Medieval shipwreck discovered at bottom of Norwegian lake in search of WWII munitions

A 700-year-old shipwreck has been discovered by archaeologists while trying to locate unexploded ordnance from World War II that was dumped in the bottom of a lake in Norway

A medieval shipwreck has been found at the bottom of a lake in Norway (

Image: FFI/NTNU)

Archaeologists discovered what may be one of Norway's oldest shipwrecks during a hunt for unexploded ordnance from World War II.

Recently released sonar images show the 33-foot-long (10-meter) wooden ship's hull at a depth of about 1,350 feet (410 m) below the surface of Lake Mjøsa, about 60 miles (100 km) north of Norwegian capital, Oslo.

Maritime archaeologist Øyvind Ødegård explained that the construction of the wreck suggests it was built 700 years ago, shortly after the transition from Viking ships to medieval designs with a recognizable bow and stern.< /p>

The archaeologist said, "We only have the acoustic [sonar] images of the wreckage.

A sonar image of the sinking (

Picture:

FFI/NTNU)

"But it appears from the data that there is the outline of something that could be a stern - and if so, then it doesn't really appear until the 1300s."

He also suggested that the ship would have had a single mast with a square sail - much like a Viking ship

Mr. Ødegård is part of a project led by the Norwegian Defense Research Institute (FFI) in conjunction with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) to locate hundreds of tons of excess munitions dumped in Lake Mjøsa between the 1940s and the 1970s.

Images of the wreckage taken by the researcher show the frame of a 'clinker-built' ship, a traditional Norse shipbuilding method in which the planks of the hull overlap, making the hull lighter .

During the medieval period this method was replaced by smoothly joined planks on stronger "carvel-built" vessels, which was a Mediterranean innovation.