Patron - Magnus Magnusson Report on 2001 work is HERE

Introduction
The Viking Unst Project is a multi-national collaborative venture between Shetland Amenity Trust and the University of Copenhagen.

Unst is the most northerly inhabited island in Shetland and is dense in the remains of rural Viking settlement.

The project aims to investigate the nature of that settlement placing it into context and presenting the results to the public.

A preliminary year (1996) has been funded by Shetland Amenity Trust, Shetland Enterprise Company, Historic Scotland and the University of Copenhagen.

Preliminary Results
So far 30 Viking house sites have been identified in Unst by Steffen Stumman Hansen. He checked existing records, tapped into local knowledge and examined areas which he felt were suitable for settlement, with a high degree of success.

Excavation began at one of these sites, near Belmont, in 1996. The work revealed a planticrub which overlay two Viking/Norse house sites. Work on the later of these houses has uncovered a hearth and an external drain. The earlier appears to have trenches which have been cut into the subsoil.

Similar trenches were found when a trial trench was dug across the house site at Hamar in 1994, which suggest a sunken floor. If the floors were sunken, then Viking houses in the Northern Isles may not have stood as high above ground as the timber houses more commonly known from Scandinavia and British towns, a feature which would be advantageous in areas which lacked large quantities of indigenous wood and where the climate was prone to be stormy.

The finds from the Belmont site have been rich in steatite, and include a toy millstone from a model of a horizontal mill, and a hanging lamp.

Future Work

Systematic survey will be carried out in order to map sites of all periods as they occur in the landscape, which will help to put the Viking settlement into context.

Funding is currently being sought to extend the excavation to include other house sites, to examine ecclesiastical sites and potentially also burial sites, and to carry out environmental analysis in the area.

For further Information

Val Turner
Shetland Amenity Trust
Garthspool
Lerwick
Shetland
ZE1 0NY
UK