9th Century Viking Settlement
The 2010 International Viking Conference confirmed the site as a longphort - a defensive enclosure built to protect the ships of Viking raiders and the treasure which they amassed, including silver, local captives (whom they would sell as slaves) and cattle.
About 4,000 objects including silver ingots, lead weights, ships nails, Byzantine coins and Viking weaponry have been recovered through preliminary surface test trenching. Much of the metal work found at Woodstown dates back to the mid to late 800s.
Work being carried out on the grave suggests that it is one of the best equipped such graves from Britain or Ireland. Included were a sword (which may have come from Carolingian Francia rather than Norway itself), a spearhead showing silver inlay, a shield which seemed to have been placed over the dead man’s face, an axe and whetstone.
The Viking inhabitants of Woodstown had some very small and apparently personalised weights which they would use to measure very small amounts of silver. The most common unit of measurement is Scandinavian and does not appear to be evident at other sites in Ireland.
Woodstown Vikings seem to have been trading as individuals, buying and selling with locals. This pattern of commerce seems to be confined to the area of Kilkenny and Waterford which may mean a distinctive and quite unique type of Viking colonisation and settlement in the south-east of Ireland.
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