Järnålder

In this essay I analyze the stone circles known as domarringar in northern Småland. In order to understand the stone circles, one must understand the society that built them, I argue. Therefore I first date them so I can put them in a context. After dating them to late Roman Iron Age and Migration period, I discuss hill forts, gold bracteates and rotary querns as a starting point for understanding the society and ideology that built the stone circles. I argue that the stone circles are a product of the midgård-ideology and that they have to be understood in that light. The stone circles are always found close to a road and often relatively high in the landscape. They manifest boundaries in the landscape.

This article looks at using areas where there are high status remains from the Iron Age
to identify places with centralisation tendencies in the county of Västernorrland. The
remains chosen as indicators for these high status areas are: monumental burial mounds,
large burial grounds, place names indicating cult and/or central administrative functions
and high status finds such as the remains of horses and/or horse trappings, weapons,
Vestland cauldrons, precious metals, clasp buttons, bear phalanxes and bone arrowheads.
Twenty six areas have been identified as exhibiting tendencies towards centralisation
to various degrees. There is, however, a big difference between the provinces of Ångermanland
and Medelpad with regard to the number of excavations that have been
undertaken. Of the 26 areas in this study, nine have the largest type of mounds, ”Kings
barrows” (Sw: Kungshögar), and eight areas have the largest type of burial grounds with
more than 20 graves. The study is based on the hypothesis that the largest mounds,
Kungshögar, symbolised the highest strata of the Middle Norrland society while the
”Big mounds” and ”Large mounds” represented the middle ranks of Iron Age society
in Central Norrland. In Medelpad the areas with the strongest centralisation tendencies
were Skön/Alnö, Tuna/Attmar and Kvissle-Nolby. However the Timrå valley, the
Selånger area, Klingstatjärn and Indal exhibit clear indications of relatively high status.
The Ångermanland, Överlännäs, Torsåker/Styrnäs, Nora, Säbrå/Härnö and Gudmundrå
areas contained the most evidence of high status and tendencies towards centralisation.
The smaller areas in this study probably represent larger farmsteads or areas with
a local "Big Man" while the larger areas may have been governed by a chieftain.

Sigtuna is Sweden’s oldest extant medieval town. The predominant narrative has been that the town was founded on virgin land around 970/980 A.D. However, in the surrounding landscape there is abundant evidence of an older settled environment, while artefacts of older character have been found in the occupation deposits in the city. Although these archaeological objects have to some extent been taken into consideration in previous research, they have never been viewed collectively in the light of possible activity on the site before 970 A.D. The first part of this study involved identifying relevant artefacts in the collection at Sigtuna museum. The artefacts were then assembled in a database and studied chronologically and contextually together with a visualization of their spatial distribution made in ArcMap. To enable a deeper understanding of what kind of activity that could have taken place before the founding of the town, the site’s different prerequisites for earlier activity have been studied. With this study a new perspective is presented which highlights an activity phase preceding the historical town of Sigtuna, thus extending knowledge of the site’s earlier past.

In the Uppåkra house the place for a possible high seat dedicated to the woman is marked out by a deposit consisting of a bronze beaker with embossed gold-foil bands and a glass bowl originated from the area around the Black Sea. These objects acted as props in the drinking ceremonies and social activities involving gift giving carried out by the queen or the lady of the house. The exclusive nature of these objects as well as the functions in which they were used by the woman illuminate her importance in the aristocratic hall and grant her a similar seat, as can be identified depicted on some of the Gotlandic picture stones. In the written sources several female characters can be identified, and it is plausible that the women in Iron Age society, especially the lady/queen, did uphold some if not all of these. Some of the female aspects found in the written accounts include the provocative Hetzerin or valkyrie, the sorcery-working völva and the divinatory norn. Through these abilities the lady and/or queen acted as an advisor and a mediator between the king and his retinue of warriors and as such could influence the course of action. This intermediate relationship between male and female roles as earthly equivalents to Odin and Freyja is essential to the interpretation of the Uppåkra house as weil as the high seat dedicated to the woman.

