We had a wonderful experience with some friends of ours to explore some of the most ancient history of this ancient land. Our tour began in the Bronze Age. When the glaciers of the ice age finally receded from the Scandinavian peninsula, people moved into southern Sweden. There are artifacts and relics from the stone age that one can see in museums, but we were looking at more “recent” artifacts, from “only” about 3,000 years ago. Where the bedrock is exposed, after scraping and polishing by the glacial ice, there are several locations where the old inhabitants had carved images into the very stone, images of boats, animals such as horses, people and strange symbols whose meaning can only be guessed at. These images are located often at sites that were apparently sacred to them. They can be found along modern roads, or deep in the woods, or even next to a farm house.
Our guide and friend started by leading us first to some of the oldest rock carvings in the area. Here, literally behind a farm house in Vallby we observed strange looking ships and what appeared to be the outlines of shoe or sandal soles, and simple holes called skålgropar like a bowl.
We next drove to an area near Torhamn where back in a pine forest is a large glacier scoured outcrop called Hästhallen (the Horse Hall). With over 200 figures carved into the rock it is Belkinge’s largest petroglyph site. With so many figures this was obviously an important cultic site, or a place of reverence. It is named after two small figures of horses, which we had to search for a while before we spotted them. Who were these ancient people? I have seen petroglyphs in the desert southwest of the United States, carved by ancient native Americans. But these images were carved by our own ancestors and it gave us some peculiar feelings, I would call it even reverence, for the places we visited.
From these locations we moved 2,000 years forward in time to the Iron Age and the Viking Era, to several old grave sites. Here the people had taken tremendous pains to move large rocks into the shape of boats and ring circles, often with one or more large upright stones as a memorial. The stone is hard granite, and their hoary age is witnessed by the covering of lichens on all the exposed surfaces. The vertical stones have been in place for 1,000 years or more, and must have taken tremendous labor to transport and place them there. Again, we felt the same feelings one feels in any cemetery – here were placed the mortal remains of people long dead, but honored and cherished by those who knew them. These grave fields are often on high ridges, glacial morraines looking over the surrounding landscape. To our great surprise one such field is located just five or six minutes from our home, at Vedeby, on a hill tucked behind a commercial area we have driven past dozens of times, not knowing it was there. The upright stones are as tall or taller than a man, and have been in place for such a long time. Sheep now graze here among the monuments and help to keep the grass down.
We visited a very large grave field to the west on a little peninsula, Hjortahammar, with sea water on either side. We could see swans swimming on the western side and enjoyed walking among the stone remains in the sunshine, thinking our sober thoughts. The marshes and farm lands nearby were surely under water when these graves and monuments were put in place – Sweden continues to rise a few centimeters every year as the land rebounds from the crushing weight of 3 kilometers of glacial ice.
To the north, at Björketorp, we walked back into the woods to find a clearing with a circle of very large, upright stones, much taller than we were. One of them bore an inscription in large runic letters. Written in old Norse, it can be read and interpreted if one knows how to read this strange, angular alphabet. It apparently contains a curse on anyone who would dare to mar or damage this particular runestone. We were careful to not even pick at the lichens on its surface!
And finally, from the late Viking Era to the Middle Ages, we moved from a grave field to a little medieval church at Hjortberga. An old bell tower sat below the crest of the grave field and higher than the church, on the other side of the road. The tower was built of wood, and covered with a coating of black pine tar to preserve it. In the warm sun you could smell the strong scent of the tar, used for centuries as a preservative for wooden ships and other structures. In the tower are two bells, crafted in the late 1500’s. The tower was built in the 1600’s. The church was closed but we walked quietly through the cemetery. The church itself dates from the 1200’s and replaced an even older church dating to the very beginning of Christianity in this country. We saw ancient oak trees standing over the graves, a few with trunks that were five or six feet in diameter. Who knows how old they were, or how many seasons have come and gone since they started life as little acorns? They must be several hundred years old, and perhaps grew from trees that were present when the church was built. The area has been inhabited since the stone age, for several thousand years. The church lies at the crossroads of old roads that connected the southern coast with Småland to the north – iron age wanderers would walk past the ridge with its stone grave markers and in medieval times, the site was a place for periodic “ting”, or council meetings where difficulties between persons and questions of general concern could be judged. Sweden is a modern state, with a high standard of living, but its roots go deep into the rocks and soil of this place.
What will people say about us a thousand years from now? What will be our legacy? For these thousands of years past we see evidence that people of all ages have sought to be remembered, have believed that there was life of some kind after this. The Gospel of Jesus Christ gives me that hope and I trust in a future beyond this present, and hope some day to meet the people who sought to be remembered by their rock carvings, stone grave monuments, churches and tombstones. We really are all family together…
