Secrets of 600-Year-Old Shipwreck Revealed by Scientists

Marine archaeologists have investigated a medieval shipwreck in Scandinavia, yielding new insights into the stricken vessel.

The shipwreck is below around 3 feet of water in an intertidal environment near Avaldsnes, a village on the island of Karmøy off the coast of southwestern Norway.

Avaldsnes was a center of power from the early Bronze Age until the end of the medieval period. Its importance was due to its strategic location along the main sailing route to the north along the Norwegian coast.

In the medieval period, Avaldsnes was the site of a fortified royal palace and a port of great importance. The available evidence suggests that between the 13th and 15th centuries, the port was used by the powerful Hanseatic League—an organization of market towns and merchant communities, primarily in northern Europe, that was created to protect the mutual trading interests of its members.

"Avaldsnes is probably Norway's best preserved medieval harbor. And with its great scientific value comes great responsibility," Hallgjerd Ravnås, a maritime archaeologist with the University of Stavanger, Norway, who led the latest research into the shipwreck, told Newsweek.

"For us Avaldsnes is a perfect testing ground for testing new equipment and approaches. We can test them in an area where we know there is archaeological objects to be found in the data, and where we know we will learn something new as the harbor is large and barely mapped."

The most prominent of the archaeological remains buried in the seabed around Avaldsnes is the medieval shipwreck. Known as the "Avaldsnes ship," this vessel is thought to have been constructed between A.D. 1392 and 1410. Previous research has suggested that the medium-sized merchant ship sank after a fire between A.D. 1399 and 1415.

Unlike most contemporary merchant vessels, this was a "fine" ship built by highly skilled workers, according to researchers. Visual diving inspections conducted by maritime archaeologists in 2003 and 2017 revealed that the remains of the Avaldsnes ship are remarkably well-preserved. These investigations documented a ship constructed in oak with a wide rounded bow and narrow, straight stern.

For the latest research, the results of which have been published in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology, Ravnås and colleagues sought to uncover new information about the Avaldsnes shipwreck. The main objective was to image the shipwreck, produce a 3D reconstruction of it and compare the newly obtained data with existing documentation.

To investigate the wreck, researchers employed a small autonomous catamaran equipped with monitoring devices—including a form of sonar technology—which enabled the collection of high-resolution data in very shallow water.

"The autonomous surface vehicle's fast mobilization and access to areas otherwise difficult to reach makes it an efficient, low-cost, and non-invasive platform for examining the seafloor and subsurface," Ravnås said.

"For projects with limited funds—which often is the case for maritime environmental and archaeological research—this is a new, affordable way of investigating submerged marine archaeology with accurate results. The positive outcomes from the employed methodology suggest that its applicability may successfully extend to other locations."

The data that the team collected ultimately led to a useful 3D reconstruction of the shipwreck, which provided "valuable insights" into the vessel's dimensions and maximum depth of burial. The results of the reconstruction supported previous diving investigations and further contributed to our understanding of the ship's buried structures, according to Ravnås.

The research showed, for example, that the vessel measures around 59 feet long and 18 feet wide. It also has a maximum burial depth of 2.6 feet, according to the study.

Researchers also identified a previously undiscovered feature in proximity to the stern and protruding southeast.

"Its location, in relation to the wreck site, makes it reasonable to suppose that this might represent parts of the rudder or other wreck-related structural elements of archaeological importance," the authors wrote.

Finally, the data that the team obtained also unveiled additional, previously unknown "anomalies" in the bay where the shipwreck was found.

"These could potentially represent parts of the foundations of a ship dock from the same historical period. However, these anomalies are yet to be verified by traditional archaeological methods," the authors wrote.

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Update 2/9/24, 8:48 a.m. ET: This story has been updated with additional comments from Hallgjerd Ravnås and to include another image.