Discover a shipwreck of medieval boat in a lake of Noruega
At the bottom of Noruega’s largest lake, a shipwreck a hundred years ago was in perfect condition. The boat, with its singular posts from the popa and superpuestos tablones, reveals a moment in the maritime history of the lake and is estimated to date from between the years 1300 and 1800.
Investigators discovered the rest of the shipwreck during the execution of the Mission Mjøsa project, which has as its objective to map the lake’s fish at 140 thousand square meters (363 square kilometers) using high resolution sonar technology.
The shipwreck discovered was found at a depth of 411 meters (1,350 feet) and was captured in sonar images. The images revealed that the boat averaged 33 feet (10 meters) of exploration.
The mellow water environment and the lack of activity of the seas at such depths have kept the vessel in perfect conditions, except for the corrosion of some fishing rods.
On the popa there are indicios of a central rudder, a characteristic that normally does not appear before the finales of siglo XIII. Combining these two characteristics, archaeologists could estimate the origin of the boats not before 1300 or after 1850.
The boat seems to have been built using a Nordic technique, in which the body tablones are superposed between yes. This method was used during the Viking Age.
Given that the shipwreck was found in the middle of the lake, it was believed that the boat had a hundid in bad weather. It is most probable that the boat would use square-shaped sails, which would prove to be difficult to navigate for the people of the sea trapped in conditions of high winds.
To map the bottom of the lake, the investigation team used a latest generation autonomous underwater vehicle called Hugin.
