So here’s another, longer article about the Viking Ship burial, complete with ill-fated crew, discovered in Estonia in 2008.

I have a soft spot for Estonia.  We visited in 1998.  The medieval city walls of Talinn were stunning.  Also, the sea was rough and the ferry bounced a lot.  For months after you could ask my then-2 year old son, “What happened on the boat?”  and he would say sadly, “I coughed.”

This burial may cause us to rethink our dates for Viking activity.  Traditionally we talk about Viking raiding as beginning late 8th century, but these burials are from roughly 50 years earlier.

So a reputed Viking navigational tool may actually have existed.  Ignore the silly bit about how the Vikings may have reached North America before Columbus.  They most certainly did, as has been known since the 1960s, when the site was excavated.