This paper deals with the relationship between the iron-age hill-forts from the migration period and the later settlements called Stenby. I discuss whether the settlements are a part of a larger complex and if they succeed the hill-forts in some matter. Another part of the discussion touches the aspect of the change in ~550-600 A.D from the migration period to the vendel period and whether this had to do with the climate crisis 536-537 A.D and how it might have had impact on the ideology of the time

This paper is a closer look at a high status area in the Iron Age called the Timrå valley (Timrådalen) in the province of Medelpad in the County of Väster-norrland that has largely been forgotten by researchers. It is a very rich area when it comes to high status finds such as gold, weaponry imported goods, large burial mounds and a chamber tomb. This high status area has had a long continuity, from early Roman Iron Age to the Vendel period. Maybe even longer. The picture so far is that the area close to the church is the residence of a high status family who has control over commerce and a pre-Christian place of worship. Wealth is spread through the valley but the power lies in the area close to the church.

In recent years two new finds of miniature weapons and tools have been made on the Iron Age site of Uppåkra. Because of this it is my intention to present an alternative interpretation that might perhaps supplement earlier studies of these objects. The idea came to me while reading about the Iron Age woman being adopted into her husband 's family in connection with the wedding and the rituals linked with this practice. For example, there is an account of how the man gives his future wife a set of weapons as well as a fully equipped warhorse in some Gerrnanic tribes in the first century AD. It is my conviction that the custom was rationalized over time and the costly full-size weapons, of no practical use for the woman, were replaced with the miniatures. This would explain why they are exclusively found in women's graves, since they would constitute status symbols associated with the female significance as a wife.

- Hur jag upptäckte ett forntida sakralt landskap alldeles utanför dörren

I den här skriften berättar jag om hur jag upptäckte ett mönster i landskapet, som skulle kunna tyda på ett mycket tidigt (300-talet) försök att införa kristendomen i ett stamsamhälle på den svenska västkusten.

Summary
An Iron Age grave field constellation in western Sweden, mirroring the star sign Cygnus
How I discovered an ancient sacred landscape just outside my front door

In this magazine, I describe how I discovered a pattern in the landscape, that could indicate a very early (300s) attempt to introduce Christianity into a tribal society on the Swedish west coast.
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Memory-stones seldom stand by the road, save when kinsman honors his kin. -Hávamál 1:72 Abstract This thesis concerns the patterns of organization visible within the context that is the Scanian runestones in relation to roads, organized clustering and energy-conservativity. As well as the digital methods increasingly used to analyze such patterns. Using FMIS databases and LIDAR-elevation data it analyses the long, spread out lines of runestones visible in the landscape through GIS spatialstatistics analysis, as well as least cost path analysis, and simultaneously evaluates the combination of the runestones and said tools, as a method for studying Viking Age infrastructure. The statistical part of the analysis includes all of the Scanian runestones, and compares the organization grade (z-score and k-function) of the Scanian runestones to the organization grade of the Scanian milestones; the organization grade of the Gotland mile-and runestones are briefly discussed as a comparative material. The results of this analysis indicate a very high level of organized clustering within Scanian runestone context, one comparable to the level of organization we see among the Gotland Milestones. The least cost path analysis focuses in on two smaller portions of Scania; the area inbetween Källstorp and Bjäresjö (which have a large number of surviving runestones), as well as an area north of Lund, around Lödde å (where runestone material is less dense and linear, and is also subject to greater influence from surrounding features). The output of this analysis showed that most of the runestones in these regions seem to have been organized in relation to one single path of higher energy efficiency. In turn most likely indicating the presence of a larger body of Viking Age infrastructure, that may have stretched across most of Scania's south and west-coasts. A Special Thanks to: Fredrik Ekengren -For supervising my work, recommending me good literature, always challenging my arguments and not having been afraid of keeping my inner Darwinist in check.

