The Viking Age graveyard that was covered in sand
If you are into vikings
you need to see what’s on the other side of this hill:
This isn’t just a bunch of rocks on a field, no, this is Lindholm Hills, the grave site of close to 700 people who lived more than a 1000 years ago during the late iron age and the viking age.
The first graves go all the way back to around 400 AD, while the newest were made almost 600 years later.
The majority of the discovered graves are cremation graves, where the deceased were burned on site and not just given a single tombstone but most often they were surrounded by a stone formation.
The triangular- and ship-formations were for men, while the oval and circular ones were for women. Some of the people were even buried with their dog.
But one thing became a problem. Sand! Sanddrifts and sandstorms, eventually caused the people of the Lindholm Hills to leave the area behind, and over time some places were covered with more than 3 meters of sand.
Deserted, covered in sand and forgotten this historic site had disappeared.
Hundreds of years later it was luckily rediscovered, but it wasn’t until the 1950s that it was fully excavated. And though the graves were made more than a millennium ago, I still look at ,
the same stones and the same moon as they did.
Lindholm Høje, Nørresundy, Denmark