– It has been a hundred years since the last time a Stone Age grave was identified, as far as I know, of the kind that we have now, field archaeologist Yvonne Dahl tells news. – I can’t think of anything more spectacular. She is one of the people who excavated the 4,000-year-old stone coffin grave in Selje, which has now been reworked at the University of Bergen (UiB). – This is definitely the highlight of my career. People were very moved. The discovery was made completely by chance, when someone had to dig away the remains of a burnt-down hotel. The work with the legs will be demanding and will take a long time, says the university. Photo: University of Bergen – It is important to tell people how much potential there is here. In climate research, people, landscapes, everything. In the grave lay a well-grown man and a child who was probably one year old. In a chamber next to it were another young man and a young woman. – Now we only have the four who are safe, but we have an incredible number of missing legs. Loose jaws, hips, shins. It seems they have moved bodies aside to insert new ones. – Most likely there are several people there, and it will be the job of the osteologists to piece together the right pieces of skeleton for each individual. The head of the Preminence section at UiB believes they will have answers to the most fundamental of their questions before Christmas 2024. Photo: University of Bergen Can teach us how agriculture came to Norway The researchers have concluded that they are engaged in agriculture, which is different from the profession to the ones you have found in Selje previously. These were most likely fishing and hunting people who lived as nomads, and could move according to the seasons and where the food sources were. This finding thus signals the start of “an enormous shift”, says Dahl. It was after these pioneers came to Selje that the agricultural revolution came to Norway. The jaw in the picture belongs to a man who was well advanced in years, and who may have been a chief, Dahl believes. Photo: University of Bergen – They are the first farmers to burn the whole of Western Norway and change the entire landscape forever. That is the start of the cultural landscape we see today. – So the information that comes here can be central to how we understand ourselves and how our country has become the way it is? – Yes, I would say that. Agriculture came to Norway about a thousand years later than the rest of Northern Europe. We don’t know why it was like this. Yvonne Dahl (h) helped excavate the find in Selje. Photo: Oddmund Reisæter Haugen – We don’t know if these have learned agriculture from someone, or if they are visiting from a city, she says, and gives Denmark, Sweden and the Austersjø area as examples. – Of course they could also have come by sea, but that would be quite wild. But the DNA and isotope analyzes we do will be able to tell us with one hundred percent certainty where the people were born and where they come from. Also tell about care for the elderly and children Through the investigations so far, the researchers have found out a little about how the four men lived. One thinks he is up to 70 years old, because he had changes in his skeleton and a spine that was badly damaged by gout, said Dahl. – We understand that it has been painful and he has not been on his own. He must have had help. – People have taken care of both the elderly, almost disabled, and children. Everyone has received the same amount of care or been equally important. It’s special and reassuring, you might say. The skeleton was found on the old hotel site in Selje. Photo: University Museum At the same time, it is possible that “the old man”, as they call him, was an important man who was buried with his family. Together with this probably older man, pearls have been found. These are two to three millimeters in diameter, have a hole in the middle, and are made of shell. – They were around his chest region near the spine. I don’t know if it was something that was on the clothes or hung around the neck. At the enormous discovery site, the researchers have found everything from bones from domestic animals to evidence of cod fishing. Photo: Oddmund Reisæter Haugen – A little later in this agricultural Stone Age it becomes very spectacular with lots of amber pearls. What becomes more exciting is what lies hidden in the sand around the skeleton, now that they have been taken out and will be worked on further. Government funds are needed to find the answer The follow-up work on the findings from Selje started at the University of Bergen on Friday 26 January. The research group also had national antiquarian Hanna Geiran visiting. Through them, the state has financed the excavation with NOK 7.5 million, she says. – Our funding is limited to what is necessary to secure the scientific source material that has been dug up, and to ensure that it is taken into the museum’s collection. – After that, it is others in Norway who are responsible for research funding. Morten Ramstad, head of the Forminenseksjonen at UiB, says it will still cost “several millions” of kroner to get answers to all their questions. – If we don’t get more funds, we won’t be able to understand who the people in the grave were or what the relationship was between them. – Then it is more difficult to put it here in a larger context. Later research on this is a goldmine for the University of Bergen, but we will not be able to use it if we do not solve the questions we have now. Aiming for Christmas 2024 Before Christmas 2024, Ramstad hopes that they will have answers to the most basic of them: how many are in the grave and whether they are related. In the long term, they will try to find out if the farmers found in Selje were part of the last great migration in Europe, which probably happened while they were alive. Ramstad is an archaeologist at UiB. Photographed here in 2018. Photo: Remi Sagen – We don’t quite know what is happening up in Norway, at least not as far north as Selje, says Ramstad. – It is very exciting. It’s a bit like a Pandora’s box, which you feel you can look into and solve things we’ve all been wondering about for so long.
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– These are the first farmers – news Vestland
