According to Ancient Origins, in the process of expanding a route running through the village of Vinjeora, Vinjefjorden region, Norway, archaeologists have found four ancient tombs.
The four overlapping graves are partly a common Viking burial custom, said Raymond Sauvage, an archaeologist at the NTNU University Museum.
One of them is a left-handed warrior's grave
buried with a very heavy sword. The warrior tomb is estimated to be 1,000 years old.
Archaeologist Astrid Kviseth lifted the tatkuink sword from the 1,000-year-old tomb and placed it in a prepared padded box. She didn't know exactly how heavy the sword was, but noticed that the wielder must be extremely strong to swing it.
For the Vikings
the sword was an heirloom and extremely sacred that the father left to his son and passed down through the generations. The sword is also a symbol of the status of Viking warriors. Swords at that time were difficult to forge, so they were very expensive and rare.
In a book written in Icelandic, archaeologists describe finding 100 ancient Viking weapons, but only 16 were swords. In Viking times, swords were worth as much as gold or the equivalent of 16 dairy cows.
In medieval Viking tombs
swords were often placed to the right of the remains, Dr. Sauvage said. Most people are right-handed so warriors often wear their swords on the left side for easy drawing.
Most of the swords in the grave were placed on the viking clothings viking outfit right because the Vikings believed that the afterlife was a mirror image of the real world, Dr. Sauvage said.
In the newly unearthed warrior's tomb, the sword was again to the left of the remains. Dr Sauvage thinks this is a sign that this warrior is inherently left-handed.