The Tune ship (''Tuneskipet'') is a

Viking ship Viking ships were marine vessels of unique structure, used in Scandinavia throughout the Middle Ages. The boat-types were quite varied, depending on what the ship was intended for, but they were generally characterized as being slender and flexi ...

exhibited in the Viking Ship Museum (''Vikingskipshuset på Bygdøy'') in

Bygdøy Bygdøy or Bygdø is a peninsula situated on the western side of Oslo, Norway. Administratively, Bygdøy is part of the borough of Frogner. It historically was part of Aker Municipality and became part of Oslo in 1948. Bygdøy is a popular recr ...

Oslo Oslo ( or ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of 1,064,235 in 2022 ...

. The Tune ship is of the karve, a small type of

longship Longships, a type of specialised Viking ship, Scandinavian warships, have a long history in Scandinavia, with their existence being archaeologically proven and documented from at least the fourth century BC. Originally invented and used by th ...

with broad hull. It was found at the Haugen farm on the island of Rolvsøy in the parish of Tune in

Østfold Østfold () is a county in Eastern Norway, which from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2023 was part of Viken. Østfold borders Akershus and southwestern Sweden (Västra Götaland County and Värmland), while Buskerud and Vestfold are on the other ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. It was discovered in a

ship burial A ship burial or boat grave is a burial in which a ship or boat is used either as the tomb for the dead and the grave goods, or as a part of the grave goods itself. If the ship is very small, it is called a boat grave. This style of burial was pr ...

mound (''Båthaugen'', from the

Old Norse Old Norse, also referred to as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian, was a stage of development of North Germanic languages, North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants ...

words ''båt'' meaning boat and ''haugr'' meaning mound or barrow). It was discovered when the burial mound was opened and the site was excavated by archaeologist Oluf Rygh in 1867. It was named the Tune ship by Professor Rygh after excavation. This is due to the discovery being located in Tune parish. The grave, found attached to the

gunwale The gunwale () is the top edge of the hull of a ship or boat. Originally the structure was the "gun wale" on a sailing warship, a horizontal reinforcing band added at and above the level of a gun deck to offset the stresses created by firing ...

of the ship, contained a wooden spade, a hand spike, and carved pieces of wood. The ship had clearly been ransacked previous to Rygh’s arrival, and likely contained many more items, including the corpse of a man. The Tune ship is fragmentary, but may have been up to long. It is wide and would have had 11 or 12 pairs of oars. The length of the keel is approximately . The ship was built around AD 900. It was made principally of clinkered oak planks. It is of rugged construction with naturally grown ribs, thick crossbeams and a solid

Other sources

* Marstrander, Sverre (1999) ''Tuneskipet'' (Sarpsborg: Borgarsyssel Museum)

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Tune Ship 1867 archaeological discoveries Viking ships Archaeological sites in Norway Ships preserved in museums Viking ship burials 10th century in Norway