Eketorp : the Fortified Village on Öland

Br 99 575 Digitalisering av redan tidigare utgivna vetenskapliga publikationer Dessa fotografier är offentliggjorda vilket innebär att vi använder oss av en undantagsregel i 23 och 49 a §§ lagen (1960:729) om upphovsrätt till litterära och konstnärliga verk (URL). Undantaget innebär att offentliggjorda fotografier får återges digitalt i anslutning till texten i en vetenskaplig framställning som inte framställs i förvärvssyfte. Undantaget gäller fotografier med både kända och okända upphovsmän. Bilderna märks med ©. Det är upp till var och en att beakta eventuella upphovsrätter. SWEDISH NATIONAL HERITAGE BOARD RIKSANTIKVARIEÄMBETET ZrjX 57? Eketorp The fortified village on the island of Oland ■ By Bengt'Edgren and Frands Herschend Front cover illustration: The recon structed curtain wall at Eketorp, from the south. Photograph: Karl-Erik Granath 1984. VITTERHETSAKADEMIENS BIBLIOTEK Opposite and inside back cover: Stamped gold sheets from Eketorp II. Drawing: Erling Svensson. (Cf. illustration, p. 22) 000041906 18000 Gråborg, Parish of Algutsrum Bårby Fort, Parish of Mörby länga Triberga Fort, Parish of Hulterstad Sandby Fort, Parish of Sandby The oldest known fortified strongholds in sembling that of the Migration Period The Scandinavia date from the Neolithic and are (400- 550 A.D.) Eketorp and Ismantorp about 5,000 years old. Defence works from Fort. Crop marks in air photographs of Prehistoric the Stone Age until the Early Iron Age were Sandby Fort show that the same kind of sett usually built in strategic positions. Often lement existed there as well. they made use of natural defences - rocky Medieval objects have been found at Eke Forts of outcrops surrounded by steep slopes, and torp and also at Bårby Fort and Gråborg. places adjoining watercourses or wetlands. This shows that all three forts were also in Öland The remarkable thing about the prehis use during the Medieval Period. toric forts of Öland is their layout and the All the prehistoric forts on Öland are building techniques they incorporate. In built up of dry stone walls, i.e. walls without both these respects they differ from all other mortar. Several of these walls are entirely of known prehistoric forts. They vary in size, limestone, while in others the limestone is the largest of them — Gråborg — being mingled with large blocks of granite. Origi about ten times bigger than the smallest to nally, many of these encircling walls were up Gråborjg have survived intact, which is Triberga Fort. to seven metres high, probably with crenela Altogether there are fifteen known prehis ted parapets. In cases where there was a Sandby toric forts on the island. Only a few of them planned settlement inside the curtain wall, /• Bårb; have been excavated. Many of them have every square inch of the protected area was Tri berga been turned into farmland, and so plough utilised. The buildings nave longwalls in ing has brought objects to light which con common and look very much like modern vey some indication of their age. All the terrace houses. It was the availability of a Eketorp prehistoric forts of Öland seem to have been good building material — limestone - and constructed during the Early Iron Age. Se contacts with the Roman Empire that en veral of them were carefully planned sett abled the people of Öland to plan and build Four of the best-prehistoric forts on lements, as revealed by remains of the stone these defensive installations which are the island of Öland. Triberga Fort walls of houses. resembles Eketorp before it was ex among the oldest monumental architecture cavated. In the photograph of Sandby Excavations at Treby Fort, the fort closest extant in our country today. Fort, crop marks betray the founda to Eketorp, have revealed settlement re tions of houses under the turf. Grå borg, the largest of the prehistoric forts of Öland, is more than 200 met res in diameter. BårbyFort is the only fort which does not have a complete encircling wall; the Landborgsbran- ten bluff — a relic of the old coastline — is about 20 metres high at this point, providing a natural defence on the westward side. Photograph: Karl-Erik Granath and Bengt Edgren 1984. 