BORN FIGHTING

What to do when you are bored at sea and you are sitting in a doldrums? One or two Vikings knew what to do because the outlines of a left and a right foot were found in the floorboards of the Gokstad ship. A Viking longship built around 890 AD, discovered in 1880 and housed in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.

The Gokstad ship, during the excavation 1880

Part of a floorboard with the right foot

Museum storage manager Hanne Lovise Aannestad with the highlighted right foot

The ship has been buried and used as a burial chamber, but the floorboards were not in place, so the researchers do not know whether the carvings were close together while the ship was at sea. Since the size of the foot was significantly smaller than that of a now living, 165cm tall woman. The owner of this foot seems to have been a young man, probably still in his teens.