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<< Text Pages >> Avaldsnes - Barrow Cemetery in Norway in Rogaland

Submitted by coldrum on Saturday, 03 July 2010  Page Views: 4402

DigsSite Name: Avaldsnes
Country: Norway
NOTE: This site is 20.786 km away from the location you searched for.

Fylke: Rogaland Type: Barrow Cemetery
Nearest Town: Avaldsnes  Nearest Village: Avaldsnes
Latitude: 59.352428N  Longitude: 5.226628E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
1
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Average ratings for this site from all visit loggers: Ambience: 4 Access: 4

Barrow Cemetary in Norway. Rich discoveries from prehistory have been made in this e entire area, including the only Norwegian example of Bronze Age burial mounds lined up in a row. A ship burial from the time of the Merovingian Dynasty (approximately 680-750 AD) found here is presently the oldest ship burial uncovered within the Nordic countries.

Storhaug (Great Mound), a ship's burial mound, can be found to the north of the royal estate at Avaldsnes. Excavation of this burial mound started in 1886. The ship at Storhaug was made of oak and was placed in a north-south orientation. Stone walls of approximately 1m in height and width were built around the great ship. The Storhaug ship is commonly described as a large oar-powered vessel, with a breadth of 2.5 - 6 meter.

Grønhaug (Green Mound), the site of another ship burial, is situated one kilometre (1,100 yards) north of the church site. It was examined by Haakon Shetelig in 1902, and contained an approximately 15-metre (49 ft) long boat with remains of a man’s grave from the 900s.

Flagghaugen (Flag Hill), from the Old Norse word haugr meaning hill or mound, is situated just north of the church. Originally it had a diameter of 43 metres (141 ft) and a height of 5 metres (16 ft), but it was flattened under the leadership of Pastor Lyder Brun in 1835. The mound turned out to be Norway’s richest grave from the Roman Period. The Avaldsnes find (Norwegian: Avaldsnesfunnet) contained a neck ring of 600 grams (19 ozt) of pure gold, weapons, bandolier mountings and various roman tubs of silver and bronze.

Mary's Needle

Mary's Needle, known in Norwegian as the sewing needle of Virgin Mary (Norwegian: Jomfru Marias synål) is the only one remaining of several monumental stones which once stood around the church area. The stone has been somewhat taller, but, towering at 7.2 meters it is still the next largest of its kind in Norway. The stone leans in towards the church wall—the distance to the wall is in fact only 9.2 cm. A saga tells that "the day of Judgement will come when the stone comes into contact with the church wall". A popular story tells us about a minister in ages past who climbed the monument and cutting off a piece from the stone when it came dangerously near the church wall.

More at Wikipedia

Note: Thunderstone Mystery: What's a Stone Age Axe Doing in an Iron Age Tomb?
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Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
 2.4km ENE 68° Reheia Cemetery* Barrow Cemetery
 3.3km ENE 64° Grønhaug* Round Barrow(s)
 3.6km E 85° Kuhaugen og Kongshaugen* Round Barrow(s)
 3.7km E 84° Sewing Needle of The Virgin Mary* Standing Stone (Menhir)
 3.7km E 83° Flagghaugen* Round Barrow(s)
 4.0km NE 45° Kjørkhaug* Round Barrow(s)
 4.6km NE 44° Storhaugen* Round Barrow(s)
 4.9km ENE 57° De Fem Dårlige Jomfruer* Stone Circle
 8.7km NNE 12° Haraldshaugen Barrow* Round Barrow(s)
 16.1km NE 55° Grinde Bautarsteinar, Tysvær* Standing Stones
 18.1km ESE 112° Resastaven* Standing Stone (Menhir)
 19.2km SE 138° Øyren Standing Stone* Standing Stone (Menhir)
 19.6km SE 137° Alvestad* Cairn
 20.8km SE 134° Søre Våge Bautastein* Standing Stone (Menhir)
 23.4km ENE 66° Bautasteinene på Erland* Standing Stones
 32.2km SE 139° Galteveien-Hedlehaugen* Standing Stone (Menhir)
 32.2km SE 139° Leik-Haug Galta* Cairn
 33.2km SSE 160° Hedlesøy* Standing Stone (Menhir)
 33.3km SE 139° Voll Standing Stone* Standing Stone (Menhir)
 33.3km SE 141° Helleneset* Standing Stone (Menhir)
 33.5km SSE 160° Vintrahamn* Ancient Village or Settlement
 33.6km SSE 159° Humraurda* Round Barrow(s)
 33.6km SSE 162° Hedlestykke* Standing Stone (Menhir)
 34.2km SSE 159° Krågøy Bautastein* Standing Stone (Menhir)
 34.5km SE 136° Sørbø Runestone* Carving
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Thunderstone Mystery: What's a Stone Age Axe Doing in an Iron Age Tomb? by Andy B on Saturday, 03 July 2010
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Thunderstone Mystery: What's a Stone Age Axe Doing in an Iron Age Tomb?

