“Fingerprints are very rare for this time period and area,” said archaeologist Mikael Fauvelle of Lund University, noting the amazing find on Scandinavia’s oldest plank-built boat. Resentenced on a bit of tar caulking, this partial print is actually a direct human impression from more than Two Thousand years ago, probably from either an artisan or seafarer during the boat’s construction or maintenances. This tiny bit of information could very well solve one of one hundred-year-old mysteries regarding precursors to an attempted seaborne attack on the Danish island of Als, which had been perpetrated by warriors in the 4th century BCE.
Hjortspring boat, found at Hjortspring Mose in the 1880s but only excavated in the 1920s, is a feat of pre-Roman Iron Age engineering. About 20 meters long, the Hjortspring boat was constructed using lime wood planks latched together by cordage, its tips extending in a flair. Accommodating 24 men, the Hjortspring boat was discovered with iron spearheads and shields enough to equip 80 warriors. It is believed that the attacking fleet consisted of as many as four boats. Having vanquished the people of Als, the winning side sunk one of the attacking boats into the bog, together with the weapons taken.
The oxygen-poor conditions of the bog successfully conserved the boat’s organic compounds, allowing today’s scientists to analyze them using very sophisticated methods. Gas chromatography/mass spectrometry analysis showed that the caulking was made from a combination of animal fat and pine pitch. Interestingly, pine trees were scarce in Denmark and northern Germany, but more abundant in the pine-lined coasts of the eastern side of the Baltic Sea. The presence of this chemical marker indicates that the boat very likely hailed from the pine-lined coastal regions of northern Poland, Bornholm, or Blekinge or Gotland in Sweden. As Fauvelle wrote: “If the boat came from the pine forest-rich coastal regions of the Baltic Sea, it means that the warriors who attacked the island of Als chose to launch a maritime raid over hundreds of kilometers of open sea.”
Radiocarbon dating of the lime bast cordage that was not affected by the preservatives that had been applied to the wood after excavation revealed that the dates ranged from 381 161 BCE. This corresponds with the pre-Roman Iron Age and shows that the Hjortspring boat was indeed more than a thousand years before the time of the Vikings. However, the attack that the Vikings carried out shows their level of navigational acumen and organization that was similar to their counterparts in the Vikings. They would have required navigational skills and adequate ships for the attack that would have taken place over water.
The discovery of the fingerprint feature lends a human touch to this tale of distant warfare. Even where ancient fingerprints are not capable of comparison against a known set of prints, such as in today’s forensic science, they still carry the possibility of providing biological data. Bioarchaeologists are determined to obtain the ancient DNA from the caulking tar, which would provide genetic information about the individuals who constructed and sailed the Hjortspring boat. By use of dendrochronology, they will be able to identify where the warriors of Hjortspring originated.
This study also highlights the use of state-of-the-art imaging in archaeology. The use of X-ray tomography and digital 3D modeling enabled the researchers to examine the fingerprint and internal details of the caulking, which could not have been done otherwise without damaging the artifact. Such techniques, which originate in industrial CT scanning technology used in medicine, have since been developed to further archaeological purposes in cultural heritage studies, allowing analysts to recreate images from basic radiography facilities in museum collections.
As with the analysis of the fingerprint, these methods gave archaeologists their first glimpse inside the boat. As a maritime historian, it is fascinating to see Hjortspring as an important step towards the development of northern shipbuilding. Indeed, because it was a sewn-plank vessel, it shows a sophisticated understanding of materials and hydrodynamics, which would be found much later in the development of the clinker-built Viking vessels. However, its long-range raid also shows just how much conflict, coalition formation, and trade may have already been occurring within Scandinavian society during the Iron Age. Indeed, as Ole Kastholm, a historian of ancient sea-faring societies, observes:
“We have a modern tendency to underestimate the people of the past and their achievements but they actually rowed and paddled in small, open vessels across the North Sea, Skagerrak and the Baltic Sea.” The fingerprint in tar is more than a remarkable archaeological find; it represents a literal time-spanning nexus, a direct historical connection between contemporary researchers and an individual whose life’s path crossed that of a peerlessly fascinating event in prehistoric naval warfare.
