Ship settlement
A ship reduction ( schwed. Skeppssättning ; Dan. Skibssætning ; Norwegian skipssetning ) is a boat-shaped contour stone setting , primarily in the Scandinavian Baltic Sea area occurs and fire or urn marked. Sometimes small stone boxes with urns shaped like a hut were found inside or next to the ship's setting. In the Swedish province of Skåne , 26 different urns from several hundred years were discovered in a ship set. Most of them (such as Ales stones) date from the Viking Age . Only 35 have been dated to the Bronze Age. Some of the early specimens can be found on Gotland.
While the older and larger ships were settled in the late Bronze and Early Iron Ages , i.e. v. A second group, made of much smaller stone formats, dates back to the Viking Age (800–1150 AD).
Meaning and definition
Ship settlements - made of arched rows of building stones - symbolize the ship that is supposed to bring the dead into the realm of the dead . They are not only the boundaries of the graves, but also part of the grave cult of that time. Ship settlements can be found in connection with a burial mound and rune stone (referred to as a "combination of three").
Ship settlements are to be separated from the boat graves of the Vendel period , from facilities such as the boat chamber grave of Haithabu , from ship victims (e.g. Nydam ship ) and the Viking Age ship graves ( Ladby ship , Oseberg ship) where real ships were used as burial space.
layout
Most ship settlements (or ship stone settlements) consist of boulders , which are mostly set up north-south oriented in the shape of a ship's hull . The stones in the middle of the ship are usually the lowest. Towards the bow and stern , they can be up to 4 m high in the event of large subsidence. The Bornholm ships deviate from this appearance , which do not consist of boulders, but rather flat plates that lie on the ground or are set up in the shape of a ship and are known as skibs røser . Ship settlements from wooden piles have been found in Ejstrupholm, Snejbjerg and Silkeborg.
On the cemetery of Domarlunden on Gotland there is a set of ships made of limestone slabs and the Askeberga / Vad complex consists of 24 up to three meter high field stones. Some Danish ship settlements (such as Glavendrup ) have a rune stone on the bow . Gotland ships are very numerous. They are up to 47 m long, but are only in exceptional cases up to 1.5 m high. Some ships (e.g. Lugnaro and Slättaröd ) were covered with stone-earth mounds.
- Ship settlement
Ship settlement in the old warehouse near Menzlin
Runestone on the bow of the Glavendrup ship settlement
Ship settlement on Gotland
Stone ship Tjelvars grave on Gotland
Vätteryd
At Mjösjön, southeast of Umeå, is the northernmost ship setting
Runsa in Uppland
Bīlavu in Latvia
Hellig Kvinde near Listed, Bornholm
Kalvestenene, the largest ship on the island
distribution
Around 2000 ship settlements can be found primarily in the Baltic Sea region . They are found sporadically in Estonia and Latvia ( called Velna laiva there), in Germany , in Finland (on the Åland Islands), on Iceland ( Mosfellsbær ), in Norway and in Russia . However, they are particularly large, old and numerous in Denmark and Sweden , where between 80 and several hundred ships are settled in the southern provinces (e.g. Småland ). On the island of Gotland there are still 350, on the Danish island of Bornholm there were once 50 of these tombs.
Examples
Sweden
- The largest preserved ship set is Ales Stenar near Kåseberga on the south coast of the Swedish province of Skåne . 59 stones form a ship 67 m long and 19 m wide in the middle. The height of the stones is at the bow at 3.3 m, at the stern at 2.5 m and in the middle part is about head high. There are about 50 more ships in Skåne.
- Runsa is a 56 m long and 16 m wide ship made of 28 stones on a burial ground near Eds in Uppland .
- Ranes Stenar, a 55 m long, wide oval ship made of 24 stones lies near Askeberga near Skövde in Västergötland
- Five ships are moored at Badelunda on Anundshög in Västmanland . The two longest are 54 and 51 m long and built together.
- Stenhed near Gärsnäs in Skåne is 50 m long and 14 m wide .
- About 350 ship settlements are known on the island of Gotland . Some of these are groups of up to five ships. At Gnisvärd is the largest settlement on the island with a length of 47 m.
- The ship's setting at Ugglarp in Skåne is 45 m long .
- The ship's setting on the Nässja burial ground in Östergötland is 44 m long .
- The ship on the Blomsholm burial ground in Bohuslän is 42 m long, but equipped with the highest bow and stern stones .
