Prehistory and early history on Sylt
In prehistory and early history , Sylt was shaped like hardly any other area in Germany by burial mounds and megalithic graves ( large stone graves ). The grave mounds from the Neolithic (New Stone Age), the Bronze Age and the Viking Age dominated the landscape on the largely treeless islands.
etymology
The names of most of the grave mounds come from the legendary world of Sylt. The Sylt chronicler and local researcher CP Hansen began as early as 1832 to write down legends and stories as folk tales and to rewrite them as art sagas. All of the Sylt legends known today go back to his collection. The burial mounds play an important role in these legends, because at that time their origin could not be explained and they were still very free in the landscape. Burial mounds, which do not have a name but are provided with a number, were not discovered until the beginning of the modern archaeological survey of Schleswig-Holstein after 1879.
Construction of the tombs
All of the burial mounds were built by human hands in an astonishingly short time. As building materials were used in the Neolithic period on the Geest occurring boulders , mostly of granite, the glaciers of the Ice Age had brought here. The stones were probably pulled by carts of oxen and / or by muscle power over tree trunks to the intended grave sites - if possible on frozen ground - and put together precisely. In this way, a large stone grave was erected within a few months.
In the Bronze Age , the bodies of the deceased continued to be buried in stone boxes or tree coffins. Later, the cremation of corpses and urn burials prevailed, which were initially also embedded in stone boxes - but later also buried in the mound. If subsequent burials took place, the burial mounds were usually enlarged and raised.
In contrast to the burial mounds of the Stone Age and Bronze Age, the burial mounds of the Viking Age were significantly smaller with a maximum height of 1.5 m. The urn was in a shallow pit under the ground in the center of the hill.
history
Neolithic
The first barrows date from the Neolithic , which dates from around 4000 BC. Until 1800 BC Lasted. During the Middle Neolithic , mighty large stone / megalithic graves were created, which consisted of large boulders . 47 megalithic tombs are known on Sylt, of which only eight have survived. The most impressive and best preserved in Germany is the Denghoog in Wenningstedt.
Megalithic graves are collective graves that have been used repeatedly and over a very long period of time. The bodies of the dead were buried. Often the graves were still used in the following Bronze Age. The shape of the graves developed from simple, rectangular stone chambers to dolmens , polygonal chambers and passage graves. The corridor made subsequent burials easier. The graves were covered with earth and had the shape of round or long hills. It is disputed whether the dead were buried directly in the graves or whether only the bones were later deposited.
Bronze age
In the Bronze Age , which occurred on the North Frisian Islands around 1800 BC. Began and lasted about 1000 years, more than 420 burial mounds were built on Sylt, which shaped the image of the Sylt landscape for thousands of years.
At the beginning of the Bronze Age, the bodies of the deceased continued to be buried in stone boxes or tree coffins, as in the previous Neolithic. Subsequently, the cremation of the corpses became increasingly popular. Urns were now buried, still in stone boxes or stone packs. Later the urns were also buried in the mound. For subsequent burials, the grave mounds were usually enlarged and raised. For example, 35 graves were found in a burial mound in Morsum. The most valuable grave goods during the heyday in the older Bronze Age were magnificent bronze swords. The new material bronze made it possible to manufacture swords for the first time, making it one of the most important innovations of the Bronze Age. Particularly beautiful swords from this period were found in rich men's graves in Kampen, for example in the Krockhoogern.
Viking age
The Viking Age lasted from 793 to 1066 AD and also left a number of testimonies on Sylt. Among other things, this includes extensive burial mound fields with a multitude of hills. Such a hill field is still preserved today on the Morsum cliff . One of the most impressive testimonies to the Viking Age on Sylt is the Tinnumburg , which began around the time of the birth of Christ. The ring wall visible today was then built over the older one in the Viking Age.
The typical form of burial at the beginning of the Viking Age were burial mound fields. With a maximum height of 1.5 m, the burial mounds were significantly smaller than the mounds of the Bronze Age. They each contained only one burial: the urn stood in a shallow pit under the ground in the center of the hill. Two such hill fields in Wenningstedt and Morsum are known on Sylt. The still visible field in Morsum originally consisted of at least 30 hills. Hill fields with well over 100 burial mounds are known from the neighboring islands. Such burial mound fields were created at the beginning of the Viking Age. Their use ended around AD 900. Perhaps this was also due to a change in the type of burial from cremation to body burial.
Modern times
Large parts of the more than 530 known burial mounds from the Bronze and Viking Age and the almost 50 megalithic tombs from the Neolithic were destroyed over time. On the one hand, many graves were destroyed by the sea and buried by dunes, on the other hand, stones were increasingly removed from burial mounds for construction purposes from the 19th century. A massive destruction took place in the 1930s and 40s by the Wehrmacht. Many burial mounds were severely damaged by military installations or even completely removed, such as B. the Munkhoog in Morsum. When the airfield was built in 1939, part of the Thinghooger was leveled. The Stone Age megalithic grave Harhoog was moved several times after it was discovered in 1925. Originally it was located between Keitum and Tinnum, but had to give way in 1954 when the airfield was expanded, so that it now stands next to the Tipkenhoog on the Green Cliff in Keitum. Only the stones of the burial chamber and a magical stone wreath were moved. The earth and clay covering was not put back on.
literature
- Söl'ring Foriining eV (Hrsg.): Hünen.kulTour-An excursion into archeology for prehistory and early history on Sylt. Sylt, 2014.
- Harry Kunz, Thomas Steensen : Taschenlexikon Sylt. Wachholtz, Neumünster / Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-529-05525-6 , pp. 147–148, p. 393.