Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Angantyrs rojr
DatedEst. 2000 BCE–1050 CE
Photo Gotogo · CC0Source file on Wikimedia Commons
Overview
About this site
Overview
Angantyrs rojr is a Bronze Age burial cairn in Grötlingbo parish on southern Gotland, Sweden. The cairn is round, 29 metres in diameter and 2.7 metres high, with a partly preserved kerb of stones in the north-east.
The cairn is smaller than it once was. When Carl von Linné visited the site in 1741 it was 5 metres high and had a kerb of large stone blocks. A cist in its centre, opened in 1826, held bones and a bronze dagger of the early Bronze Age.
Read on Wikipedia2 min readCC BY-SA 4.0
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
Angantyrs rojr
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Swedish): Angantyrs rojrCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Swedish): Angantyrs rojrCC BY-SA 4.0
The cairn (röse) is round, 29 metres in diameter and 2.7 metres high. A kerb (kantkedja) is partly preserved in the north-east.
In 1741, when Carl von Linné visited, it was 5 metres high and had a kerb of large stone blocks.
Research historySources for this section
- Wikipedia (Swedish): Angantyrs rojrCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Swedish): Angantyrs rojrCC BY-SA 4.0
The cairn has been much reduced. In 1741, when Carl von Linné visited, it was 5 metres high and had a kerb of large stone blocks. The heavy damage is due partly to Nils Johan Ekdahl's 'excavation' in 1826 and partly to extensive quarrying of stone. At the land redistribution (laga skifte) a large quantity of stone from the cairn and its kerbstones was used to build the stone lines and cattle lanes that follow the path to the cairn.
FindsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Swedish): Angantyrs rojrCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Swedish): Angantyrs rojrCC BY-SA 4.0
During his excavation Ekdal found a cist more than 2 metres long in the middle of the cairn. It was covered by a limestone slab and contained bones and a bronze dagger of the early Bronze Age. The dagger was handed over to the Historiska museet in Stockholm (acquisition number 484).
NameSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Swedish): Angantyrs rojrCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Swedish): Angantyrs rojrCC BY-SA 4.0
The first word of the name contains the Old Norse man's name Angantyr. The second word, rojr, is Gotlandic (compare Uggarde rojr) and is written rör in mainland Swedish, an older word for a cairn.
ContextSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Swedish): Angantyrs rojrCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Swedish): Angantyrs rojrCC BY-SA 4.0
Many round earth mounds and stone cairns in Sweden belong to the Nordic Bronze Age, roughly 1700 to 500 BCE, when the elite were buried beneath mounds of earth or stone. In the early part of that period the dead were often laid in oak coffins or stone cists.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Swedish burial mounds and cairns
Sweden's landscape is thick with prehistoric graves, and most of the mounds in the Atlas are round earth mounds (gravhögar) or heaps of stone (rösen, or cairns). Many belong to the Nordic Bronze Age, roughly 1700 to 500 BCE, when the elite were buried beneath mounds of earth or stone. In the early part of that period the dead were often laid in oak coffins or stone cists; towards the end of the second millennium BCE cremation became the norm, and the ashes went into an urn or a small pit under a cairn.
Many of these graves have not been excavated. Their dates are inferred from shape, setting and the grave goods of excavated neighbours, so the Atlas gives a range instead of a single year.
The showpiece is the King's Grave at Kivik in Scania, the remains of an unusually grand double burial of about the fifteenth century BCE. Its restored cairn is some 75 metres across and 3.5 metres high. At the centre is a cist about 4 metres long, built of ten upright slabs, eight of them carved on the inside with ships, a two-horse chariot, lur players, axes, birds and fish. Farmers opened the chamber in 1748 while taking stone for field walls, and the carvings were first recognised in 1756. The excavation of 1931 recovered only teeth, bone fragments and broken bronze, because the grave had been looted. In the nineteenth century some scholars read the carvings as the work of Phoenician settlers; that idea was later rejected.
When visiting, look for mounds on ridges with a view over farmland or water, for kerb stones at the foot of a cairn, and for a shallow dip in the top that often marks an old digging.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Tumulus, Wikipedia: Nordic Bronze Age, Wikipedia: Kivik grave, Wikipedia: Burial mound · 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.
Photographs
3 photographs, each with its author and licence
More photographs
Lore
Evidence & Lore
What the sources actually support — and, kept apart, what has been claimed.
What the evidence supports
Dates
Est. 2000 BCE–1050 CEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical range for megalithic mounds in Sweden; this site has not been dated itself. Swedish barrows are mostly Bronze Age rosen of the Nordic Bronze Age (c. 2000-500 BC); the Viking-age royal mounds of Gamla Uppsala belong to the Viking Age (about 800-1050 CE).Source for this date
Where it stands
Sweden
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 57°07′18″ N, 18°22′48″ EFor a GPS or map app: 57.12180, 18.38000
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.
Angantyrs rojr2000 BCE–1050 CE- Stone circleGrötlingbo 16:12000 BCE–800 CE
- Stone circleGrötlingbo 18:12000 BCE–800 CE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Grötlingbo 19:12000 BCE–1050 CE
- Stone circleGrötlingbo 39:12000 BCE–800 CE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Grötlingbo 80:12000 BCE–1050 CE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Grötlingbo 32:12000 BCE–1050 CE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Grötlingbo 35:12000 BCE–1050 CE
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q530473wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
Image files
- Angantyrs rojr 1.jpgGotogoCC0
- Angantyr rör Grötlingbo Gotland.JPGHelen SimonssonCC BY-SA 3.0
- Angantyrs rojr 2.jpgGotogoCC0
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Angantyrs rojr" (Swedish), 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
- Wikipedia (Swedish): Angantyrs rojrCC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikidata Q530473CC0