"If one finds something once, it's accidental. If it is found twice, it's puzzling. If found thrice, there is a pattern," the archaeologists Olle Hemdorff and Eva Thäte say.

In 2005 the archaeologists investigated a grave at Avaldsnes in Karmøy in southwestern Norway, supposed to be from the late Iron Age, i.e. from 600 to 1000 AD. Avaldsnes is rich in archeological finds. They dot an area that has been a seat of power all the way back to around 300. Archaeologist Olle Hemdorff at the University of Stavanger's Museum of Archaeology was responsible for a series of excavations at Avaldsnes in 1993-94 and 2005-06.

"It became clear to us quite early that the grave had been plundered. The material in the grave had been messed up and now contained brick and porcelain fragments from younger layers of soil," Hemdorff says.

Plundering of graves was very common in the 19th century and actually legal. It was not until the Cultural Heritage Act in 1905 made it a criminal offence for lay persons to excavate cultural monuments.

Axes and pearls

The German archaeologist Eva Thäte is in the spring of 2010 visiting researcher at the Museum of Archaeology. She is also a guest researcher at the University of Chester in England. The cooperation with Hemdorff started in 2003 when Thäte came to Stavanger in connection with a doctoral work on the recycling of ancient tombs. The latest research project carried out by the two archaeologists is on finds of older artifacts in younger graves. In the grave at Avaldsnes the researchers found seven handsome glass pearls in the dirt.

"In the late Iron Age glass was the most common material for making pearls, and therefore glass pearls are often found in men's and women's graves from this period. The women wore the pearls in a cord around the neck and brought more pearls with them into the grave than men did. The discovery of the seven pearls made us assume that it was a woman's grave we investigated," Hemdorff says.

"But then we suddenly found a stone axe. It was in the same layer of soil as some of the pearls. The axe is from the Stone Age and more than a thousand years older than the pearls! It is a so-called greenstone axe. All the other indicators suggested that the cairn was from the Iron Age and belonged to a buried woman. So why was there an old axe from the Stone Age in the grave?," the archaeologist asks.

Not accidental

During the last three years documented discoveries of artifacts have been made that are typical for the Stone Age -- marks from flint, flint fragments, quartz, axes, etc. in younger burial mounds.

"Unfortunately this documentation did not begin until the 1970s. Up to that date neither archeologists nor grave robbers were aware of these objects. They were just seen as unimportant and without archeological value. It is only now that we are beginning to have enough data for analysis, and we have made many enough discoveries of Stone Age artifacts in younger graves to say that they make a clear pattern," Thäte says.

She points to a good example from Sogndal in Sogn og Fjordane where a stone axe was found in an untouched stone coffin from the 5th century.

"The axe must have been placed there intentionally. Other finds in Scandinavia make this pattern even clearer. In Halland in Sweden they have found a burial site consisting of almost one hundred graves from the late Iron Age where one has registered processed flint objects in nearly every grave," Hemdorff says.

Starting with the finds around the grave at Avaldsnes and taking the other finds into account, it is not likely that the axe ended up in the grave by accident. Why was it deposited there?

Thunderstones from the sky

The researchers say that people back in the Iron Age had a conscious relationship to objects from ea

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