

have altered most of the evidence,

but there are still many clues to be found.

Three, four in the hull. Using new technology

to probe deep time, archeologists will uncover answers

that change our perception of the Vikings forever.

(dramatic music continues)

(dramatic music continues)

Our story begins in 2018 in Norway

on farmland in Gjellestad south of Oslo.

(dramatic music)

This region is home to Jell Mound,

one of the largest burial sites in Norway.

Several important Vikings have been laid to rest

under this strange ancient dome,

(engine rumbling)

but archeologists suspected that more remains

were still buried underneath the mound,

so they began a new assessment.

Non-invasive technology called GPR was used

to survey the site.

Electromagnetic waves enable scientists

to see the outlines of things buried for centuries.

When the shape of a boat became clearly visible,

everyone was surprised.

(dramatic music continues)

After this incredible discovery,

the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo

launched a new excavation in June 2019.

Christian Rodsrud was the archeologist in charge.

(Christian speaking in foreign language)

You can see that the boat extends

from that point in the south to that one in the north

where the bough of the boat is,

so the vessel is approximately 20 meters long.

(gentle music)

The team soon encountered

the first parts of the ship.

(Christian speaking in foreign language)

We dug 60 centimeters into the ground.

You can see the remains of wooden planks.

It goes up here, then there's another plank,

then it goes up again, and so forth.

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

The GPR revealed the vessel's backbone,

the keel.

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

Now Christian needed samples

to determine how deep they would need to dig.

(Christian speaking in foreign language)

There we found some wood.

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

The deepest part

of the ship's keel is 30 inches deep,

so the upper parts of the boat had likely been destroyed

during the hundreds of years of agriculture on the land.

(intense music)

But it's still a tremendous discovery:

an unknown ancient boat buried beneath this fertile field.

Only very powerful Viking leaders

were interred with their ships.

Ships were valuable assets, so the burial of one

would have been a huge sacrifice for the community.

(intense music continues)

(fire crackling)

Food, weapons, jewelry, and even animals often accompanied

the deceased for their final journey.

A funeral chamber was built around the body,

and finally the huge coffin would be covered

with earth and branches.

(gentle music)

(wind whistling)

Before the Gjellestad boat was discovered,

only three other ships of similar size

had been found in Norway,

the Gokstad in 1880, the Tune in 1867,

and the Oseberg in 1903.

(gentle music continues)

More than a century passed

before the incredible Gjellestad boat came to light.

(dramatic music)

The Gokstad, Tune, and Oseberg ships are on display

at the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.

Professor Jan Bill is the curator of the museum.

Most of our knowledge about the old Viking ships,

those from early part of the Viking age,

comes from the ships that we have here in this museum,

and especially from this one, the Osberg ship.

(dramatic music continues)

The Osberg ship is the best preserved Viking ship

in the world, and it's also the oldest one

that we can really study in detail, at least until now.

It was used as a burial ship for two women.

The ship burial itself was tremendous.

It was filled with beautiful artifacts, mostly made of wood.

The Oseberg Mound was excavated in 1904,

and it revealed an exceptionally well-preserved longboat,

72 feet long and 16 feet wide.

(dramatic music continues)

A beautifully decorated sleigh had been crushed

into thousands of pieces by the weight of the mound,

so it needed to be reassembled.

Remarkably carved animal heads provided evidence

that Viking craftsmen were masters of their art.

A horse drawn cart used for religious processions

was also found in the treasure trove.

It was richly decorated with characters

and animals also found on textiles.

(dramatic music continues)

The carvings on the bough and stern

of the Oseberg boat are the most intricate

and fantastic ever found on a Viking ship.

When we are looking at the Oseberg ship,

we can really get a picture

of how the Gjellestad ship must have looked.

We probably have the same features also

with these beautiful decorations

which have been molded along the edges of the planking

and we'll also kind of imagine how the Gjellestad ship

also must have had some kind of stem construction,

which probably have rised

just as the one from the Oseberg ship.

The Oseberg was built in 820 AD

on Norway's west coast, and it offers a wealth

of information about the Viking era,

but we still need to know more

about how these warriors arrived in Scandinavia.