3 Carl von Linné (Linnaeus) visited Eketorp Eketorp I was built in the fourth century Excavations on 8th June 1741, during his tour of Öland, A.D. and already pulled down in the fifth and described it as follows: ”Eketorp Fort century, when work began on the construc at Eketorp was visited, with its rough, dilapidated tion of a bigger fort, Eketorp II, immediate walls, two and a half km from the eastern ly outside the first and enclosing it. 1964-1973 shore and formerly one of the most magni Eketorp II was given a curtain wall 80 ficent in this country: For it was a musket metres in diameter, and so the fortified area shot in diameter, with a well in the middle was twice as large as in Eketorp I. There which never dries up. Undoubtedly these was still a gateway to the south-west, an forts were places of refuge for the inhabi other entrance was constructed in the north tants, before the invention of powder and east, and to the east there was a small pos shot.” tern gate leading to the water hole. Altoge Eketorp-I Not quite 200 years later, in 1931, Mårten ther there were about fifty houses inside the Stenberger, later to become Professor of curtain wall, both lining the inside of the Archeology at the University of Uppsala, curtain wall as in Eketorp I and forming an carried out a test excavation at Eketorp. irregularly shaped central quarter. This sett This revealed undisturbed cultural layers in lement was abandoned sometime during the the fort. The real excavations under Mårten seventh century. Stenberger’s direction did not start until A final settlement Eketorp III, came into Eketorp-Il 1964. By the time excavations were concluded being at the end of the Viking Age, c. 1000. in 1973, 26,000 finds had been salvaged, The houses were timber-framed, of the kind three tons of bones had been collected and still to be seen in the long villages of Öland, three settlement phases had been identified which now superseded the earlier type of and charted; located one on top of the house included in Eketorp II. A workshop other, they were dubbed Eketorp I, Eke area with forges was constructed outside the torp II and Eketorp III by the archaeo curtain wall. These workshops are close to a logists. low outer defence wall constructed to Eketorp-III The oldest settlement on this site, Eke strengthen the defence works of the fort. torp I was a round fortress 57 metres in dia Also for strategic reasons, the north and meter, located at the centre of the fort as we east gates of Eketorp II were walled up. Excavation is very much a matter of see it today. The gateway was in the Eketorp III was abandoned in the thirteenth making and recording observations, south-west and there were about twenty century, about one thousand years after the partly by plottingthe position of finds houses lining the inside of the curtain wall. first settlement had been established. and traces of buildings. Photograph: Bengt Edgren 1973. Drawing: Björn Ed. 5 Öland in the fourth century is an agrarian divided into 21 units of 18 ells each. In the Eketorp I — community without any villages in our sense original layout of the fort, one of these units of the word. The homesteads, it is true, are constituted the south-west gate, while the The First scattered here and there in clusters, but other twenty indicated the positions of the Fortress most of them are single farms surrounded by houses lining the inside of the curtain wall. 300 A.D. small fields and extensive grazing lands. Li After various changes, Eketorp I finally vestock played a very important part in came to include twenty-three houses. farming. The houses had stone walls and were ap When the farmers in the southern most parently open at the end facing the interior part of the island come to build their for of the fort, which was left as a clear central tress, they choose a site on the limestone space. There are few traces of habitation in pan (Alvaret) close to a large expanse of the house floors, such as fireplaces or mis wetlands. This position is dictated by stra laid artefacts, and so people are unlikely to tegic considerations, because it is difficult to have moved here from the surrounding attack from the wet lands and at the same farms, bringing their household imple time the defenders have a ready supply of ments, livestock and valuables with them. If water. Then again, the fort is right next to they took refuge in the fortress, it must have the extensive open grazing which Alvaret been for short periods at a time, and above provides in the south of Öland. all perhaps in order to protect both man and The size of Eketorp I and the layout of beast from approaching dangers. The grow the settlement were not left to chance. It is ing need for protection from hostile attacks clear that the inside of the fortress was care during this period is reflected by the demo fully parcelled out, in units (ells) of 47 cm. lition of the earliest fort after only a short This was the common unit of length in the time, and its immediate replacement with a East Roman Empire, which is probably larger curtain wall. People now transfer where the people of Öland learned their their entire homesteads - houses, byres methods of measurement and calculation.

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