Norwegian Vikings grew hemp

The Sosteli farmsted, in Norway's southermmost Vest-Agder County, offers strong evidence that Vikings farmers actively cultivated cannabis, a recent analysis shows. The cannabis remains from the farmsted date from 650 AD to 800 AD.

This is not the first sign of hemp cultivation in Norway this far back in time, but the find is much more extensive than previous discoveries.

“The other instances were just individual finds of pollen grains. Much more has been found here,” says Frans-Arne Stylegar, an archaeologist and the county's curator.

Rope and textiles

Sosteli is also further away from current-day settlements than other sites where cannabis finds have been made.

Hemp is the same plant as cannabis, or marijuana. But nothing indicates that the Vikings cultivated the plant to get people high. Most likely it was grown for making textiles and rope.

Found and forgotten

The material, which re-emerged by chance, stems from a Norwegian-Danish research project at Sosteli in the 1940s and 1950s. Scientists took samples of pollen from a bog during the original dig.

“The samples had been forgotten, so it was really exciting to discover them,” says Catherine Jessen of the National Museum of Denmark.

he data was stored in the museum’s archives. Stylegar and Jessen presented their discovery in a recent issue of the journal Viking.

Jessen is a geologist with pollen sampling as a specialty. She says that the bog where the samples were taken has now been drained. The peat is drier now and the chances of making a similar discovery today would be much slimmer.

FULL ARTICLE: http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.dk/2012/12/norwegian-vikings...