Avaldsnes Church

Today’s stop on the Virtual Book Tour is this interview at Fodder For Fiction. I think it’s a good one; maybe I bared my soul a little too much.

Sorry to go back to Viking news, but it’s all I’ve got today, and this is big stuff in my strange little world. This news item was recently published by the website forskning.no (“forskning” means research). The article is in Norwegian, but my translation follows:

During the summer of 2006 post holes from the Viking Age were found at Avaldsnes, near Karmsund.

In November of that year discoveries indicated that what had been found was the royal farm of King Harald Finehair.

But it took several years before the all clear for excavation came on Thursday, says Haugesunds Avis.

“The answer was the one we’d been hoping for. As I understand the response of the national antiquities authority, there will now be excavations, beginning next May. There are a number of conditions the antiquities authorities indicate, but I believe we can say that we have the go-ahead for excavations,” says project chief Dagfinn Skree, a professor at the University of Oslo.

National antiquarian Jørn Holme is also enthusiastic about the project getting under way.

“This is one of the most important projects we have in this country. At the same time I believe and hope that it will be an important event for the people of Karmøy and Haugesund,” says Holme.

The first thing that occurs to me on reading the above is that bureaucracies are the same everywhere. It would appear (unless my translation is way off) that the archaeologists got a reply from the government that seems to say they can go ahead, but they’re not entirely sure.

For those of you who missed your Norwegian history classes, King Harald Finehair (or Fairhair, depending on the translator) is the monarch traditionally credited with beginning the consolidation of Norway as a unified kingdom. Like all Viking kings, he lived a roving life, moving from one royal farm to another, at locations scattered strategically around the country. But his chief residence was Avaldsnes on Karmøy, near present-day Haugesund. This interests me particularly because my great-grandfather was baptized in Avaldsnes church, and several of my ancestors are buried there.

In related news, during the International Vinland Seminar in Chicago I met a gentleman from Stavanger who recently got funding to begin a general survey of Hafrsfjord (a body of water you will know about if you’ve read my Erling books. If you haven’t, do it now. I’ll wait). Hafrsfjord is the only Viking Age sea battle we can actually locate geographically with any precision, but nobody has ever looked for artifacts on the fjord bottom. Once they find something (assuming they do), they’ll have to evaluate whether to bring it up, or to leave it undisturbed in situ. It all depends on the condition of what they may find, and how much money they have to spend.