In the late 19th century, two Norwegian farmers made an astonishing discovery.

The people of Vestfold's Sandeford region had long been aware of the myths and legends surrounding

their homeland. Tales of high kings and ancient treasures to be found within the great burial mounds and

hilltop cairns that dotted the landscape. Yet guardian spirits were said to haunt the region too,

warding off all but the hardiest of grave robbers, and keeping their secrets interred within over the long centuries since the age of heroes.

Finally, one day in 1880, the sons of the owner of the Gottschstad farm,

undeterred by the legends surrounding their

father's property, and encouraged by a new age of scientific inquiry, began digging in the

frozen earth. Little did they know it at the time, but what they found there, hidden for centuries, would

change the Western world forever. There, lying just underneath the surface, protected by the unusually

preservative clay of southern Norway, lay the bow of a magnificently preserved sea vessel, the very first

of its kind to be found in the modern world. Realising the magnitude of what they had unearthed,

the two men called in professional help in the form of archaeologist Nicolay Nicolasa.

By the middle of the 19th century, a revolutionary new set of scientific methods

had swept through the Western world, completely transforming the ways in which people viewed the past.

No longer was history simply the domain of elderly academics pouring over dusty old tomes.

It was now something that could be discovered, could be seen and could be held.

The discovery and excavation of ancient Mayan cities in the

1830s had sparked off a newfound interest in the past. And later finds, such as Heinrich Schleeman's,

famous excavations of the city of Troy in the 1860s, previously thought to be little more than myth, inspired a new

generation of archaeologists the world over.

In Scandinavia, however, the movement initially had made little impact. There were no great cities of old to be uncovered in the north, and no accompanying flurry of

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