Vejerslev Stone Ship

In the Viking Age, some people were buried in symbolic ships marked with stones. On Lindholm Høje and Hjarnø you can see the smaller versions, where ordinary Vikings found their last resting-place. Then there are the much larger monuments for the important people of the time, such as those in Jelling, Glavendrup, Bække and Lejre. There were probably once a great deal more, but over time many of them have disappeared – which also applies to the Vejerslev stone ship, 15km north of Silkeborg. From the written sources, we know that it was 90m long and 14m wide, and consisted of 26 stones – the second-largest known stone ship in Scandinavia, after Jelling. Part of this was removed in 1743, and the rest approximately a century later. It lay just 100 metres from the Gudenå River, northeast of Kongens Bro, "the King’s Bridge", which was also an important crossing-point in the Viking Age. However, precisely because the monument has been gone for so long, some archaeologists believe that it might indirectly be the best-preserved stone ship. This prompted Moesgaard Museum to excavate the site in 2013 and 2016, in an attempt to learn more. The preliminary conclusion was that it was clear that there had been a monument at the site, and that stone carving had taken place here.