The Vang burial field is the largest known burial ground in Norway, with around 900 mounds spread across a 700-metre stretch of open cultural landscape just outside Oppdal. Most date from the Viking Age, roughly 750 to 1000 AD, though excavations in 1999 revealed that some graves go back to the Roman and Migration periods, several centuries earlier. What makes Vang unusual is that it appears to be a communal graveyard: several farms shared the same site, which is uncommon in Norway where most burial mounds sit on individual farm properties.
Archaeological finds include weapons, Irish bronze artefacts showing long-distance trade contacts, and arrowheads that tell us hunting and trapping were the main livelihoods here. Most of the finds are now in the Museum of Natural History and Archaeology in Trondheim. The site itself is freely accessible, and the low mounds and cairns in the open meadow are easy to walk among. No dramatic standing stones or reconstructions; just an enormous field of small bumps in the grass, each one covering someone who lived here a thousand years ago.
Archaeological finds include weapons, Irish bronze artefacts showing long-distance trade contacts, and arrowheads that tell us hunting and trapping were the main livelihoods here. Most of the finds are now in the Museum of Natural History and Archaeology in Trondheim. The site itself is freely accessible, and the low mounds and cairns in the open meadow are easy to walk among. No dramatic standing stones or reconstructions; just an enormous field of small bumps in the grass, each one covering someone who lived here a thousand years ago.
