In the 1300s, four young girls were buried below the floor of the Uvdal Stave Church in Norway and they have been rediscovered in a museum collection.

The Museum of Cultural History in Norway has held the remains of the four girls since 1978 when archaeologists were investigating the old church. Beneath the floor they uncovered graves in layers with some of the bodies resting on pillows of flowers. The girls were found without coverings or coffins but they retained their clothing and belongings, which had been preserved in very good condition. The remains were lifted and transported, together with the soil on which they rested, to the Museum where they lay in a box in the basement until the 1990s when Marianne Vedeler  found them while researching clothing from the Middle Ages. Curiously all four of the girls were buried with red mittens, and all had died at the same time.

The decision was made to display one of the bodies in the Museum where, despite the obvious fragility of the garments, she remains in her burial attire.

_{Header image: the interior of the stave church, Photograph by DBerdasov – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=84635438}