Use of Cannabis in the Viking age

I have read this article: Cannabis found in Viking grave (https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/09/20/cannabis-discovered-viking-grave/)

The article is about the Oseberg boat Grave in Tørnsberg, Norway. The article seems to be quite accurate, except for the wording. It is true that Cannabis was found in a leather purse found with the elder lady (the word sack seems to imply something larger). What the article doesn’t tell us that the cannabis found was in the form of seeds and that seems to be forgotten in the article.

There seems to be no doubt that cannabis was farmed in Norway during the Viking Age. Besides the purse with the seeds found in The Oseberg Mound and other places, we also have found hemp pollen in a bog in Vest-Agder in Norway. Hemp pollen doesn’t move very long, but a bog would be a bad place to grow hemp. This seems to indicate that the hemp was placed there to loosen the fibers so that it would be possible to make rope or clothes from the fibers. (From Norwegian Vikings grew hemp)

I’m not aware of which kind of hemp was found in Viking-age Norway, not all strains have a high percentage of THC which gives it the psychoactive effects and as said it’s likely that the hemp pollen found in Vest-Agder was grown to make fibers, but that doesn’t mean, that they didn’t also use hemp for its psychoactive effects. We just don’t know.

This page was deleted by a mistake at the end of 2019. This blog post is from the old page and has been reposted on the new page. The original article was posted in September 2016.

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