Dom som talade fornnordiska, og ...

PhD in Archaeology, Kristin Ilves, specialization in
Maritime Archaeology, by blogged today, it stands corrected, yesterday:

This is the very first press release I have written. 

And then:

it feels great to have the news of such relevance for the archaeology in the Baltic Sea region out there, in the public. Although the finds are to be conserved yet and new information will surely arise after that, in my following posts, I will present a number of these interesting finds to you in more detail.

New intriguing finds from the Late Iron Age have been found in Kvarnbo, Saltvik, on the Åland Islands.
The research project titled The Hall at the Crossroads of Baltic Waterways was initiated in 2012 (Further investigations are planned in the area in 2014) and emanated from an infra-red aerial photography depicting the fields north of the church of Saltvik where archaeologists observed a soil impression that bears very strong similarities with the outlines of large Late Iron Age hall structures known from Scandinavia.
Halls were buildings with special social importance for the region. There are similar hall buildings known throughout Scandinavia, such as in Gamla Uppsala, Sweden, but longhouses of comparable dimensions have been previously unknown both on the Åland Islands and on mainland Finland.

There has found lot: consisting mainly of personal ornaments of silver and bronze, were unearthed in connection to what is believed to be the remains of a 40 x 12 m large building. Overall, the results point towards the existence of an elite settlement at the site, comparable to only a handful of places in the Baltic Sea region.
Among the unearthed objects, there are several different types of brooches from the late 6th century AD to the end of the Viking Age. One of the earliest finds recovered is a brooch shaped as a bird of prey. A well-preserved small oval brooch belongs to the same period. The craftsmanship is characterized by rich ornamentation in different techniques and motifs – a Viking silver finger ring exhibits an intricate pattern of punched triangles, while the unearthed part of an equal armed brooch depicts the head of a human or an animal. In addition to jewellery, an end socket made of bronze that has been sitting at the tip of a scabbard, a so-called sword chape, was found. This object has a direct parallel in an object found at Birka, where the better preserved specimen displays ornamentation in the shape of a human figure.

Foto: Kristin Ilves.

But the people there, they were still free of the Christian faith, and spoke Old Norse language.

Fornlämningen är från den första tiden då människor kom till Åland och kan dateras till mellan 5.200-4.500 före Kristus. Utgrävningen pågår fram till slut av år 2014, men man har redan gjort många fynd.