Håga kurgan: A Nordic Bronze Age Burial Mound in Sweden
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Sweden
- Primary era
- Bronze Age
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Bronze Age
- Civilizations
- Unclassified
- Site type
- Burial
- Remains
- Burial Mound
On this page13 sections
History
Håga kurgan is a Nordic Bronze Age burial mound near Uppsala in Sweden, built around 1000 BC during Period IV of Oscar Montelius’s Scandinavian Bronze Age chronology. It belonged to a socially prominent person in Uppland and is known for an unusually rich group of weapons, bronze objects, and gold ornaments.
A distinctive Bronze Age burial
The date was first established through the forms of the grave goods and was later supported by radiocarbon analysis of charcoal in the 1960s. The burial is exceptional in the Mälaren Valley because mound burials were no longer customary there at this time. Its wealth and weapons also make it an unusual example in Middle Sweden, with comparable contemporary burials at Lusehøj on Funen in Denmark and Seddin in northern Germany. The quantity of gold has especially close parallels in graves from the Oder Valley.
The burial brought together older and newer customs. A long oak coffin, associated with earlier Bronze Age inhumation practices, held the cremated remains of the deceased, while cremation had become characteristic of the later Bronze Age. The identity and sex of the person remain uncertain. The objects have often been interpreted as indicating a man, while the human remains have also been described as those of a woman or a very slender man. The possibility that more than one person was buried in the grave has also been proposed.
Investigation and changing interpretations
An initial investigation took place in the late seventeenth century, but it apparently reached only earth, stones, and gravel rather than the centre of the mound. The principal excavations were conducted in October and November 1902 and in April and May 1903 under the direction of the archaeologist Oscar Almgren, with assistance from students at the Uppsala seminary. Gustaf VI Adolf, who later became king of Sweden and was then active as an archaeologist, helped organize the work.
The excavations showed that the mound belonged to the Bronze Age rather than the Migration Period or the Viking Age. They also revealed a complex construction that prompted further archaeological questions. The finds were transferred to the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm and placed in a permanent exhibition. In February 1986, a gilt bronze spectacle-shaped brooch was stolen from the museum. The thief broke it into bronze fragments outside the building, and parts were recovered several months later near the entrance after the snow melted. Surviving documentation allowed a replica to be made for exhibition in 1987.
Name and surrounding cemetery
The name King Björn’s Mound comes from a tradition first written down in 1704. It claimed that a King Björn had been buried there and had lived during the late Iron Age, but the mound is about 1,500 years older. Håga mound is the modern designation, while Håga means “tall mound.”
The surrounding Håga cemetery area was used during the Bronze Age. Around 1300 BC, a cult building, or possibly an open-air sacred enclosure bordered by stones, was built near the mound. When it became obsolete, a larger structure was erected nearby around 1200 to 1100 BC. Three smaller burial mounds, 24 circular stone settings, and two standing stones also formed part of the cemetery landscape. The mound and this wider archaeological setting are included in Sweden’s national archaeological heritage register.
Remains
Håga kurgan is about 7 metres high and 45 metres across. Its central burial was enclosed by an oak-log chamber and a stone cairn, a monument made chiefly from piled stones, before the whole structure was covered with turf. The construction required an estimated 7,500 person-days of labour, and turf was removed from an area covering more than six football fields.
Mound and burial chamber
Stone and turf construction
A cairn approximately 4 metres high was built around, beside, and above the burial chamber. Roughly 4 metres of turf were then placed over it to create the mound that survives today. A stone ring around the centre lay beneath the turf and would have been visible during the earlier phase, when the cairn formed the outer surface.
Oak chamber and coffin
The chamber was made from upright oak logs of regular size. It collapsed, bringing down the oak coffin inside it. The coffin was at least 2.5 metres long and stood at ground level over the cooled remains of a funeral pyre. Charcoal and other ash from the fire were placed on the chamber floor with the cremated bones, while small fragments of the coffin survived among the burial material.
Weapons and ornaments
Bronze sword
The largest grave object was a 76.5-centimetre bronze sword, partly covered with gold. Its blade was thickened along the centre and sharpened on both edges. The wooden grip has largely decayed, causing 29 gold rivets to detach. A gold pommel may also have belonged to the grip, and a comparable gold object was found in the grave. Each side of the grip carried five circular designs containing five or six concentric rings that resemble tree rings. The same pattern appeared on the brooch.
Spectacle-shaped brooch
The gilt bronze spectacle-shaped brooch was a clothing fastener formed from two cast ornamental discs, each more than 4 centimetres wide. Their paired circles resemble eyeglasses. Each disc had a central ring surrounded by further rings, seven similar circles arranged around it, and a zigzag pattern between enclosing lines. Twisted gold wire decorated the frame joining the discs. The broken pin had another circular disc bearing concentric rings. The brooch’s design has been interpreted as feminine, contributing to the suggestion that a woman was buried there, although the razors have encouraged other proposals involving a man and woman, two men, or two men and a woman.
Other grave goods
The burial group included a bronze razor and a smaller razor, two pairs of small tweezers, two bronze belt hangers, two gilt bronze buttons, and two bronze double-buttons with long spike-like projections. Four long twisted ornaments were made from flat gold wire, along with three small spiral ornaments formed from similar wire. In total, the assemblage contained 52 gold-decorated objects, some surviving only as tiny fragments. The bronze pieces were gilded or embellished with gold wire, and the group may have come from one workshop on Zealand.
Other material in the chamber included a pottery sherd, three or four pieces of resin carrying impressions of wood grain, a piece of birch bark, cremated human bones, charcoal, ash, and minor remains of the oak coffin.
Later activity and wider landscape
Fires were lit repeatedly on the mound after the burial. Its surface layers contain scattered animal and human bones. The identified wild animals include reindeer, squirrel, hare, marten, wild goose, fox, and pike, while domesticated animals include dog, cattle, sheep, goat, horse, and pig. The human bones came from several individuals. One thigh bone had been split to expose the marrow, a feature interpreted as possible evidence of cannibalism or human sacrifice, although the ritual meaning remains uncertain.
Around 1000 BC, higher sea levels made the site a peninsula projecting into a long marine inlet extending from Lake Mälaren. A former road ran in front of the mound toward ancient fortifications at Fiby, including three around Lake Fibysjön. About 2 kilometres upstream lies the Lillängen burial area, with roughly 50 circular stone settings and approximately 30 standing stones. Farther along the former shoreline stood the Predikstolen hillfort, while other burial grounds and hillforts occupied the wider shore zone.
The Håga cemetery contains the foundations of both the older and the larger cult structures, as well as the smaller mounds, stone settings, and standing stones. The foundations of the larger structure had long been known, while those of the older structure were identified only more recently.
