Spirit Ship

Longships were boats used by the Vikings and Saxons.. They were the epitome of Viking power and high in their admiration of material possessions. It was common in Viking society for kings to be buried under a long burial mound in a ship with rich possessions. The Viking Oseberg ship burial in Norway and the Anglo Saxon longship of Sutton Hoo in England are both good examples. Viking peoples of Scandinavia left pictographs or petroglyphs of ships in places they visited. The ship also symbolized the ships that carried them to the other worlds, and the dead were sometimes buried in their ships, in the earth, or burned, the “spirit ships” carrying the dead to the other shores.