Mystery and magic are at the core of the podcast this week. We return to the Oseberg Viking Ship, Norway’s most magnificent historical treasure. But there are also many questions connected with it, including these three: Which great Viking leader was honoured with this most magnificent of ship burials? Why was this ship of death anchored to a huge boulder? Why was there a long wooden wand on board, identical to wands that were used in the Viking Age for sorcery? In this podcast, I travel back to the Oseberg burial mound, and we also hear the results of the latest scientific DNA analysis of the two skeletons found on board the buried ship. The burial took many months, a gathering of the elite-of-the-elite in the early Viking world. But was the burial motivated more by FEAR of the deceased than respect?  CONTACT Twitter: (a)northbynorway Email: northbynorway(a)gmail(.)com EPISODE PHOTO The prow of the Oseberg Ship with its enormous anchor stone. From the excavation of the Oseberg burial mound, 1904.  Photographer : Olaf Væring. Owner: Universitetsmuseenes fotoportal. (Licence:CC BY-SA 4.0) THANKS to actor Solveig M. Boyle for her vocal contributions MORE INFO andrewjboyle(.)com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.