What could be more iconic of the Viking Age than the idea of the longships that carried Norse peoples to raids and faraway lands? These clench nails or clench bolts as they are sometimes called, may have once part of one of those longships, at least in theory. They are made from iron and were found as part of a structure covering an Anglo-Saxon grave in Minster, England.¹ While the nature of the structure that these particular clench bolts were found in is unknown, similar bolts were conventionally used to hold the planks of a ship together. Sometimes they were buried in graves either to represent a boat or as part of a boat that was actually being buried.² These bolts may have been part of a boat that was used to cover the grave. While not inherently an Anglo-Saxon style of ship, Norse ship building techniques spread to England and Europe through continued contact.²
Clench nails are a particularly interesting piece of Viking Age archaeology because they are representative of the forward progress in ship-building that the Norse developed. Prior to much of the Norse expansion into Europe and England, ships were built in a different style that rode low in the water. However, in a place such as Scandinavia which is full of rivers, water travel was very important and the Norse soon developed better boats that rode higher in the water, had better sails, and could therefore travel easily down rivers.² These ships were clinker-built style ships, which had a different shape and a full keel. With this new style of ship, the planks were laid on top of each other and held together by these nails that were punched through and then bent.² Without these boats, the Norse would not have been able to make their way so far into European and English territory and the story of Norse integration and immigration would have been very different. These clench nails are the legacy of that forward progress that allowed for expansion.

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