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Archaeologists in Iceland have bring out what may be a rare Viking Age toy carved out of Edward Durell Stone , but it ’s anyone ’s guess as to which creature it depicts .
Thefigurine , which experts dated to between A.D. 940 and 1000 , was find at the Fjörður mining situation in Seyðisfjörður , Iceland . It ’s a low , four - legged animal with a chipped capitulum carved from local stone .
Archaeologists found the carving of an enigmatic stone animal in Iceland.
Most of the team thought the animal was a squealer , Ragnheiður Traustadóttir , theatre director of the Antikva archeologic team that unearthed the toy , assure Live Science . This is n’t far - bring , since Vikings used domesticated pig bed for meat . Two team members , however , understand it as a bear , and while bears are not native to Iceland , at least 600 polar bears ( Ursus maritimus)have beenreported on the islandsince human settlement began to today . But when pictures of the figurine wereposted on Facebookon Aug. 13 , many Facebook users became confident that it represented an Icelandic dog .
" Children are not so seeable in the Viking Age , so this is an astonishing find , " Traustadóttir order . The director sees a cop and is questioning about the Icelandic dog interpretation , as she says the expression does n’t jibe the animate being . " I possess an Icelandic dog for 14 class , " Traustadóttir say . " I ’m not sure . "
TheFjörður excavation , list after the historical Fjörður farm , begin in 2020 ahead of the contrive construction of avalanche protection walls in Seyðisfjörður and was opine to last only two years . But the archeological site revealed so much that Traustadóttir is now in her 5th summer there .
Is this stone carving a pig, bear, Icelandic dog or another animal entirely?
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In 2021 , archaeologists reveal a farm mound , manufactory and sheep spill date stamp to sometime between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries , perSeydisfjord Archaeological Research , a website lead by Antikva that publishes finding from the Fjörður dig . Beneath that , they found medieval remains , and beneath those , they discovered four Viking Age ( A.D. 793 to 1066 ) graves buried beneath an 11th - century landslide .
In other language , a exclusive dig had let on 1,000 days of Icelandic account . In 2022 , south of the previous site , the archaeologist find aViking longhousewith a weaving way , animate being enclosures and a farm midden , or trash heap , dating to between the 11th and 13th hundred . They grade their findings on this historical timeline by dating the layers of ash tree from the many volcanic clap that have impacted the region since the arrival of human colonist .
The animal carving may have been a toy, which would be a rare find from the Viking Age.
" There ’s no other website in Iceland that has so many finds , " Traustadóttir tell . In five years of archeological study , they ’ve cataloged up to 4,000 artifacts , including nearly 100 Viking game pieces from a plug-in game call " hnefatafl " that were crafted from the same eccentric of Harlan Stone as the miniature .
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While it ’s impossible to have sex exactly who carve these objects and why , Traustadóttir offer one possibility .
" Someone sat in the wintertime night , in the darkness , carving chess pieces , " Traustadóttir muse , " and then this animate being for a child . "
The excavation is due to twine up soon , after which the archeologist will start studying the thousands of artifacts they have recovered .
