The Director General of Cultural Heritage is mapping Viking Age cultural heritage sites to assess their potential inclusion on Norway's «waiting list» for World Heritage status.
The Ministry of Climate and Environment has given the Director General of Cultural Heritage the task, and now the mapping work for a possible listing on Norway's tentative list for World Heritage in full swing.
"Many people probably think first and foremost of Viking ships, but Viking heritage is much more than that. We have systematically reviewed the cultural heritage sites from the Viking Age in Norway and consider the ship burial mounds to be completely unique in the world," says Director General of Cultural Heritage Hanna Geiran.
"In the context of world heritage, there are strict criteria, and only cultural environments and objects that are still at their place of discovery are eligible. That is why the ship burial mounds have been chosen as the subject of the survey," continues the Director General of Cultural Heritage. "In this sense, the Viking ships in museums cannot be nominated as world heritage sites.".
Ship burial mounds at seven locations
Seven sites are included in the survey, from Østfold, Vestfold, Rogaland, Vestland, and Trøndelag. The burial mounds being surveyed are:
- Gjellestad in Østfold, where the Gjellestad ship was found and excavated in 2020-2021. Originally, there were approximately 30 mounds at the site.
- The Borre burial mounds in Vestfold. Today, this is a rich cultural environment from the Viking Age, with nine large burial mounds, among other things. This is where the Borre ship was found and destroyed by road workers in 1851.
- The Oseberg mound in Vestfold, where the Oseberg Queen's ship was found.
- Gokstadhaugen in Vestfold, where the Gokstad ship was found.
- Storhaug on Karmøy in Rogaland, where a ship was found in 1887. There are several smaller mounds in the area.
- Myklebostad/Myklebust in Vestland, where a burnt ship was found in 1874. There are several mounds in the area, and the ship may have been similar in size to the Gokstad ship.
- Herlaugshaugen on Leka in Trøndelag. Investigations in 2023 showed that the ship may date back as far as the 700s, making it the oldest shipwreck found in Norway.
Symbolic places
The Director General of Cultural Heritage is currently compiling a knowledge base in collaboration with the University of Oslo and the Museum of Cultural History, the University of Stavanger, and the counties of Østfold and Vestfold.
"The mounds are symbols of the wealth and power of that era, of faith and society, and they show us what the people of the Viking Age imagined was important about life after death," says Geiran. "The monumental burial mounds have been symbols that have linked stories from mythology and sagas with the places. Some of these stories live on today. In this sense, we believe that the ship burials can meet important criteria for World Heritage status," says Geiran.
Long process towards World Heritage status
The road to World Heritage status is long. Norway, in collaboration with several other countries, has previously attempted to nominate Viking heritage to UNESCO, but the proposal was rejected in 2015. Since then, several of the other countries have moved forward with their own sites, and the Danes succeeded last year when UNESCO designated five ring forts from the Viking Age on the World Heritage List.
It is the government that decides whether Viking heritage should be included on Norway's tentative list. The government also decides whether Norway should proceed with the proposals on the tentative list and start a nomination process as a basis for consideration by UNESCO.
