Archeologists Investigate Possible Viking Boat Discovered Under Pub Parking Lot

British Archeologists University of Nottingham, England announced last week that they were investigating a Viking boat discovered under a pub’s garage to determine its origin. Press release.

According to reports, the boat was discovered by workers in 1938. However, they were instructed to cover it up. Since then, locals have been interested in the story. One of the workers who found it made precise notes, including one that included a Map Researchers can make guesses about the age, function, or condition of this item by drawing a sketch.

“There has been intense local interest in this buried object for many years,” Dominga Devitt is the chair of Wirral Archaeology Community Interest Company. “It has been thought that the boat dates from the Viking era but no professional investigation has ever been carried out to establish the truth, so everyone is really delighted at the prospect of what we might discover.”

The boat is thought to have been buried beneath the railway inn’s parking lot in Wirral, northwest England. The dig Begin Wirral Archaeology Community Interest Company is conducting the Saturday event with permission from the pub owners According Wirral Globe. Stephen Harding, a University of Nottingham professor and Viking expert in Wirral region, is also involved.

According to Harding, the worker’s description from the 1938 unearthing showed a clinker-built boat — a design that was favored by the Vikings and originated in Scandinavia. Clinker-built vessels have overlapping planks. Opposed In carvel-designed ships, planks are placed flush against each other in order to create planks. Researchers were also led to believe that the boat measured around 20 by 30 feet and had been buried nine feet beneath the surface in blue clay. Harding believes it to be either a fishing boat or a transport vessel.

Harding said that clay is great for boats preservation as it keeps bugs away and preserves the wood. This type of clay is very rare, he said. According to the Nottingham press release, archeologists will drill 100 boreholes that will lead down to the boat. This has been confirmed by radar scans. Nottingham explained that this dig preserves the vessel and minimizes damage as opposed to fully excavating the entire boat.

Find the Viking boat that was lost under Wirral pub parking this weekendhttps://t.co/OqvyqToWtX pic.twitter.com/FFQShYtjCd

— Wirral Globe (@WIRRALGLOBENEWS) February 17, 2023

With the borehole samples, researchers will be able to perform an analysis of the wood and the environment surrounding it in labs at Nottingham and the British Geological Survey. They expect to do carbon-14 dating and dendrochronology, which uses growth rings to determine age. Harding hopes these tests will help confirm the type of boat and help “end the speculation.”

“It is not impossible the vessel may have derived from the time the area was heavily settled by Norsemen, or if not the descendants of these people: an investigation we did jointly with the University of Leicester has shown a high proportion of Y-chromosomal DNA of Scandinavian origin in the admixture of people from old families (possessing surnames prior to 1600) in the area,” Harding said. “But in all honesty we just don’t know and are keeping an open mind.”

The efforts are expected to last all week, and Wirral Globe notes that the results are expected to be released in May. “Like everyone around here, we all want to identify just what is there and if it really does date back to Viking times,” the owner of the pub told the outlet.