Scandinavia’s Largest Mound Likely Built as A Disaster Monument, Not for Burial

Raknehaugen, Scandinavia’s largest mound. Credit: Øyvind Holmstad / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0

Scandinavia’s largest mound whitethorn person been built arsenic a monument to catastrophe alternatively than arsenic a burial site, according to a caller survey that challenges a long-standing presumption of the immense earthwork successful southeastern Norway. The mound, known arsenic Raknehaugen, has often been treated arsenic a sedate for a almighty person. But researchers present accidental the grounds points successful different direction.

The study, led by Lars Gustavsen of the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research and published successful the European Journal of Archaeology, argues that the mound was apt a communal ritual effect to a large landslide successful the sixth century.

Scandinavia’s largest mound recast arsenic a monument to upheaval

Raknehaugen stands astir 40 kilometers (25 miles) northbound of Oslo. It is wide described arsenic Scandinavia’s largest prehistoric mound. For years, archaeologists linked its size to elite powerfulness successful the Late Iron Age. That thought rested connected a communal presumption that the biggest mounds were built to grant the astir important dead.

But Raknehaugen has ever posed a problem. Excavations dating backmost much than 150 years person failed to uncover wide impervious of a burial. Researchers recovered nary burial chamber, nary sedate goods, and nary coagulated grounds of human remains tied to the mound’s archetypal purpose.

View of the 1939–1940 excavations, showing the occidental portion of the main trench. Credit: Lars Gustavsen / CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

Instead, the mound revealed a striking interior design. Investigators recovered layers of clay and soil separated by monolithic timber structures. One furniture unsocial included astir 25,000 logs and branches. The wood was unsmooth and uneven. Some trees had been breached alternatively than cut. Others had been chopped precocious connected the trunk. Some stump ends adjacent inactive carried roots.

Unearthed clues constituent distant from a royal grave

Those details substance successful the caller study. Gustavsen argues that the mound does not look similar a modular burial monument. It looks much similar a cautiously staged operation tied to a circumstantial lawsuit successful the surrounding landscape.

Using LiDAR data, the survey points to a ample landslide scar conscionable southbound and westbound of the mound. The people successful the terrain covers astir 1 quadrate kilometer (0.39 quadrate mile). The mound appears to beryllium adjacent the borderline of that damaged ground, wherever 2 precise antithetic landscapes meet: fertile clay onshore to the southbound and west, and sandy woodland to the north.

The timing besides stands out. Tree-ring and radiocarbon grounds spot the mound successful the mid-sixth century, astir the aforesaid play arsenic the climatic situation linked to the A.D. 536 “Dust Veil” event. That play brought colder upwind and apt much rain. The survey says those conditions could person made the country much susceptible to a catastrophic landslide.

A sixth-century situation whitethorn person shaped Raknehaugen

Rather than marking the sedate of a high-status person, Raknehaugen whitethorn person been built to reply upheaval successful some quality and society, the survey says. Gustavsen suggests the mound served arsenic a ritual structure meant to reconstruct bid aft a traumatic event.

The statement does not assertion last impervious that the landslide and the mound are straight linked. But it reframes 1 of Scandinavia’s best-known monuments. In this view, Raknehaugen was not built to glorify 1 dormant person. It was built to assistance a assemblage face disaster.