He carefully numbered the 10 surviving ship settings but mostly just found a few burnt bones, charcoal, and pottery shards dating back to 600-900 AD. Broholm did a scientific excavation of two of the graves for the National Museum in Copenhagen. (Residents likely removed the other settings over the centuries for various repurposes.) In 1935, iron fragments that may have once been part of a damasked iron sword were found. Worm’s 1650 drawings-the first recorded survey of the site-indicate that 34 stone settings once stood at Kalvestene, although only 10 remain today. “It’s such an interesting site, and the fact that it is referred to in medieval sources-when other, larger monuments aren’t-demonstrates it was a significant site, too,” co-author Erin Sebo of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, told Ars. It is first mentioned in the 12th-century treatise Gesta Danorum (“The History of the Danes” or “Deeds of the Danes”) by Danish theologian Saxo Grammaticus, and there are many other references throughout medieval and early modern texts. Even though it’s a relatively small grave field, the Kalvestene (literally translated as “the calf stones”) was nonetheless well-known in the region. The Kalvestene, on a small island called Hjarnø, is one of about 25 such sites in Denmark. They then covered the grave with dirt to create a raised earthen mound. Vikings typically buried their dead, along with the deceased’s material possessions, within a wooden ship. Now, a team of archaeologists has compared its own detailed surveys with Worm’s original illustrations and may have discovered two new ship settings that are consistent with that centuries-old survey, according to a recent paper published in the Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology. In 1650, a Danish physician and antiquarian named Ole Worm conducted the first survey of a Viking cremation burial site known as the Kalvestene. Worm created a map of the locations of all the “ship settings”-stones arranged in the shape of vessels-marking the graves. Danish antiquarian Ole Worm conducted the first survey of the Kalvestene in 1650.
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