22. Lindholm Hoje Museum and Cemetery, Aalborg
Before
leaving Aalborg this morning we spent a few hours visiting the dead.
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| Marker Outside the Museum |
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| Viking Helmet |
First,
we toured the Lindholm Hoje Museum and learned about the history of the area
and the Vikings who lived here. The graves were discovered in the late 1800s
but the area was not excavated until 1952 -1958. There were displays of their
clothing, ships, burial rituals and cooking practices.
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| Cremation Ceremony |
Then
we crossed a small park to enter the Viking Cemetery.
 Aalborg Viking Cemetery |
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| Triangular Graves From the 5th or 6th Century |
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| Warrior's Grave With Large Stones, Mounded Earth Topped With Flint Blocks |
It
was an honor to pay tribute to these warriors, or, as some called them raiders
or Vikings. You see, Aalborg has the largest Viking cemetery in the world and is well preserved. It is open to the public, you can just
park your car and pay tribute to people who lived in the 5th century
AD and during the Stone Age. Well, some others were buried here between 1000 and 1500
AD. No matter the dates, those are Viking graves. Or better, Memorials, erected
to pay tribute. The larger the grave, the more elaborate the stones and the
higher or ‘more’ important the deceased was.
Male
graves were marked with triangles or ship shaped stone edifices, women with
circular or oval graves.
This
place was not eerie, it was peaceful. The area is so large it does not feel
crowded and I had time to sit on a bench and contemplate the surroundings. Here
I sat and birds chirped in the trees, the wind swayed the branches of the trees
taking energy from the ocean, right past my view. There were no other sounds. A
few sheep grazed in the distance, I saw a horse in the pasture below me. I
could have been in any century; I could pretend to be in the 9th
century, too.
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| Circular Woman's Grave With Smaller Stones |
Those
people who lay here now were living beings, had their daily struggles, tried to
make a living, eat daily and chased after perceived wealth. Just as we still do
today. They did not live like the movies project them to us. The people here struggled
through their lives, just like we do today, but a bit differently because they
had different beliefs; their minds were not like ours.
The
area we are in today is called Lindholm Hoje, where Hoje stands for the word
‘high’ or hill. So we are on Lindholm’s Hill. The actual village of the Vikings
is long gone; it was below, near the water’s edge. All that remains is this
spot, but it is
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| Oval or Ship-Shaped Male Grave |
a beautiful spot. It was preserved by a sand cover for over
1000 years until it was excavated. The sand came because the
land was exhausted by overuse, by over-cutting the trees, by over-grazing. The
sand acted like a band-aid, preserving, covering up, and healing the land underneath.
Today,
the land is still fragile but has recovered some; the sand again grows trees,
bushes, grass. But it took over a millennium. Maybe we can learn something from
the past, from the things the Vikings did wrong?
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| A Very Small Area of the Cemetery |
Yes,
we drove to Aarhus after our Viking Cemetery visit, but we spent most of the
morning and early afternoon here, taking in the surroundings of this place of
honor for any Viking.
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| Parking for Electric Cars, Aarhus |
We
slept however at the Hotel Zleep, in Aarhus, a nice hotel, modern, quiet with
parking that was easy but again a bit quirky. You just park your car, walk up
to the hotel reception but then you have to type in your license plate number
into an iPad like tablet: that is it.
Now
the ‘authorities’ know you are in the hotel; Strange that they have to know
this.
There
are a lot of strange, hidden things around here……now that is eerie.
