The Oseberg tapestry is a fragmentary tapestry, discovered within the

Viking Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and se ...

Oseberg ship burial in

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and t ...

. The tapestry (dated to about 834AD) is in bad condition and was probably a part of the funeral offering in the ship burial. Its decay meant it took several years to extract. The fragments of the tapestry feature a scene containing two black birds hovering over a horse, possibly originally leading a wagon (as a part of a procession of horse-led wagons on the tapestry).

Anne Stine Ingstad Anne Stine Ingstad (11 February 1918 – 6 November 1997) was a Norwegian archaeologist who, along with her husband explorer Helge Ingstad, discovered the remains of a Norse settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows in the Canadian province of Newfo ...

interprets these birds as

Huginn and Muninn In Norse mythology, Huginn (Old Norse: "thought"Orchard (1997:92).) and Muninn (Old Norse "memory"Orchard (1997:115). or "mind"Lindow (2001:186).) are a pair of ravens that fly all over the world, Midgard, and bring information to the god Odin. H ...

flying over a covered cart containing an image of

Odin Odin (; from non, Óðinn, ) is a widely revered Æsir, god in Germanic paganism. Norse mythology, the source of most surviving information about him, associates him with wisdom, healing, death, royalty, the gallows, knowledge, war, battle, v ...

with a horned helmet, drawing comparison with the images of

Nerthus In Germanic paganism, Nerthus is a goddess associated with a ceremonial wagon procession. Nerthus is attested by first century AD Roman historian Tacitus in his ethnographic work ''Germania''. In ''Germania'', Tacitus records that a group of Germ ...

attested by

Tacitus Publius Cornelius Tacitus, known simply as Tacitus ( , ; – ), was a Roman historian and politician. Tacitus is widely regarded as one of the greatest Roman historiography, Roman historians by modern scholars. The surviving portions of his t ...

in 1 AD. Ingstad, Anne Stine (1995). "The Interpretation of the Oseberg-find" as published in Crumlin-Pedersen, Ole and Thye, Birgitte Munch (Editors). ''The Ship as Symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia: Papers from an International Research Seminar at the

Danish National Museum The National Museum of Denmark (Nationalmuseet) in Copenhagen is Denmark's largest museum of cultural history, comprising the histories of Danish and foreign cultures, alike. The museum's main building is located a short distance from Strøget ...

, Copenhagen, 5–7 May 1994''. Page 141-142, Nationalmuseet. The tapestry was one of a number of textile remains found in the Oseberg ship in 1903. Other finds included rolled-up rugs, tapestries, curtains. Most are embroidered with mythological and battle scenes. There was no representation of the ships owner. The tapestry is stylistically similar to the Bayeux tapestry. Graves have shown that the Vikings loved the expensive fabrics, which were acquired through trade. Their clothes were decorated with delicate embroidery, sometimes in gold thread.

References

{{Tapestry Tapestries Viking art