Only a tiny percentage of Vikings likely were interred in ships. But for warrior rulers and other members of the elite, elaborate ship burials showcased their earthly power and wealth as they journeyed to the afterlife.

Much like Egyptian pyramids, buried ships hosted not just the deceased, but also various possessions ranging from weapons and jewelry to kitchen utensils and dismembered pets.

There was no one standard way that the Vikings buried their dead. Many Vikings were cremated, but others were laid to rest intact. Some were buried in flat graves; others were placed in burial mounds of various sizes. Underground funerary chambers and graves outlined with stones to resemble ships have been unearthed, as have small boats and wheelless wagons that served as coffins. Not everyone got a grave at all.

“Burial customs during the Viking Age were quite diverse,” Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, professor of Scandinavian history at the University of Cambridge in England, said in an email. She pointed out that burial practices could differ even among neighboring communities. For example, at one site in Sweden, men were interred in boats and women were cremated. But a few dozen miles away, women were buried in boats and men were cremated, Rowe said.

Boats were hugely important to early Scandinavian societies. “The fjords and the ocean were the highway,” says Terje Leiren, professor emeritus of Norwegian studies at the University of Washington. “You could walk, you had horses, but in mountainous areas, especially places like Norway, you needed a vessel to get around.”

Eventually, boats started to play a role, not just in life, but in death as well. “In general, the idea is that the ship or boat symbolically transported the deceased to the afterlife,” Rowe says. Boat graves have been found in Denmark dating back to the Stone Age, and they’ve been found throughout the Baltic region from the time of the Roman Empire. (Boat and boat-shaped burials independently took place in parts of East Asia.)

Scandinavia and surrounding areas may have suffered population losses in the 6th century, possibly caused by volcanic eruptions around 536 and 540 that blocked out the sun and sent temperatures plunging, followed by a major plague. However, Rowe said the period of decline was relatively short.

By the start of the Viking Age in the mid-700s, the development of sails and other new technologies had prompted an increase in trading and raiding, first eastward to the Baltic region and then westward to Great Britain and Ireland. As wealth accumulated, a custom emerged of burying high-status leaders, not just in small boats, but in large ships. These ship burials “were something special and probably not for everybody,” Leiren says.

In a November 2024 article, archeologist Knut Paasche at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research wrote that the construction of ship graves must have required extensive planning and labor, and that one of their purposes was to highlight the authority and wealth of the deceased person’s clan. “It is as if the elite always needed to stand out and to show off to maintain their position,” Paasche wrote.

Archeological excavations of ship burial mounds have been taking place since the 1700s. As of 2024, 26 ship burials had been detected in Norway, along with seven in Sweden, six in the United Kingdom, three in Denmark, two in Finland, one in Estonia, one in Germany and one in France, according to Paasche, who defines a ship, as opposed to a boat, as being longer than 12 meters (or about 39 feet).

Paasche is working to survey all boat and ship burials across northern Europe, and estimates there are close to 1,000 of them.

Most of the large ship burials date to the Viking Age. But a few pre-date the Vikings, occurring during the so-called Merovingian period. For example, a ship burial at Sutton Hoo, England, in the early 600s “is considered a sign of the influence of Vendel Sweden on Anglo-Saxon East Anglia,” Rowe says. She pointed out that a helmet found at Sutton Hoo is very similar to Vendel helmets.

With the help of ground-penetrating radar, new discoveries are still being made. In 2018, archeologists discovered a new ship burial in southeastern Norway. Around the same time, new Viking boat burials were unearthed in Sweden, and iron rivets were found in Norway belonging to yet another buried Viking ship.

A few Viking Age ship burials have been remarkably well preserved. The Oseberg ship contained the bodies of two women, along with beds, quilts, tents, clothes, shoes, combs, kitchenware, farm equipment, sleighs, animal carvings, an embroidered tapestry, around 15 decapitated horses, six dogs and two cows.

Meanwhile, the Gokstad ship contained dozens of shields, fish hooks, kitchenware, beds, a tent, a game board and several animals, including horses, dogs, goshawks and peacocks, all of which accompanied a dead warrior.

“He had clearly been killed in battle,” Leiren says. “His lower leg was severed by a sharp object, probably a sword, and there were pierce marks on his bones from a sword or spear stab.” Leiren added that the dead warrior was probably the owner of the ship and, if not a king, then at least a prominent leader.

Other possessions found at Viking burial sites include swords, axes, tools, containers, jewelry, riding gear and sacrificed slaves.

In pop culture, Vikings are sometimes depicted putting a dead warrior on a boat and then setting it ablaze with flaming arrows as it drifts out to sea. It’s unclear whether this ever actually happened. No archeological evidence has been found to corroborate such an event. However, as Rowe pointed out, Norse mythology speaks of an enormous funeral pyre that’s lit aboard the ship of the dead god Baldr.

Furthermore, in 922, the Arab envoy Ahmad ibn Fadlan encountered a group of Rus, descendants of Swedish Vikings, at the mouth of the Volga River in present-day Russia. According to ibn Fadlan, the Rus engaged in a multi-day funeral bacchanalia that involved copious amounts of drinking, as well as the rape and murder of an enslaved girl and the burning of a funerary vessel.

No known Viking ship burials occurred after the 10th century. Researchers believe that once the Vikings converted from paganism to Christianity, which mandated coffins in consecrated cemeteries, the era of ship burials came to an end.