Port an Eilean Mhòir ship burial

A Viking boat burial lies on the Ardnamurchan peninsula in the Scottish Highlands, at the north coast between Achateny and Ockle. The site is the most westerly point on Great Britain and dates from the 10th century. The outline of a small boat, about five metres long, still shows in the ground with around two hundred rivets and fragments of wood. Stones filled the vessel, perhaps as part of a ritual act. The remains of a man were found inside, along with weapons and everyday objects. The burial is one of the most important Norse graves ever found in Britain. It is the first fully intact Viking boat burial excavated on the UK mainland. Dr Hannah Cobb, co-director of the Ardnamurchan Transitions Project, calls it a key discovery. The project, led by the Universities of Manchester and Leicester, has uncovered earlier sites such as an Iron Age fort and a Neolithic chambered cairn. The team’s work shows how people used this landscape for thousands of years. Visitors reach the site near Port an Eilean Mhòir on a quiet stretch of coast. The burial mound sits close to older Neolithic and Bronze Age burial cairns, linking the Viking era to much earlier times. The grave goods include a shield placed over the man’s chest, a bent sword, a broken spear, an axe, a knife, an Irish bronze ring-pin, pottery, a Norwegian whetstone, a drinking horn, a sickle, tongs and a ladle. The finds suggest the man may have been a warrior, merchant or explorer, though scholars still debate his identity.