- 42 m long, is also the setting of the Össlöv in Småland .
- Some ship settlements on Öland z. B. Karums Alvar (Noahs Ark) and on the burial ground near Gettlinge .
- There are some smaller ships settled in the burial fields of Årby , Gumhem , Hjortsberga and Hjortahammar , one of the largest Scandinavian burial grounds .
- The Iron Age ship settlement of Böckersboda was restored in 1950.
- The Bronze Age ship setting on Mjösjön in Västerbotten County was restored in 1970.
- The Nederkalix ship was built in 1974 in Norrbotten County, based on the Öland model . In 2008 a rune stone was erected next to it . Neither of them occur historically in this region.
The custom of honoring the dead by setting a ship, which was already common during the younger Bronze Age, lives on until the beginning of the Iron Age. These more recent ship settlements are relatively short and built of small stones that barely rise above the surface of the earth. They occur on Gotland and Bornholm.
Denmark
The most imposing, because largely preserved, ship settlement in Denmark (once 60 m long and 12 m wide) is near Glavendrup on Funen . Its former bow stone bears the longest runic inscription in Denmark. There are other Danish ship settlements or their remains:
- at the Klebæk Høje at Bække (45 m)
- in Dyndved (near Stolbro on Als )
- between Ferslev and Venslev in Hornsherred (on Zealand )
- in Konabbe Skov (on Langeland )
- on Hjarnø (remains of 10 - originally 20 ships - the longest 13 m). The island is named after the skald Hiarne , who, according to legend, was briefly King of Denmark in the 1st century, as he wrote the best grave poem on the late King Frode. He is supposed to be buried here.
- On Bornholm there are ship settlements in Troldskoven and Hellig Kvinde between Svaneke and Gudhjem .
- in the Højstrup Mark
- Lindholm Høje near Aalborg
- on endelave
Iceland
- In Iceland, the Mosfellsbær ship settlement was discovered after the stones had been exposed by erosion. The exact time is not known, but there have been numerous Viking Age finds nearby .
Remnants or departed large ships
- in Jelling (once about 356 m long) on ( Jutland )
- the ship setting from Vejerslev (about 88 m long and pre-Viking) on Jutland
- in Gammel Lejre (once 80 m long) (on Zealand)
- The remains of two ship settlements were found in Färlöv in Skåne , one of the largest in Scandinavia. It was 80 meters long and 18 meters wide. Both settlements date from the 8th or 9th century, i.e. from the Viking Age .
- The remains of a 70 m long ship were found at the Kabusa firing range near Ystad .
- The ship was set at Gumpekulla near Linköping in Östergötland, 50 m long and 11 m wide
- The largest collection of Viking Age ships, most of which are not as huge as those built earlier, is on Lindholm Høje in North Jutland .
Norway
- Agnes' launch of the ship
- Elgesem grave field with a 40 m long settlement
- Istrehågan burial ground
- Ship launch by Øvre Kleppaker
- The setting of the ship at Tingvoll
- Mølen burial ground near Værvågen
- Skipssetning in Ullerøy, Østfold
Germany
The only surviving ship settlements on German soil are in the area of the area natural monument " Altes Lager " near Menzlin in the district of Vorpommern-Greifswald in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
curiosity
Replicas of prehistoric types of monuments are not uncommon.
See also
literature
- Working group of the project "Traces of the Vikings in Denmark" = "Vikingerne i det danske landskab" (Ed.): Traces of the Vikings in Denmark. Museums and monuments. An introduction . Working group of the project “Traces of the Vikings in Denmark”, Copenhagen 1996, ISBN 87-89224-19-1 .
- PV Glob : prehistoric monuments of Denmark. Wachholtz, Neumünster 1967.
- Fredrik Svanberg: Vikingatiden i Skåne . Historiska media, Lund 2000, ISBN 91-89442-04-0 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Svanberg p. 49.
- ↑ Stenunga / Hundene, Trustorp / Ljungby, Kungshögen / Hasslöv, Ivars Kulle / Sperlingsholm, Dragby / Skuttunge all Sweden; Oeversee and Thumby in Schleswig-Holstein; Nygaard / Skive, in Denmark and Knaghaug and Kongehaugen on Karmøy in Norway
- ↑ books.google.de , Heiko Fritz, Joachim Feik: Midgard - In the footsteps of the Vikings : Volume 1: Germany & Denmark, Volume 1, 2008.