(wind whistling)

(dramatic music continues)

The investigation moves to northern Norway

and Tromso in the Arctic Circle.

At the Arctic University of Norway,

storerooms reveal rare archeological finds

that help explain how

and when the Vikings populated Scandinavia.

This is a paddle and it's one of the earliest boat finds

we have from Northern Norway.

It's about 2 1/2 thousand years before Christ,

and here's another paddle from almost exactly the same age,

and this was found in Northern Troms to the north of Tromso.

The evidence we have from the earliest settlement sites

along the coast is that colonization of the Norwegian coast

took place very rapidly around 11 1/2 thousand years ago.

All the way from the southern end to the northernmost part

of the coast was settled

within a period of maybe 2 to 300 years,

so it's a amazingly rapid colonization.

This was after the glaciers receded from the shoreline

so that people could travel along the coast,

but when their focus was so much towards the ocean,

they didn't need that much land,

so even though the ice may have been close to the shoreline,

using their boats, they could travel rapidly

and use the marine resources.

(wind whistling)

(water burbling)

So boats are a critical element to that.

They're essential tools to survival.

(singer vocalizing)

(dramatic music)

The Vikings perfected

their navigational skills throughout the 8th century

to become extraordinary seafarers.

Paddles quickly became powerful oars,

capable of propelling larger and larger ships.

(dramatic music continues)

What we have here is a complete rowing oar

from a Viking-age ship.

The early ones from the pre-Roman Iron Age,

they were experimenting to some stage,

and during this period,

they'd found exact form that they used.

(singer vocalizing)

These are revolutionary things

that changed the whole approach to using boats

and their potential and what they could accomplish.

(water splashing)

(dramatic music continues)

The earliest ancestors of the Vikings

settled along Norway's coast.

By the 8th century, the Vikings were capable

of exploiting everything the ocean had to offer,

including fish, marine mammals, and crustaceans.

(Vikings speaking in foreign language)

The sea and its bounty was essential

to the daily existence of the Vikings.

(gulls cawing)

(lively music)

The excavation is well underway in Gjellestad.

It is not long before the structure

of the boat becomes visible.

The archeologists must be meticulous to ensure

that any surviving wood fibers aren't missed.

It's painstaking work,

and the excavation will take more than a year.

Outside here, you can see some very visible,

nice, dark spots of soil.

I suppose they are remains of wood

that once were the construction over the grave chamber,

and this all collapsed at some point,

and then maybe some of the soils from the grave mound on top

of it just sinks in and fills the gaps in here.

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

And over there you can actually see

that we are starting to find bones.

Here, maybe a shoulder blade,

maybe a part of a leg bone.

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

I think it must have been a quite large bone

from a big animal, I think.

Or a big man.

Really big man. (laughs)

No, I think it must have been a horse or a cow, perhaps.

There's no way to understand it without removing

the top layer. Top.

It's a situation that is in a way similar

to the Oseberg ship because we have these large animals

placed in the ship as part of the sacrifice

along with the deceased person.

Also, we would expect to find other objects lying on top

or next to it, and then from these objects,

we could try to understand this complete burial ritual,

and from them, we could also try to establish

who is actually buried within here.

What kind of person was this?

(dramatic music)

As the first clues come to light,

it's clear that this boat burial raises questions.

The scientists need to know the history of the ship,

when it was built, and if it was powered by oars or sails,

and who were the people that buried this valuable vessel?

(fire crackling)

(tool banging)

These legendary looters were much more complex

than history previously believed.

Community was very important to them,

so villagers worked together for the common good.

Blacksmiths held key positions in Viking society.

(tool banging)

Scandinavia's earth is rich in iron,

which is a critical component for boat building.

6,000 iron nails and rivets

were uncovered during the Gokstad excavation.

Weighing nearly 200 pounds,

(tool banging)

forging so many nails would have been a colossal task.

(gentle music)

The archeologists at Gjellestad

are also finding huge numbers of nails.

There are some nice rows of nails.

They're coming along nicely as expected.

Yes.

(gentle music continues)

(tool beeping)

Each nail's location

provides crucial information,

so each is geolocated before it is removed.

To appreciate why this is significant,

it's important to understand

how the Vikings built their boats.

(dramatic music)

The Roskilde Museum in Denmark is home

to the largest Viking-style boatyard in the world.

Boats are constructed here with the tools

and methods used during the Viking age.

(ax thudding)

Martin Dael is the head boat builder at the yard.

Okay, so the way a boat like this is hanging together

is that you have a bevel on the one piece

of planking like this, and then the next piece sits on top

of that and that makes the curve of the boat

so it turns, and in between the overlap of the planking,

we have a small piece of wool like this,

lying like this now.

(Martin grunts)

And that's simply the way you want it tightened.

And then we wanna drill a hole in through here.

See, I think we're through.

Yeah, there we go.

And then, you know, we have an iron nail like this,

and you just punch it through,

(hammer tapping)

and then on the inside you have a little square like this.

And then in that way, when you hammer it together,

that's your construction of clinker building.

(dramatic music)

(ship creaking)

The Vikings refined a technique

known as clinker construction,

and it revolutionized seafaring.

Clinker built boats used beveled planks that overlap

to produce a curvature in the hull.

(gentle music)

(water burbling)

The planks are held together using nails and rivets.

This process requires thousands of both.

Analyzing the number, shape, and position

of each allows archeologists to reconstruct buried ships.

(boat creaking)

(Viking speaking in foreign language)

(dramatic music)

This process helped the Vikings to excel at seafaring.

When boats are less rigid,

they can withstand rough seas without breaking apart.

(wind whistling)

After removing the upper layer of nails at Gjellestad,

the archeologists uncover the lower rows.

Ruben With is the conservator

at the University of Oslo's Museum of Cultural History.

He ensures that samples are correctly preserved.

(Ruben speaking in foreign language)

In the university's laboratory.

Ruben begins the second phase of his painstaking work

by taking x-rays of the Gjellestad ship's hundreds of nails.

He is able to obtain precise images of the nails

without removing them from the soil

where they lay for hundreds of years.

The nails are very fragile.

(Christian speaking in foreign language)

(Ruben speaking in foreign language)

You been scaling X-rays?

Yes. These are the newest X-rays.

Cool.

They also have a lot of information.

By doing it the way we did in the excavation,

measuring out each and every rivet

with four geometrical points, it makes us able

to put them all into one big 3D model in the end,

and then we have a really, a full data set of the ship,

and that's very important when doing a reconstruction.

(dramatic music)

Building a longboat is a laborious process.

Along with forging the nails,

the Vikings wove sails from wool gathered from their sheep.

Once the cloth was woven, they boiled oak bark in water

and applied it to the sails as a type of fungicide.

(water splashing)

Carpenters honed the planks required to build the hull.

(hammer banging)

Building a ship was a lengthy endeavor

and required many resources.

(tool scraping)

Burying such an investment meant a significant sacrifice

by the community.

(gentle music)

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

In Gjellestad,

the excavation progresses slowly,

then Christian finds evidence

that the burial chamber has been disturbed.

(wood banging)

There is a situation that we can see actually,

the shovel working its way into the subsoil.

So this is someone has been digging from the outside,

coming, moving towards the side of the ship,

and then they have just been following this rubber trench

into the middle section of the ship

and into the possible burial chamber.

We see many different layers there,

but they're all quite disturbed, they're very spotty,

so meaning that the soil has been turned around

and tossed back and forth.

This black layer or more brownish maybe

is probably the layer where the rubbers

have been standing on,

and this here being backfill from after the disturbance.

But we wouldn't know yet if it's going in this level

all the way over or it starts to go up again.

The burial chamber has been looted.

This is a huge blow for the team

because it is where the finest artifacts can be found

along with evidence of the owner's identity.

(gentle music)

The archeologists try to remain positive.

Little by little, the boat's wooden structure is emerging,

and it is surprisingly well preserved.

(gentle music continues)

But while the wood, nails, and rivets can yield information

about the shape and structure of the vessel,

they don't explain how the Vikings powered the ship

before it was buried here.

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

(wind whistling)

(ship creaking)

(dramatic music)

The word Viking comes from the Icelandic expression,

(speaking in foreign language) which means going on a raid.

Viking is not an identity, but the act of embarking

on an expedition in search of fortune and glory.

(dramatic music continues)

(wind whistling)

At the Gjellestad site, the team is excited.

After a year of excavation,

the keel has finally been exposed,

and it seems well preserved.

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

Removing it will be tricky.

It is stressful because this is quite thin

and in the middle section it's got a really narrow point.

It could actually break.

It's lots of preparations that have to be done

so that we can make a safe lift.

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

We've working for a year now

before we actually reached this moment in the excavation

with the lift or the extraction of the keels,

which is the most inspiring

and exciting part of the excavation.

Okay.

(Christian speaking in foreign language)

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

It is the only part of this ship burial

that has very intact wood that's possible

to lift out from the ground.

It will tell us a lot

about the sailing abilities of the ship.

Was it a ship that was for rowing or for sailing?

And so far we haven't found any evidence

of remains of a mast that would indicate sailing,

so it actually tips a little bit in favor

of this being a rowing ship.

(gentle music)

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

No breaks along the walk.

Think it went really well.

It's gonna be an exciting

to remove the brackets and start cleaning it.

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

After spending more

than 1,000 years underground, the keel is very fragile.

It must be constantly sprinkled

with water to prevent it from disintegrating.

It needs to have contact

with oxygen as short as possible,

so we need to make it kind of a rapid movement.

(gentle music continues)

Need to wash it quite fast with water and then document it

using 3D to see how it looks just fresh from the soil.

(device beeping)

Then we'll bring it into a tank of water, keep it cool,

take it back to Oslo, and start the conservation process.

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

Once the keel has been cleaned,

the archeologists take it to a special storage facility,

a freshwater tank that can recreate conditions

like those at the burial site.

(gentle music continues)

The keel must be analyzed

at a laboratory of the Norwegian Institute

for Cultural Heritage Research in Oslo.

Archeologist Knut Paasche specializes

in the digital reconstruction of archeological discoveries.

He created the model for the Tune boat burial.

(Knut speaking in foreign language)

(Christian speaking in foreign language)

That's the keel?

This is just a small part of it.

In total, we have something like nine meters

of surviving keel, of surviving wood.

That's taken out in the front of the ship, isn't it?

Yeah, it's around here.

Yeah.

(dramatic music)

It's very small compared to-

Oseberg and Gokstad. Oseberg and Gokstad

and your Tune ship as well.

(Knut speaking in foreign language)

It's exactly four and a half.

Four and a half. Okay.

This keel is so much smaller and it has

a rectangular shape- Six.

But all the three others,

they have this so-called T-shape.

That means that you have a rectangular piece in the middle,

but you have a top laying on like this.

This example is the Tune ship,

and here the keel itself is in one piece,

and if you go closer you will see

that the keel here is quite deep and it's much deeper

than the one we have on the Gjellestad ship.

The most important or why you have the keel in the ship

is to keep the right direction.

(dramatic music)

(water burbling)

(ship creaking)

So with a lot of wind,

you need a deep keel or you will just blow away.

(Vikings speaking in foreign language)

So if you're out rowing,

it might not be that important,

but as soon as you put a sail on the ship,

you've gotta have this keel.

(Vikings speaking in foreign language)

All three boat burials discovered

before Gjellestad had keels,

which means that they used sails.

They were also equipped with masts.

(ship creaking)

Since Oseberg is so far the first working ship

we had in Scandinavia with a mast and sail,

we are wondering is that the first one

or could it be others?

So when we then, if this one, we don't know exactly the date

of the Gjellestad ship yet,

but maybe they didn't have the sail at that time.

Maybe they only rode the ship,

and that's what we really need,

one of the exciting questions here.

But the keel itself is not the only thing

we have to look at 'cause a rowing ship

should be more slender and not that wide.

And if we look at this one,

it looks quite similar to Oseberg, Gokstag, and Tune,

and they had a sail.

(gentle music)

In addition to revealing

whether the Gjellestad ship was powered by sails or oars,

the wooden keel hides other vital clues about the Vikings.

The archeologists must determine what type of trees

were used in the construction and where they grew.

Wood was crucial to many aspects of Viking life

and different trees had different uses.

(tree creaking)

Elm was used to construct boughs,

but oak and pine were best for building boats.

The wood in the Gjellestad keel

may reveal another valuable piece of information:

the date when the ship was built.

(dramatic music)

The investigation moves to Copenhagen in Denmark.

(bright music)

Aoife Daly specializes in dendrochronology,

the scientific method of dating wood by analyzing its rings.

When trees are growing,

they make a single ring every year,

and depending on what the climate is,

sometimes the tree is gonna make a narrow ring,

sometimes it's gonna make a very wide ring,

and it's the growth of the trees, basically,

wide and narrow rings that becomes a sort of a fingerprint

of the trees' growth, and we can use that fingerprint

to match up trees that are growing at the same time.

You can actually build an entire reference

of how trees have been reacting to climate

from the modern day back further,

further back in time, thousands of years.

Dendrochronology is extremely precise

because it compares rings in wood

to those already known from a database.

You can see lots of nice tiny rings.

In order to accurately date

the Gjellestad keel, the rings must be carefully analyzed.

This is just a sample in the cross section

of the keel fragment and I'm just using a very,

very sharp blade to prepare the surface

so I can get a absolutely clean surface

so I can see all the tree rings all the way along.

I get the very last ones and the very first ones.

Usually when I do an analysis, for example of a shipwreck,

I'll have 5, 6, 10, sometimes even more samples

so that I get a good solid group

of trees that are matching together.

It was a little bit tricky working

with the single sample from the Gjellestad.

It wasn't that short a sequence in spite of its size.

There was something like 120 rings on there,

so at least I had a good long sequence to work with,

but it was still only one tree.

Obviously I knew that it was a ship burial,

and we know that the tradition

of ship burials is from the Viking period in Norway,

so my instinct was to try against the other material

that was dating with the Ose fjord regions.

(tense music)

Then what I found was that I was getting a match

with one of the smaller boats from the Gokstad burial.

The Gokstad tree chronology here

is the wiggle there in black,

and then the red one is the sequence

that I got out of the little, the Gjellestad keel,

and you can see the way, the all the ups and downs

kind of agree, a lot of them agree.

The innermost ring that I measured says 603,

and the outermost ring says 724.

(dramatic music)

The most recent ring in the wood used

for the Gjellestad keel corresponds

to the year 724 and the oldest ring to 603.

The scientists conclude that the tree was felled in 724

to use in the construction of the boat,

but since the very outer rings are missing from the sample,

there is some uncertainty.

(lively music)

Dendrochronology has confirmed that the Gjellestad ship

was built after the year 724.

The archeologists hope that other artifacts

from the site can refine this date,

which might solve other mysteries about this boat burial.

You can see the imprint of the ax.

The imprint in the rust is very clear.

You can follow the line on top here.

It would have been hafted

with an iron shaft going through here.

I think we are gonna be able to see what kind of ax

it was in the typological sequence.

And this is important

because then we can place it in time as well.

Analyzing this ax could help to answer

the greatest mystery about the Gjellestad site:

who was buried inside this massive ship?

You would mostly associate weapons with a man,

so it points in the direction of a man

being a weapon inside this grave.

(dramatic music)

(weapons clanking)

You cannot be completely certain on it

because there are weapons in female burials as well.

Archeology is a demanding science,

and patience is needed to solve

the confusing puzzles in this cold case.

(people chattering indistinctly)

The Viking Ship Museum in Oslo

has many objects from the Viking period.

(dramatic music)

Each provides a wealth of information

for scientific investigators.

By comparing finds from the Gjellestad excavation to others

that have been identified,

Jan Bill and Christian Rodsrud hope to find more

about the identity of the person buried in the boat.

It's gonna be one of the first soil blocks

we actually open and see how the travel went.

Oh, that's more than exciting.

(laughs) It is.

Look forward to this.

(dramatic music continues)

The imprint of the ax

is in this block of earth.

Jan and Christian want to compare it

to other examples of axes from the Viking age.

Good.

Let's make comparisons. Yeah, okay.

So we have actually quite a nice example

of this early 9th century ax here

that are comparable, I think.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

It has the same sort of a gap.

Absolutely. This is a bit steeper.

So and you see the size is quite-

Yeah, it's really a big one

that was in there. It's a really big one.

