Jellhaugen

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Jellhaugen

The Jellhaugen is a big grave hill in the hamlet Gjellestad, east of the E6 , six kilometers north of Svinesund in the town of Halden in Norway Fylke Viken , near the border with Sweden .

The burial mound is nine meters high and has an oval floor plan of around 85.0 by 70.0 meters, which makes it the northernmost of the "large burial mounds" in Scandinavia , along with the Raknehaugen near Jessheim . The hill dominates the flat surrounding area.

According to local tradition, the hill is said to have been built over a King Jell and his ship. The Jellhaugen has not been fully archaeologically investigated, but in 1968/69 the archaeologist Erling Johansen (1919–2000) dug a search trench in the middle of the hill. Here he found a stone core and traces of a cremation, as well as amber . The investigation revealed that the mound was made of sod. Johansen estimated the volume to be around 20,000 cubic meters and the construction to be 100 man-years , which is a minimum estimate . According to the C14 dating between 426 and 598 AD, the grave dates to the Nordic Iron Age . Johansen found traces of a serious remodeling that he could date to 692–896 AD. It is therefore not a hill from the Viking Age (800-1050 AD) and it does not contain a ship's grave .

In October 2018, however, the remains of other grave sites and several longhouses were discovered in the immediate vicinity of Jellhaugen by means of ground radar investigations . In one of the grave sites, the remains of an approximately 20 m long Viking ship are believed to be located about 50 cm below the surface of the earth.

literature

  • Joakim Goldhahn: Om döda och efterlevande med exempel från Bredrör, Skelhøj, Sagaholm och Mjeltehaugen , Bergen: Arkeologiske Skrifter 2006 pp. 283–303

Web links

Commons : Jellhaugen  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "The Gjellstad Ship" , Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), accessed on October 16, 2018 (English)
  2. ↑ Archaeologists find Viking ship in old burial mound at Spiegel Online from October 16, 2018

Coordinates: 59 ° 8 '49.2 "  N , 11 ° 15' 4.3"  E