On a small island off the coast of Norway sat the ruins of a 500-year-old fortress. The fortress’s historical past was well-known and a lot of the construction had been extensively studied, however the courtyard hid a secret — till now.
Steinvikholm fortress was constructed on Steinvikholmen island within the 1520s as a stronghold for a Catholic archbishop, in keeping with the Giant Norwegian Encyclopedia. The advanced has a central courtyard surrounded by 4 wings and two spherical towers on reverse sides.
The central courtyard was the one part of the castle that archaeologists had not utterly explored, the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Analysis mentioned in a Jan. 24 information launch.
In a nook of the yard, the bottom had collapsed, prompting hypothesis a few hidden construction, the supervisor of the regional antiquities affiliation, Merethe Skjelfjord Kristiansen, mentioned within the launch.
Intrigued, archaeologists determined to scan the courtyard with floor penetrating radars to see if there was something buried there.
There was.
The radar scans recognized the ruins of a construction buried simply over 2 toes down, the discharge mentioned. The fragmented construction was rectangular and measured about 26 toes by about 23 toes.
The ruins don’t hook up with the encompassing fortress or align with it, the institute mentioned. As a substitute, the ruins in all probability belong to a separate constructing and are almost certainly older than the fortress.
A pair of pictures present the radar scans of the courtyard and the brown define of the construction.
Archaeologists don’t know the precise age of the buried ruins or what function the construction served, the institute mentioned.
The key construction could be a hidden cellar or a short lived workshop used in the course of the fortress’s building after which destroyed, archaeologists mentioned.
Radar scans of the realm outdoors the fortress revealed traces of an previous street and a effectively, the institute mentioned.
A YouTube video shared by Ståle Kotte exhibits the Steinvikholm castle from above.
Steinvikholmen island is about 240 miles north of Oslo.
Google Translate was used to translate the information launch from the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Analysis (NIKU) and the article from the Giant Norwegian Encyclopedia.
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