Scar boat burial

The wood of the 6.5 m long and 1.5 m wide boat had rotted away, leaving more than 300 iron rivets. It was placed in a boat-shaped stone-lined enclosure which was packed with further stones. There were also stones forming a walled enclosure inside the boat itself, within which were found the remains of three bodies. Sand within the boat lining was found not to match sand from Orkney, Shetland, nor the Scottish mainland, indicating that the boat was not made in Scotland, and that both it and its occupants may have come from Norway or elsewhere. The man was aged about 30 when he died, the woman about 70, and the child—of unknown sex—about 10 or 11. There is evidence that the man had rowed a…