Viking Boat Burial: A Woman and Her Dog on Senja

In 2023, a metal detectorist on Senja, an island in northern Norway, found two oval brooches decorated with silver thread, along with fragments of ribs. The brooches date to about 900–950 C.E., and archaeologists suspected they had found the grave of a Viking woman. It lay so close to the surface that they worried it would not survive much longer. In 2025 they excavated it and found a Viking boat burial.

Just Beneath the Surface

The grave lay less than eight inches (20 centimeters) below the surface. When the landowners planned to extend their garage, the museum moved to excavate before any more damage was done.

“We were concerned about the condition of the grave and wanted to prevent further damage. It lies just beneath the surface, covered by only a thin layer of topsoil,” Anja Roth Niemi, researcher for the Arctic University Museum of Norway, told Science Norway.

A Viking Boat Burial

The grave held more than just the brooches and ribs. The outline of a sewn boat is visible, even though the organic material has decomposed. The boat was a little less than 18 feet long (5.4 meters). The planks were not attached with iron rivets. Instead, the boat was sewn with organic material that has also decayed. Now, the vessel is a dark spot in the sand of the grave. (The great ship burials, like Oseberg, are the royal version of the same custom: a large ship rather than a small sewn boat.)

Researchers are still awaiting confirmation of the gender of the person buried with the ship, but they are confident that it is a woman. Men were not buried with brooches in the Viking era. The woman had a small dog placed at her feet. A ring-shaped pendant was near her skull.

A pair of bronze oval brooches like those that marked the Senja Viking boat burial, from a woman’s grave at Birka, Sweden — Oval brooches from a woman’s grave at Birka, Sweden, shown for comparison and not from Senja. A pair of this kind led the detectorist to the Senja grave. Photo: Gabriel Hildebrand, Swedish History Museum, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

“We believe the woman buried here held significant status locally, and perhaps even across the region,” Niemi said.

A calm fjord on Senja island in northern Norway, mountains reflected in the water, fireweed in bloom on the shore — Sifjorden on Senja, the island in northern Norway where the boat grave was found. Photo: Ximonic (Simo Räsänen), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A Dog in the Viking Boat Burial

Niemi said a dog in a Viking grave isn’t unusual, but it does show the strong bond between people and their animals, a bond the sagas also describe. Cats had a harder time of it, as our post on Viking cats tells.

“There are stories of prominent people doing everything in their power (to heal their animal) when their dog became ill,” said Niemi.

Brooches in the Viking Boat Burial

While the original discoverer of the site dug a little deeper than the laws allow, they followed the correct procedures afterwards. By preserving the brooches and bones with the dirt around the artifacts, some organic material was saved, including textile fragments from the woman’s clothes.

More to Find

“There’s reason to believe there’s another grave there, possibly still undisturbed,” said Niemi. The excavators found another brooch not far from this first Viking grave site. “We’d really like to survey the area with ground-penetrating radar to see if there’s more to uncover.”

Sources

Science Norway, A Viking woman was buried here with her dog
UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Anja Roth Niemi

Viking Grave Site Holds Boat, Woman and Dog