The poem describes a Viking-age grave: a small boat buried in a dune, with the bodies of seven people inside. Grave-robbers have opened it and taken nearly everything, leaving only a bronze hammer of Thor, a coin or two, and some crosses. Bonta sees those crosses as "hammers on their way to being men," a neat image of one faith slowly giving way to another.
The speaker watches without judgment, and the tone is quiet and observant. The dead were young, worn down by disease or hunger, and now lie "like beads from a broken cord," a line that feels both tender and sad. The last stanza turns to the hungry, treeless land, where wood is precious. The boat will dissolve into the soil, leaving only rows of iron nails that keep the outline of a belief. The mood is hushed and elegiac, a calm acceptance that even faith and memory fade, leaving only small traces behind.