Resumen de Halls at Borre: the discovery of three large buildings at a Late Iron and Viking Age royal burial site in Norway

Christer Tonning, Petra Schneidhofer, Erich Nau, Terje Gansum, Vibeke Lia, Lars Gustavsen, Roland Filzwieser, Mario Wallner, Monica Kristiansen, Wolfgang Neubauer, Knut Paasche, Immo Trinks

• Borre in Norway is famous for its Late Nordic Iron and Viking Age (AD 400–1050) monumental burial mounds. Recently, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys have revealed three large structures close to the mound cemetery. Their unusual layout and size, and location within such a prominent burial site, suggest that they were halls—high-status buildings mentioned in the Nordic sagas. The authors present the GPR results, discuss the buildings’ typological classification and provide a preliminary chronological framework. The latter suggests that the buildings coexisted with some of the burial mounds, and raises important questions about the significance of such buildings in Nordic mound-building societies.