Sortenge
DatedEst. 3500–2800 BCE
No licensed photograph yetWe have no photograph we may publish for this site, so the interpretive 3D view leads instead.
Overview
About this site
Overview
The stone cist of Sorteenge (Danish for Black Meadow) lies on Sorteengevejen between Nylars and Arnager on the Danish island of Bornholm. It is a large cist, known in Danish as a hellekiste, and is a protected ancient monument in Denmark. The catalogue record gives a typological date estimate of 3500 to 2800 BCE.
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Where it sits in time
The site's dated range, placed against world reference points.
The scale is logarithmic: each step to the left is about ten times older than the last.
Article
Sortenge
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (German): Steinkiste von SorteengeCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (German): Steinkiste von SorteengeCC BY-SA 4.0
The cist is oriented east to west and lies beside the road, set against a boulder about 2.0 m long and 1.4 m wide that forms the end stone of one narrow side. The chamber is 2.8 m long and 1.2 m wide and is built of four heavy sandstone slabs on each side. Two of the side stones project by 0.6 m beyond the transverse slab at the other end. The side stones stand about 0.5 m high. The upper part of the three south-eastern side stones has been destroyed in the past.
The floor of the cist is covered with smaller, flat stone slabs. The capstone is missing, and no mound is visible.
ContextSources for this section
- Wikipedia (German): Steinkiste von SorteengeCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (German): Steinkiste von SorteengeCC BY-SA 4.0
A cist is a small stone-built, coffin-like box used to hold the bodies of the dead. It may once have been covered by a cairn or a long barrow. In Scandinavia the stone cist is called hellekiste in Danish and hällkista in Swedish, and in Nordic megalith architecture it is one of the recognised types alongside dolmens and passage graves.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Scandinavian and German stone cists
A cist, or kist, is a small stone-built coffin-like box used to hold the bodies of the dead. It may once have been covered by a cairn or a long barrow, and several cists are sometimes found together within the same cairn or barrow. Ornaments are often found in excavated cists, which shows the wealth or prominence of the person buried. In Scandinavia the stone cist is called the hellekiste in Danish and hällkista in Swedish, and in Nordic megalith architecture it is one of the recognised types alongside dolmens and passage graves.
The most spectacular cist in Scandinavia is the central chamber of the King's Grave at Kivik in Scania, from about the fifteenth century BCE. It is about 4 metres long and 1.5 metres wide, made of ten upright slabs of which eight are decorated with carvings of people, ships, birds, fish, horses, axes and a chariot. It was opened in 1748 by farmers who were taking stone for field walls.
Other cists are much smaller. Associated with Nordic Bronze Age settlements are burial cairns, mounds and cemeteries, with interments including oak coffins and urn burials. The cists in the Atlas, many of them in Sweden and Denmark, are usually single graves under a cairn or a barrow.
Dating relies on the objects in the cist and on radiocarbon dating of any surviving bone.
When visiting, look for a box formed by slabs, exposed where its covering mound has gone.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Cist, Wikipedia: Kivik grave, Wikipedia: Nordic megalith architecture, Wikipedia: Nordic Bronze Age · CC BY-SA 4.0
See it in 3D
An interpretive reconstruction of the monument, standing on the real ground at its exact point, under the sun for that place and season. Drag to look around it.
The reconstruction is ours, not a survey: it shows what a monument of this type looks like, at the size the record gives for this one.
Lore
Evidence & Lore
What the sources actually support — and, kept apart, what has been claimed.
What the evidence supports
Dates
Est. 3500–2800 BCEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical range for cists in Denmark; this site has not been dated itself. Danish stone cists belong to the Nordic megalith tradition which emerged predominantly between 3500 and 2800 BC.Source for this date
Where it stands
Denmark
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 55°03′49″ N, 14°48′08″ EFor a GPS or map app: 55.06349, 14.80227
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Sellesborg3500–500 BCE
Lundestenen3500–2800 BCE- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Nylarsker3500–500 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Store Strandbygaard3500–500 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Store Strandbygaard3500–500 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Nylarsker3500–500 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Nylarsker3500–500 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Dammegaard3500–500 BCE
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Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q30108230wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Steinkiste von Sorteenge" (German), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; authors are listed in the page history. Reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikipedia · Edit history and authors