Researchers discovered the wreck during the execution of the Mission Mjøsa project, which aims to map the 140-square-mile (363-square-kilometer) lake bed using high-resolution sonar technology.“My expectation was that there could also be shipwrecks discovered while we were mapping dumped munitions — that turned out to be the case,” said Øyvind Ødegård, a senior researcher in marine archaeology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the mission’s principal investigator.Since the shipwreck was found in the middle of the lake, Ødegård believed the ship had gone down in bad weather.“Wooden shipwrecks can be very well preserved in freshwater, since they lack the organisms that usually eat wood that are found, for instance, in the ocean,” Ødegård said.“I assume that if we are going to find intact Iron Age or medieval vehicles in Norway, then (Lake Mjøsa) would be the place to look, since it’s big enough to have had its own distinct maritime history with a lot of seafaring and trade.”During the Viking Age, the lake served as a big trade route, although there are notable gaps in what is known before and during these times, according to Ødegård."