Archeologist for a day at Avaldsnes

Imagine that people have lived in this area all of 10 000 years before us! When coming to Avaldsnes you can be an archaeologist for a day, dress up and participate in activities. How does an archaeologist work? Do archaeologists only dig with a brush and a teaspoon? What do they actually unearth? How do they know how old something is, and what can be learnt about our ancesters by studying the artefacts that archaeologists dig out of the ground?

Monumental burial mounds, standing stones and medieval church sites are clear evidence of the rich chieftains and kings of Avaldsnes. Archaeology and research is needed for revealing more secrets about the people who once lived here.The most of what those people did, we’ll never get to know anything about... But some of what they have done have left their mark, which we can still see today.

Maybe there are some nutshells or coal deposited in the earth from a meal around a Stone Age fire, or items have fallen into the sea and have been preserved in the mud of the seabed, or there might be traces of the poles of a Viking Longhouse in unploughed fields. We can also learn about what Viking kings and others were up to from very old books that have been preserved.

It is such things that we archaeologists are always looking for; traces from the past that can reveal something about the life of the people that lived in previous times. We often follow traces in the earth as such traces an hide exciting secrets that can teach us much about the past and if we take samples from the soil and look at it through a microscope, it can reveal a lot of information about how people lived. Seeds and pollen can tell us which plants were cultivated. Sometimes we discover enough traces from the past to help us understand approximately how things were and try to recreate it, which is what have been done in building the Viking farm at Avaldsnes.

Avaldsnes is full of traces from the past; and now you can join to explore the exciting history hidden here.