9 VIKING GJELLESTAD, 9–14 ISSN 0332-608x – DOI: https://doi.org/10.5617/viking.11908 Contact: Knut Paasche, E-mail: knut.paasche@niku.no Norwegian institute of Cultural Heritage Research Knut Paasche, Kjetil Loſtsgarden and Christian Løchsen Rødsrud Gjellestad introduction, background and historical framework. Abstract The Gjellestad ship, discovered in autumn 2018 by the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research in Østfold county, sparked significant archaeological interest. The Viking Nativity project, funded by The Research Council of Norway, aims to understand the development of regional polities in Scandi- navia from AD 200 to 1000, taking the Gjellestad ship and its landscape as a starting point. Researchers employed advanced geophysical surveys and traditional excavation methods, uncovering Iron Age houses, burial mounds, and other significant structures. This first publication from the project presents initial findings and situating them within a broader cultural-historical context. The project research aims to establish Gjellestad as a central site for understanding the political and economic processes that shaped early historic Scandinavia, while also mapping regional variations in the archaeological record. The spark that ignited this research project was the discovery of the Gjellestad ship in the autumn of 2018 by the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU). The surveying was initiated by Østfold County Council (ØCC) aſter a landowner planned to drain farmland (Figure 1). Archaeologists Lars Gustavsen and Erich Nau, both associated with NIKU, conducted the geophysical surveys that led to the uncovering of this amazing archaeological find. The discovery attracted massive international interest, partly because in this particular landscape in Østfold County no one had ever found any evidence to suggest that a ship could be hidden below the ground – this “ship” was considered something of an anomaly. In 2019 the Directorate for Cultural Heritage (Riksantikvaren) funded the verification project to investigate the degree of preservation of the ship anomaly using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), as well as to collect material for radiocarbon-dating of other features detected with the GPR. The Museum of Cultural History (MCH) at the University of Oslo led inves- tigations of the ship anomaly, while ØCC led the remaining part of the surveying, mainly through trial trenching and sampling. MCH’s investigations showed that the ship’s state of preservation was poor, with the remaining wood both fragile and prone to attacks from soſt rot bacteria, causing uncontrolled deterioration. On the advice of the cultural heritage