Traces they left behind

How do we know?

We can begin to gain an understanding of the bigger picture by combining knowledge from different disciplines.

The historian reads and interprets documents, the art historian looks at art and architecture, while the archaeologist looks for traces of buildings, roads, jetties and objects.

Having received reports of something resembling a rock collection, architect Gerhard Fischer from the National Trust in Bergen then uncovered the north-western part of the ruins of the church of St Margaret.

Inside the ruins he found four skeletons, marble fragments, glass and brick. Later excavations identified 64 graves near the church ruins, all of them from the Middle Ages.

Another small find in the vicarage fields was recorded in 1941, when archaeologist Per Fett from Bergens Museum (now the University Museum) discovered remnants of buildings and utensils.

They found remains of homes, fireplaces, wells, roads, boat landings, boathouses, jetties, human and animal bones and no fewer than 45,000 objects. The artefacts are now stored in the University Museum’s medieval archaeological collections in Bergen.

During the 1967 excavations they also unearthed a large site by the Katavågen bay to the east of Borgund church. There they found building ruins, fireplaces, 300 graves and plough tracks along with boathouses and landing stages. In one of the graves they discovered an Anglo-Saxon coin from the early 11th century. This tells us that the burial ground was most probably from the early 11th century.

In 1989 a smaller excavation was carried out in the south-western part of the ruins of St Margaret's church. On that occasion they found large quantities of brick, probably from the church floor, as well as marble fragments from the church wall.

There they found remnants of earlier dug structures dated to the early Middle Ages.

The ruins of St Margaret's church were cleaned up in 2020. During the process they came upon ceramics, flint, glass from the church windows, bones, teeth, nails, marble and brick fragments. The most exciting find was two dice made from bones.

St Margaret's church
The church of St Margaret is one of four medieval churches mentioned in the sources.

The oldest source to describe the church is the last will and testament of the nobleman Bjarne Erlingsson in 1309.

The church was a Romanesque long church, probably dating from the 12th century, built from stone and marble. It measured around 20 by 10 metres.

One well shaft was made up of 2 1/2 barrels stacked on top of each other. The water in the wells was used for crafting and for putting out fires. There was always a risk of fire in the densely populated timber-built town.

In many of the wells we have found remnants of shoes, wooden spades and even a toy boat with mast holes.

“The new boat he had whittled was a fine thing, with sails made of leather that his father had found. He wanted to try the boat in the sea but knew he was not allowed, so he took it to the well. He held the boat by the mast top, but then he lost his grip, and the boat disappeared in a splash …”

Perhaps that is what happened to the boat that the archaeologists found in the well some 900 years later?

These are more recent piles that the archaeologists put there to replace the old piles that had been excavated.

The piles and the relationships between them are clearly visible, and it makes one wonder whether they might have been used for warehouses, to dry fish on or as homes.