Excavation of the giant house Baadslunde
I dThis year, archaeologists from Museum Vestsjælland are excavating one of Zealand's largest giant houses. The investigation of the well-preserved giant's house Baadslunde near Skælskør is financed by the Danish Agency for Castles and Culture and contains bones from the buried as well as grave goods in the remains of the almost 11-metre-long and two-metre-wide burial chamber.
The Giants' Rooms are the culmination of the large stone-built burial monuments of the Peasant Stone Age, and were built of stones weighing tons in the time around DKK 3300-3200. A long, narrow corridor was built at right angles to the burial chamber, so that you could get in and out of the interior of the burial mound. The large grave monuments were erected in thousands throughout the country, over a period of a few hundred years. Today, the vast majority of them are decommissioned and often completely plowed away, but just under 700 have been preserved and are protected in connection with the Conservation Act of 1937. It is therefore rare that there is an opportunity for extensive studies of the construction and structure of a giant's house. The excavation of the looped giant's house at Skælskør contains important knowledge about both construction and use, including the rituals, burial customs and other burials that have taken place in the mound over time.
Excavation
Jættestuen was known from descriptions in the late 1800s where it was looped. But it was only when a detector operator found a skull in the field at Skælskør in 2021 that it became clear that much was still preserved under the soil layer. Excavation began in 2022 and so far the chamber and the various structural layers around it have been uncovered. Beneath the mound was also an even older – and hitherto unknown – megalithic tomb – a stone nozzle. Around it, there are preserved scars from the cultivation of the land in the earliest agricultural societies. The various elements in the burial mound are examined by a combination of detailed archaeological documentation with photogrammetry as well as a variety of scientific and archaeological analyses. The excavation will continue in 2024, among other things with the participation of students from the University of Copenhagen.
Photos of finds from the excavation
Project manager
The project is supported by:
