The
Royal Mounds (Swedish:
Kungshögarna) is the name of the three large
barrows located in Gamla Uppsala. According to folklore, the three gods
Thor,
Odin and
Freyr would be at rest in
Kungshögarna or
Uppsala högar (from the
Old Norse word
Haugr meaning mound or barrow; cognate English
Howe). In the 19th and 20th centuries, they were speculated to hold the remains of three kings of the semi-legendary
House of Ynglings and were thus known as ''
Aun's Mound
, Adils's Mound
and Egil's Mound
. Today their geographical locations are used instead and they are called the Eastern Mound
, Middle Mound
and Western Mound''. They are dated to the 5th and 6th centuries. As Sweden's oldest national symbols they are even depicted on the covers of books about the Swedish national identity. In the 6th century, Gamla Uppsala was the location of royal burials. The location was chosen carefully and in order to make them majestic. The tumuli were constructed on top of the ridge. By burning the dead king and his armour, he was moved to
Valhalla by the consuming force of the fire. The fire could reach temperatures of 1500 °C. The remains were covered with cobblestones and then a layer of gravel and sand and finally a thin layer of turf. Thus he (Odin) established by law that all dead men should be burned, and their belongings laid with them upon the pile, and the ashes be cast into the sea or buried in the earth. Thus, said he, every one will come to Valhalla with the riches he had with him upon the pile; and he would also enjoy whatever he himself had buried in the earth. For men of consequence a mound should be raised to their memory, and for all other warriors who had been distinguished for manhood a standing stone; which custom remained long after Odin's time. [...] It was their faith that the higher the smoke arose in the air, the higher he would be raised whose pile it was; and the richer he would be, the more property that was consumed with him. :—
Ynglinga saga An old controversy and its solution In the 1830s, some scholars claimed that the mounds were pure natural formations and not barrows. This affront to ancient Swedish national symbols could not be accepted by the future Swedish king
Karl XV and in order to remove any doubt, he decided to start an excavation. The task was given to
Bror Emil Hildebrand, the director-general of the National Archives. In 1846, he undertook the excavation of the nine-metres-tall (30 ft)
Eastern mound with the hope of finding the grave of a Swedish king of old.
The eastern mound The excavation was complex and generated a lot of publicity. A tunnel was dug into the mound, where they found a pot of clay filled with burnt bones and around it there were the remains of the charred grave offerings. Among the most important finds in the eastern mound were many fragments of decorated bronze panels with a dancing warrior carrying a spear. These panels have probably adorned a helmet of the
Vendel Age type, common in
Uppland (the only foreign examples being the
Sutton Hoo and
Staffordshire helmets). There were also finds of gold which probably had adorned a
scramasax, but according to another interpretation, they were part of a belt. The dead was also given several glass beakers, a
tafl game, a
comb and a
hone. Most scholars agree that the mound was either raised for a woman or for a young man and a woman as the remains of a woman and boy were found. Hildebrand reburied most of the remains, so a new excavation will need to be undertaken before the controversy can be settled. What is quite certain is that the dead belonged to a royal dynasty.
The western mound In 1874, Hildebrand started an excavation of the western mound and opened an enormous shaft right into the cairn in the centre of the mound. Under the cobble stones, there were the charred remains of the funeral fire. In the western mound were found the remains of a man and animals, probably for food during the journey. The remains of a warrior's equipment were found. Luxurious weapons and other objects, both domestic and imported, show that the buried man was very powerful. These remains include a
Frankish sword adorned with gold and garnets and a board game with Roman pawns of
ivory. He was dressed in a costly suit made of Frankish cloth with golden threads, and he wore a belt with a sumptuous buckle. There were four
cameos from the Middle East which were probably part of a casket. The finds show the distant contacts of the people of Uppland in the 6th century. ==Gamla Uppsala Church==