And these have this sort of characteristic-

But they might not

be preserved- Form.

Those thin points. No,

the metal here are very thin, so it might be not visible.

I think there's...

Do you want it?

Yeah, I really want it. (Christian laughs)

It's very much the same thickness here.

It's also important to try to look at it

from the top here, but we can see that have this kind

of narrow neck here and this one has been made

to be light, so my guess would be that this one

has been made more for fighting.

Yeah, so that connects-

And not for cutting wood- Absolutely.

And things like that.

And I mean, that's interesting in our context.

It's no good to get into your head.

(laughs) I would believe not.

So I think that this is perhaps rather a male burial

than a female burial, but of course, hard to say.

Yeah, it's hard. It's hard.

Without any skeletons- I think we should-

Left then, it's really difficult.

(water dripping)

Relying on surrounding objects

to draw conclusions about the gender of the deceased

is risky, and only the elite were interred in burial mounds.

(dramatic music)

The most revealing Viking mound found

in Norway is the Gokstad boat burial.

(melancholy music)

The burial mounds were ceremoniously created

to bind the community together

as they honored their fallen leaders.

It was important for the people

to remember their common history

and cement their Viking bonds.

(Vikings speaking in foreign language)

(fire crackling)

(somber music)

Burial rights were designed to prepare the deceased

for passage to Odin's kingdom of the dead.

Valhalla means hall of the fallen,

and it is where heroes live in the afterlife.

The dead person's family would lay weapons,

food, drink, and finery in the grave.

Cremation was common for ordinary people among the Vikings,

so burial with one's boat was reserved only

for the most powerful figures.

Archeologists have identified

more than 20,000 Viking-age burial mounds in Norway.

the actual number may be much higher

because like in Gjellestad,

farmers often level their fields for cultivation.

(somber music continues)

The boat burials of Gjellestad, Gokstad,

and Vinjeora all had the same goals:

to affirm power, ownership of the land, and influence.

Whoever was buried at Gjellestad must have enjoyed

immense power during their lifetime.

More than 1,000 years after the boat was buried,

archeologists continue to work tirelessly,

investigating the tomb at Gjellestad.

(archeologists speaking in foreign language)

When the first excavation is nearly complete,

another surprising discovery emerges from the ground:

a pile of small beads.

(archeologist gasps)

The beads appear to be contemporary with the ship.

And it's yours.

Wonderful. Looks good.

At the end of a long day,

Christian sifts through chunks of dirt,

hopeful for a turning point

in the excavation of the Gjellestad site.

Then it comes in the form of a large bead made from amber.

This is a huge moment for the team.

But yeah, I'm not gonna dig out the inside

because I wanna do that under control.

Yep, but it could be felt.

Beads, beads, beads, beads. There could be something

in there, beads, beads, exactly.

Perfect. This is really

a rare bead, and clearly the most beautiful ones

that I've been part of excavation finding.

This is extraordinary.

Being buried in a ship itself, it's special,

but also these objects are quite meaningful

to what class of society we're talking about there.

It's the very upper class.

(archeologist speaking in foreign language)

It might actually indicate

that we are looking at the burial of a woman.

I think it's a bit more spectacular with a woman

than it is with a man, actually.

Everyone would just expect this being the burial of a king.

So it's quite spectacular if it's actually a female

that was buried here.

(lively music)

The amber bead is their first real clue

as to the identity of the deceased, and it tips the balance

in favor of a queen rather than a king,

but without a skeleton and a DNA extraction,

confirmation of the gender

of the dead person is still impossible.

And yet the Gjellestad discovery is incredible.

The archeologists unearthed a boat burial of a size

not seen in more than 100 years.

(lights thunking)

The Gjellestad boat burial will be one

of the 21st century's major archeological finds in Norway.

(upbeat music)

Each new discovery reveals a little bit more

about who the Vikings really were.

We now know that they were farmers living in a society

in which women figured prominently.

Their seafaring skills were revolutionary,

and they traded throughout Europe,

often mixing with other cultures, diversifying their own.

(upbeat music continues)

1,000 years later,

Scandinavia continues to reflect that diversity.

(upbeat music continues)

(upbeat music continues)