Floor below ground The excavations at the Viking Longhouse in Belmont ended this week.

Hard at work The excavations at the Viking longhouse site at Belmont are gathering momentum as the Danish led team prepares to begin their final week on site.

Stone axe It’s amazing where you can find archaeology, as John Laurenson recently found out.

Excavation at Belmont begins The Viking Unst project has come earlier to the islands this year, with the arrival of the Danish team who have been excavating at the Viking longhouse in Belmont this week.

A NEW archaeological project got under way this month in the secluded location of Gunnister Voe in Northmavine.

Natascha Mehler, of the University of Vienna, and Mark Gardiner, of Queen’s University, Belfast, are planning a three-year project to investigate sites associated with the Hanseatic merchants. These German merchants traded around the North Atlantic between the 1400-1600s and played a major role in Shetland where they traded for Shetland caught fish.

The Bremen Böd which has been restored and interpreted in Whalsay is one of the few böds, or booths, which survive to any great extent.

Little research has been done …

Belmont work ends
THE VIKING Unst Excavations ended yesterday with the last of the staff leaving Belmont and returning to Denmark today. Anne-Christine Larsen, archaeological curator at the Roskilde Viking Ship Museum, is pleased with her season’s work at Belmont this summer.

“I am very happy with the way things have gone this year,” she said. “We have made good progress.” She is already looking forward to returning to Shetland later this year in order to examine the finds in more detail.

The longhouse at Belmont looks very different now to how it appeared six weeks ago. The shape of …

by Val Turner

THE PAST five weeks have flown by and on Monday the Bradford University team of archaeologists who were digging at the Viking longhouse sites of Hamar and Underhoull completed their work and left.

Peat story
The discovery last year of peat covering part of the longhouse site at Underhoull raised our expectations for the good preservation of organic material on the site. When the site was excavated it became clear that the growth of peat was very localised. The longhouse at Underhoull lay close to an earlier dyke: indeed it is possible that the dyke may have …

BY Val Turner

SUPRISES always happen as time begins to run out for archaeological excavations. As the Viking longhouse excavations at Underhoull and Hamar draw towards their last few days, they have proved to be no exception to this rule.

Hamar pit house

This week the archaeologists working at Hamar have discovered that the earliest Viking “living room” on the site was dug a significant way into the bedrock.

This room was an unexpected discovery, and lies underneath the remains of two later buildings. How deep the excavations into the bedrock went has yet to be established. At the moment …

BY Val Turner

Busy at Unst

WORK is now proceeding apace with the excavation of the three Viking longhouses currently being excavated in Unst.

At the longhouse at Hamar, the remnants of a later room which was built over the top end of the longhouse has been removed and the team is coming down onto what is left of an earlier floor surface.

Floors are productive areas for archaeological discoveries as they often hold the clues as to how the building was used. There is an ash pit in the earlier room and there appears to be a fairly deep …

BY Val Turner

Danish team arrives

WITH excavations at the Viking longhouse sites of Hamar and Underhoull now in full swing, the third excavation of the Viking Unst project began this week with the arrival of the Danish team from Roskilde Viking Ship Museum and Copenhagen University.

This longhouse is situated on the slopes of the hill on the opposite side of the road from Belmont House, from where it commands a wonderful view.

This is the fourth season of excavation on the site, led by Anne-Christine Larsen. This summer the team plans to define the full extent of the …