Ancient Scandinavian Stone Ships

New theory on Baltic regions stone ships, known to be a sea lover's grave memorial not all of them have a grave. Based on their locations new thoughts are that they may have been used as ancient maritime classrooms:





www.livescience.com...

www.sciencedaily.com...

www.megalithic.co.uk...

Originally posted by SeekingDepth
New theory on Baltic regions stone ships, known to be a sea lover's grave memorial not all of them have a grave. Based on their locations new thoughts are that they may have been used as ancient maritime classrooms.

This is new to me, and a very cool concept. S&F for sharing!

reply to post by SeekingDepth


I can certainly imagine ancient sailors teaching the next generation of sea farers how to operate a ship in a mock stone vessel.

I can also imagine the stone boats as being a form of blueprint for boat builders. Build a stone boat on dry land, fine tune your measurements, and transfer the information to the men cutting lumber and shaping fittings.

S&F

Wow thank you for this information. Very cool
I had not known about these.
This has me visualizing some great images !

where I live (on Öland, a small Island just outside the south-east coast of Sweden) it is full of these "ship-graves" litterally, like 10-20 of these within a 20km "radius" ( Öland isnt even 20km wide )

We who live here don´t see anything special with them, and they are just a part of the natural scenery here.

BUT, there is this old man who is doing field research every spring summer and fall (or like when the wheater allows him) on this grave site. The sound suck in the beginning because of the wind, and anyway he speaks in Swedish, and just explain when it was "built" and so on.

I live in Södra möckleby, a village about a 1km from this gravesite "gettlinge gravfält".

Anyway, this old man thinks this is a advance calendar or something like that, and he is trying to break the -code- He is a odd fellow.

Was watching the movie series Vikings they had this King burying part of his ill-gotten loot in the shape of a boat along with a child ,but in some reading they commit the dead to a burning ships did they have both cremation and burial in the same culture I know we do it because we are diverse but the Vikings??

Very interesting article - but from my reading of it all they are really suggesting that these were gathering places as well as sites to bury at least part of the dead, which is in common with many megalithic sites. i think it's a bit of a stretch to suggest that maritime skills were taught in these monuments as scandinavian and baltic people would have been familiar with boats from an early age, and such skills were surely passed down the generations in the most practical of ways. they had no lack of boats to practice in either.

ETA: SnF too!

reply to post by Spider879


i must say i dont really know how accurate the image of the dead norseman set afloat on burning long ship is - i've never read about it in the sagas (and i've read the lion's share of them). however, a great many were certainly buried, beit in graves or under cairns and mounds as shown both by archaeological finds as well as documentary or literary references - the sagas frequently mention coffins as well (this is prior to conversion to christianity as well as afterwards).

reply to post by Spider879


In the early Viking era, you where burned on a pile of wood (think darth vader in star wars return of the jedi )

This was also known to take place during the end of the Viking era, allthough more rare because of Christianity had made its mark on the culture.

If the dead was a chief or a outstanding fighter, the body was burned on a ship. Sometime on land and sometime on the sea.

The most common burial however during the Viking era was a kind of massgrave where you simply piled bodies in a hole together with their marterial stuff like jewelry, clothes, weapons etc. Basiclly all the stuff you needed in the afterlife.

Chief´s could also be buried in real ships in the ground with their belongings. Even their "slaves" or "träl" as it was called in Sweden. These slaves where killed so that they could acompany the chief.

Sometimes they put stone formation above these graves to mark where it was. These are called in Swedish "skeppssättning". But these stoneformation was mostly used when there wasn´t a ship to bury with the chief and was more of a symbolic gesture to the chief.

Perhaps those stones were used as a brace or measuring tool for ship building.

i've been digging a little deeper on this and have found a couple of papers by the same guy that relate to this, and while i have not had a chance to read them yet, from quick scan of the first couple of pages they look very promising and worth sharing.

Imaginary vessels in the Late Bronze Age of Gotland and South Scandinavia: Ship settings, Rock Carvings and Decorared Metalwork:
www.academia.edu... _Decorared_Metalwork

Stone ships: continuity and change inScandinavian prehistory:
www.academia.edu...

reply to post by Nettlas


Nuff respect!! my knowledge has increased

reply to post by Nettlas


Hi Nettlas, thanks for a very interesting post
re the burial in a burning ship at sea, obviously there would be nothing in the way of physical evidence of this. i've often wondered where the tales of this rite came from and have not come across it in the sagas (which is why i'm curious about it) and wondered if there is a source for this that i missed. i've not read the entire poetic/older edda for example - is it in there somewhere?
i also wrote a thread about Egil Skallagrimsson a few days ago (there is a link in my signature) - you may find it intersting and have stuff to add... i'm particularly interested in the link between nithing poles/nidstangs and the dragon prows.. cheers

I will go to sleep now, and will give a proper answer tomorrow But first I just wanted to say what a joy it is to see two answer from ppl using avatars, one of Ras Daniel Hartman´s son (not to be confused of ras daniel ray who is a "reggae" artist whom I don´t like) And the second has a avatar of one of my idols LSP himself, master of dub (aside from king tubby of course ) man what he did with the upsetters is just pure magic.

Goodnight.

There is SO much of history I don't know.I read alot but separating the wheat from the chafe is getting BLURRY lately.And some of the history books are just so damn DRY.
I think the Vikings beat Christopher to the US by a few years. Its always cool to learn this stuff.

reply to post by cavtrooper7

Hey cav, leif eirikson and iirc eirik the red both beat colombus by about 400 years - their settlements and other archaeological evidence has been found. Besides this it is recorded in sagas, groenlendina and vinland saga if I remember right. I'll try post some links later today but no doubt some old translations are available on sacred texts.
Obvs some other folk beat them all by a very very long time tho!

ETA: dont weant to take the thread off topic, but some threads here look like they have covered this already:
vikings discovering america threads
abovetopsecret.com.samuru.com...
sacred text links for sagas etc on vikings discovering america - like all sacred texts stuff it's old (1800's to turn of 1900's) translation and will no doubt feel a victorian is reading to you.
www.sacred-texts.com...
stone age eurpoean discovering america threads
abovetopsecret.com.samuru.com...
a really watchable doc on stone age europeans discovering america
www.youtube.com...

ofc by discovering, i mean "finding" - folk were already there.

reply to post by cavtrooper7


Perhaps those stones were used as a brace or measuring tool for ship building.



thats where im leaning towards looks like some kind of jig or support then could lift off with beams roll down to shore with logs and poof into the water.

people probably got buried in them after they were of no use or maybe just as a last right kind of thing

i want to be buried in my ship maker type thing


cool stuff none the less never heard of these stone ships

reply to post by SeekingDepth


Just a great post OP ! New light and all that.

reply to post by SeekingDepth


They are bordering some areas, that stones.
What sanctify means, what are priests doing when sanctifying some place or some area?
How it works?
Can that be detected or measured with some equipment?

Maybe they built their ships around these stone ships, like a template. You could make more ships, faster if you had a big stone ship you could build around. You'd have a confirmation of your measurements and cuts because the wood has to fit around the stone ship the same every time.

It could be they just built the frames around the stone ships and moved them to the ocean for finishing touches.

Originally posted by doctornamtab
Maybe they built their ships around these stone ships, like a template. You could make more ships, faster if you had a big stone ship you could build around. You'd have a confirmation of your measurements and cuts because the wood has to fit around the stone ship the same every time.

It could be they just built the frames around the stone ships and moved them to the ocean for finishing touches.

edit on 23-3-2013 by doctornamtab because: (no reason given)

That's more or less what I am thinking they are - but how far are these structures from open water? Rather, how far would they have been from a river/sea/ocean when they were constructed?