The experts from Norway's Museum of Cultural History in Oslo had been unsure of the condition of the two women, believed to be an Oseberg queen and her servant. They're hoping their bones can reveal new information about them through DNA testing.
The bodies had been sealed in an aluminium casket in the late 1940s in an earlier attempt at preservation. The casket was then replaced in the burial mound's sarcophagus.
Workers at the gravesite southwest of Oslo discovered Monday that the casket was damaged at one end and that it was sitting in nine centimeters of water, believed to be formed from condensation inside the sarcophagus.
The casket itself had remained sealed, and it was taken to the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo and opened Tuesday morning.
There, more experts hope to unravel whether the women in the grave were Queen Åsa, the mother of Halvdan Svarte, and her daughter, or a Viking chief’s wife and her servant. Bones were intact and the 1,200-year-old remains appeared in remarkably good shape.
On Thursday, experts will also extract a casket from the Gokstad burial mound and open it on Friday. It holds the remains of a male Viking that they also hope to keep from disintegrating.
