The Ship’s Setting at Tjelvar’s Grave Dated to circa 1100-500 BC, Tjelvar’s Grave is one of the best-preserved ship-shaped stone settings in Gotland. The grave is 18 meters (59.06 ft.) long and 5 meters (16.40 ft.) wide. The height of the gunwale stones diminishes towards the center of the ship, which has also been filled with stones to form a boat-deck. A plundered stone-slab coffin, containing cremated bones and a few potsherds, was uncovered in an excavation in the 1930s. The earliest skeleton found on Gotland so far has been dated to 8000 years ago, but this was before the ship-shaped burials were popular. These types of sites replaced the cairn style grave site, which was made from a rough pile of stones. The stone ship, or ship setting, was an early burial custom in Scandinavia. The grave or cremation burial was surrounded by tightly or loose fit slabs or stones in the outline of a ship. Scholars have suggested that the stone ship developed out of the desire to allow the dead to pass into the afterlife with all their mortal belongings. Alternatively, the ship was specifically associated with the journey to Hel, or where the dead arrived in order to enter the afterlife in Scandinavian mythology.