Fig. 765.
Fig. 766.
Fig. 767.
Some objects of bronze or iron. Gökstad ship. See Vol. ii., Frontispiece and pages [162] to 168.
The warrior had been buried according to his position in life; remains at least of twelve skeletons of horses were found in different parts of the mound on each side of the ship; there were also remains of skeletons of several dogs. The bones and feathers of a peacock were inside the ship, the prow of which, like that of the Tune boat, looked towards the sea as if ready for a voyage.
One of the finest discoveries, illustrating the use of a ship as a pyre for the burial of the dead warrior, was in a mound 12 feet high and 92 feet in diameter, opened in 1874 in Moklebust Eids parish, Bergen Stift, Norway.
Among the objects were a vast number of rivets or clinch-nails, and a great number of shield-bosses belonging to shields which adorned the sides of the ship; perhaps several warriors had been burned together. On the bottom of the mound, on the level of the ground, was a layer of charcoal and burned soil intermingled with small pieces of bone, which extended nearly to the sides, but was heaviest in the middle. Separated from this by a layer of light shore-sand was another similar layer.
Inside an oval about 28 feet in length and 14 feet in width these two layers were interspersed with burned bone-splints, clinch-nails, and spikes.[[216]] In the eastern half of the charcoal layer were found six shield-buckles; and in the western half, shield-buckles scattered about in various ways, sometimes singly, sometimes close to one another. In nearly every one of them lay a clinch-nail, evidently placed there intentionally, just as some of the shield-buckles were filled with bone fragments and charcoal.