Visiting Vikings at Birka

Last weekend, after spending the previous day at the historical museum (see my last blog), I woke up at 3 am and looked out the window. Although all weather forecasts had called for heavy rains, it was absolutely clear out. So I set the alarm for early a.m. and we got out early and took a boat tour to the island of Bjorka, home of the old “Viking” town of Birka.

Birka is located in that huge Lake Malaren, which connects the Baltic Sea with the interior of Sweden, whose many rivers drain into the lake. Malaren is filled with islands small and large, including the multiple islands that make up the city of Stockholm, and an island that holds the palace where the royal family actually live (as opposed to the island closer to downtown that holds the palace that is OFFICIALLY the royal palace). The main trading route from the Baltic Sea to Uppsala, which was the ancient capital of Sweden, as well as a central ritual site, used to go past Birka.

Birka lies just off another island where the local “king”/chieftain lived and held ‘court” in the 600s and for the next few centuries. He brought in many, many craftspeople to Birka and created a town of artisans with a “sheriff” to oversee them. The really, really cool thing is that in addition to a ring fort/hill fort (pictured below) and the archeological relics being found on land and in the water, too (we got to watch divers doing underwater archeology and to watch people sifting through material brought up from underwater, and saw numerous items that had been found that way), the island has the largest Viking cemetery anywhere—Scandinavian people over a thousand years ago lived right near and among their dead, so they could visit with them frequently for advice, etc. So their burial sites were right near their living and craft sites. There are over 3000 graves on Birka, most of them burial mounds--just like the ones pictured here-- over cremated remains. But some individuals were not cremated, and others had their ashes buried with lots and lots of things and with their animals. As a result of all those things that were buried with them, archeologists know a lot about Viking—and pre-Viking—culture. Many of the items and stories we had seen at the museum the day before had been recovered from Birka.

During the summer months, there are Viking re-enactments of all sorts at Birka. When we were there, the guides, who dressed in authentic Viking outfits, were actually archeologists, and we got to see some of the village that they are re-building, along with numerous crafts.