As you read this story, you will learn the following:
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Researchers have discovered fingerprints on Scandinavia’s oldest plank ship, which was used by sea raiders more than 2,000 years ago.
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One of the boat’s builders left this imprint in the caulking tar.
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Experts still hope the fingerprints will point to clues about who the attackers were and why they attacked Als Island.
The mystery of why a group of sea raiders attacked the Danish island of Als more than 2,000 years ago is a step closer to being solved. Researchers searching Scandinavia’s oldest plank boat, possibly used by the attackers, found fingerprints embossed into the tar caulking material. While this is admittedly a small piece of evidence, archaeologists still hope it will bring them closer to figuring out where the attackers came from.
The attack on the Isle of Ars took place in the fourth century BC when a fleet descended. Even though up to four ships were involved in the attack, the islanders were still able to defend their home, sinking one of the ships in the marsh in the process (possibly as a thank you for the victory). First discovered in the 1880s and unearthed in the 1920s, the ship, now known as the Hjortspring Ship, is the only prehistoric plank ship found in Scandinavia.
“Where these sea raiders might have come from and why they attacked the island of Ars has long been a mystery,” Mikael Fauvelle, an archaeologist at Lund University, said in a statement.
While the Hjortspring was on display at the National Museum of Denmark, a university research team still accidentally discovered parts of the ship that had not been chemically preserved and studied them with modern tools. “It’s surprising that the boat was waterproofed with turpentine,” Falwell said. “This suggests that the ship was built in an area where pine forests were abundant.”
Previously, scholars believed the attackers must have come from modern-day Hamburg, Germany. But researchers published findings of the missing parts of the Hjortspring ship in the journal PLOS OneIt is now said that clues point to the Baltic Sea region as the origin point of the attack. The use of pine resin means the ships must have been built in areas with abundant pine forests, such as the island of Rügen and the Baltic Sea region east of Scania, the authors write.
“If the ship came from a coastal area rich in pine forests in the Baltic Sea, it would mean that the fighters who attacked Als chose to launch a maritime attack hundreds of kilometers out on the high seas,” Folwell said.
The researchers used all available tools to investigate the find, including carbon dating of the lime bast rope, which confirmed its pre-Roman Iron Age age. They also used high-resolution X-ray tomography scans to create 3D models of fingerprints, and employed chromatography and mass spectrometry to help understand how the caulking tar is produced.
“We also hope to be able to extract ancient DNA from the ship’s caulking tar, which could give us more details about the ancient people who used the ship,” Fauvelle said.
Analysis of intact rope fragments and rope marks on caulking materials has helped experts speculate on sewing and rope-making techniques originally used in construction, and partial human fingerprints have provided direct links to ancient seafarers. “Taken together, these results shed new light on the methods and materials used to build Scandinavia’s first plank ships and raise new questions about our understanding of early maritime societies in Northern Europe,” the authors write.
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