Våren år 2017 genomförde Arkeologerna, Statens historiska museer en
arkeologisk utredning steg 1 och 2 inom fyra områden i närheten av
Hedensberg i Tillberga socken, Västmanland.
Bakgrunden till utredningen samt den följande undersökningen var att
Hvalfisken AB ville stycka av tomter för nybyggnation.
Utredningen ledde till att flera nya lämningar registrerades. De förhistoriska lämningarna var till stora delar av boplatskaraktär och innehöll bland annat stolphål, härdar och lager. Sydöst om Hedensberg påträffades även ett flertal tidigare okända gravar. Det var främst fråga om flacka stensättningar, men det påträffades även en rest sten samt högar. Gravarna ingår numera i ett större gravfält som breder ut sig väster om det egentliga undersökningsområdet.
I det norra undersökningsområdet påträffades spår efter byggnader,
men i omgivningarna fanns även rester efter stensträngar och odlingar.
Fyndmaterialet samt studier av äldre kartmaterial stödjer uppfattningen att den historiska torparmiljön etableras redan under 1700-talet.
En av boplatserna (L2001:343) som påträffades vid utredningen steg 2,
undersöktes våren år 2018. Vid undersökningen framkom ett stolphus,
två aktivitetsytor och en stolpkonstruktion. Aktivitetsytorna innehöll kokgropar, härdar, stolphål samt en lågtemperaturugn.
Genom 14C-analyser och rumsliga analyser har man kunnat konstatera
tre brukningsfaser. Den äldsta fasen tillhör övergången mellan äldre och
yngre bronsålder. Fas två tillhör romersk järnålder och fas tre historisk tid.
Varken fyndmaterialet eller kvarvarande konstruktioner tyder på det att
funnits något överflöd och därför har boplatsen, både under fas ett och fas två bedömts som ordinär.

Detta är Länsstyrelsen Västernorrlands handlingsprogram för uppdragsarkeologin länet. Enligt riksantikvarieämbetets föreskrifter och allmänna råd om uppdragsarkeologi (KRFS 2017:1) bör varje länsstyrelse ha ett handlingsprogram eller en strategi för uppdragsarkeologin i sin region.

Enligt 2 kap. 13 § kulturmiljölagen görs gällande att all arkeologi ska ske med god vetenskaplig kvalitet. Länsstyrelsen Västernorrland har valt att fokusera på den goda vetenskapliga kvaliteten i detta program. Därför består delar av programmet av metodbeskrivningar för flera av de vanligaste naturvetenskapliga metoder som används i arkeologin.

In this article I take a look at a cauldron that was found when the foundations for
the new vicarage were dug in 1879 in the parish of Boteå, in the county of
Västernorrland. The vessel is made of pure copper with fragments of an iron
collar beneath the rim for Iron loops. The cauldron was placed in the middle of
a grave under a stone slab. The burial mound had a stone footing round the
edges, a feature that is known from graves from the Roman Iron Age and the
Migration Period. In 2000, the cauldron was examined by Professor Gustaf
Trotzig who came to the conclusion that the vessel has no known parallel in the
country. Even though the manufacturing technique used to produce the vessel
diverged greatly from other vessels from the Viking Age, Trotzig concluded that
the cauldron had to be from this period. This conclusion is based on the idea
that pure copper vessels did not appear until the Viking Age. Västernorrland has
around 10 known burials with bronze/copper cauldrons. The majority of these
cauldrons were used as cremation urns. Although there are a few different types
of cauldrons used in this way, the majority are so-called Vestland cauldrons.
Based on the morphology of the grave in Boteå and on the internal arrangement
of the grave it must be concluded that the burial mound was erected in the early
to middle part of the Iron Age. The fact that a large portion of the Vestland
cauldrons examined are made of pure copper shows that there is no longer any
reason to date the Boteå cauldron to the Viking Age.