Jelling stone ship

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The Jelling stone ship is a stone ship, the longest known to have existed, remains of which lie under the two royal barrows at Jelling, Denmark. The Jelling ship was formerly thought to have extended between the two mounds and been 170 metres (560 ft) long, by far the longest stone ship discovered. However, recent archaeological research and the re-evaluation of large pits on the west side of the north mound which were noted in the 1960s has led to a different reconstruction, in which the ship had the north mound as its centre rather than its stern and was 354 metres (1,161 ft) long; this length corresponds to 1,200 Roman feet, and the Trelleborg fortresses were also measured out in Roman feet. King Harald Bluetooth erected a great mound, the largest burial mound in Denmark, over an existing Bronze Age burial mound at Jelling, and buried in it the remains of his father Gorm the Old. Later, to the south of it he raised an even higher empty mound, which a runestone raised by Gorm describes as the grave of Harald's mother, Queen Thyra. One end of the stone ship is preserved under this southern mound. Between the two mounds, Harald placed a larger runestone in memory of both his parents, and the smaller stone now stands beside it. The two stones are now in the churchyard on the south side of Jelling church, the fourth church to occupy the site south of the north mound. Still during the 10th century, Gorm's body was moved from the north mound, which now contains only the grave goods, to a grave under the church. The triangle of stones under the south mound was previously thought to have enclosed a temple and the runestone to Thyra, but when the base of the...