Viking chieftain's burial ship excavated in Scotland after 1,000 years

Egan · 10-19-11, 01:48 PM

Some cool stuff about. Further north, in the Cape Wrath area, I've heard plenty of rumours over the years of at least four of these funerary ships buried in the vicinity of a place called Sandwood Bay. I don't know whether they are really there or not but the Vikings certainly held the area in special renown and large swathes of the north west have stronger Norse influences than anything else.

In the area I grew up, in the estate just across the road from the house I grew up in, in fact, A huge battle had been fought in the 9th or 10th century between a confederacy of local clans under the leadership of a 'king' called Dunacht against Vikings who had come inland, mostly navigating along the river Spey from it's mouth on the Murray firth, and then continuing overland.

A few miles further south, in an old, old church yard on the shores of loch Laggan (which itself contains small islands upon which several Pictish kings were buried) are the graves of Christianized Norse settlers from the 11th and 12th centuries - some of them still have their original headstones as well. I don't think the church yard has public access. I only ever got to see them because my friend was commissioned to do some sketches and painting of them for a book that was being written. Certainly virtually no one else I've spoken to seems to know that they are there.

This story is very, very interesting. Cheers.

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10-19-11, 01:48 PM	#4
Egan Admiral Join Date: Sep 2001 Posts: 2,020 Downloads: 15 Uploads: 0	Some cool stuff about. Further north, in the Cape Wrath area, I've heard plenty of rumours over the years of at least four of these funerary ships buried in the vicinity of a place called Sandwood Bay. I don't know whether they are really there or not but the Vikings certainly held the area in special renown and large swathes of the north west have stronger Norse influences than anything else. In the area I grew up, in the estate just across the road from the house I grew up in, in fact, A huge battle had been fought in the 9th or 10th century between a confederacy of local clans under the leadership of a 'king' called Dunacht against Vikings who had come inland, mostly navigating along the river Spey from it's mouth on the Murray firth, and then continuing overland. A few miles further south, in an old, old church yard on the shores of loch Laggan (which itself contains small islands upon which several Pictish kings were buried) are the graves of Christianized Norse settlers from the 11th and 12th centuries - some of them still have their original headstones as well. I don't think the church yard has public access. I only ever got to see them because my friend was commissioned to do some sketches and painting of them for a book that was being written. Certainly virtually no one else I've spoken to seems to know that they are there. This story is very, very interesting. Cheers.