Ulvøysund Viking Shipwreck

Promare, in cooperation with the Norwegian Maritime Museum, has been surveying selected parts of the Norwegian coast and waterways in search of submerged Viking Ships. In 2012 the Norwegian Maritime Museum received a tip about an interesting shipwreck in the southern part of Norway. Based on carbon dating it was recently established that this is the remains of Norway’s oldest shipwreck and the only Viking age ship discovered underwater in Norway. The ship is dated to around year 1000, it was probably a trading vessel travelling from the west coast of Norway loaded with a cargo of grinding stones. In 2019 Promare and the Norwegian Maritime Museum carried out a detailed mapping of the site. This was featured in National Geographic Channel Drain the Oceans – Vikings Seas episode (s.3, e.2).

In 2020 a team from the Norwegian Maritime Museum and Promare carried out a complete pre-disturbance survey of the site. This included a high-resolution photomosaic.

The team carried out an extensive excavation of the main cargo area in the summer of 2021. We discovered both reindeer antler and wooden elements from the shipwreck, but no large wooden ship structures were discovered. Both the antler and the wooden ship parts have now been dated and confirms that the ship sank around year 1000, making it the only known Viking age shipwreck ever located in Norway. See the video from the project here.

Telemark Waterway Survey

The Telemark Waterway

Transportation along the lakes and rivers of Telemark dates back to at least the Iron Age. Typical trade goods include whetstones as well as timber and hides from the forests. Most particularly, whetstones come from quarries in Eidsborg and Lårdal, near the head of the waterway. Precambrian deposits of quartzite are characterized by a fine-veined form that is prone to splitting in two directions, which makes it ideal for use as a whetstone.  Though some of the whetstones were transported west across Norway towards cities such as Stavanger and Bergen, most were carried down the Telemark waterway towards the Skagerrak strait and eventually the rest of Europe where it has been found in archaeological investigations in several countries.

The Telemark waterway in its current form was initiated 150 years ago and was considered at the time to be an engineering marvel. The extensive waterway is 105 km long and rises 72m from the sea to its headwaters in the interior. 18 locks enable the ships to navigate the waterway.

Little is known about the trade along the waterway and Promare, therefore, initiated a survey of the waterway together with the Norwegian Maritime Museum, and other research partners, to locate sunken vessels and other cultural remains on the lake floor. The main aim was to learn more about transportation and trade along the route that connected the interior settlements with those along the coast.

More than a dozen shipwrecks of different dating and typology have been located and will be investigated in more detail.