9.4. Cairns in Historical Sources?

9.4.1. Långholm

In Finland, cairns dating back to the historical period have been reported from Ostrobothnia and the archipelago of Uusimaa (Siiriäinen 1978; Europaeus 1922). Cairns form the historical period have been registered also on the eastern coast of Sweden, occasionally associated with tomtning-remains (Larsson 1984; Hermodsson 1987; Norman 1991; Norman 1993: 93, 158). In the archipelago of Åboland, the shore zone datings for some cairns in the outer archipelago suggest that the grave might date back to the Middle Ages. This is the case concerning, for example the grave at Djupklevudden, Kälö, Korpo (364). It has been constructed on a shore cliff, which today is at the height of 6.4 m above sea level, which corresponds to the shore zone dating 940 160 AD but there is no certainty of medieval origin for any of the graves.

There are, however, two historical sources which may be relevant. One is the great inquiry into the ancient monuments in 1666–1693 which was launched in Sweden-Finland with a royal statute (Baudou & Moen 1995; Cleve 1967; Laakso 1987; Edgren 1995 c). In 1674, the Vicar of the parish of Taivassalo, Petrus A. Bergius dispatched to the King a report on the information he had acquired concerning the ancient remains in his parish. In order to collect that information he convened the peasants of his parish, which at that time comprised also the subordinate parish of Iniö. The letter written by Bergius was published in 1859 by Karl August Bomansson in the following form:

Men fans intet, som wärdigt är skrifwas; Vthan bönderna wid wårt capell, och Juimo byy, berättade, at på en högh backawägh som Callas borgh holmen, hafwer fordom warit en skanss temligh stoor och wijdh, hwilcken Konungens Krigzfolck i den giordt hafwer, och sedan aff Landzens inbyggiare i siälskap och på en annan holme haart när, i twå jord och sand här begrafne *)

Petrus A. Bergius

Past. et Præp. toefsalensis

*) Meningen häraf är svår att fatta. Utg. anm.

As stated by Bomansson in his footnote, the contents of the text are rather obscure. In the following a suggestion for an English interpretation[1]:

But there was nothing worth writing about; apart from what the peasants from the village of Jumo in our chapel parish [of Iniö] told: on a high hill, called Borgholmen, there was in ancient times a fairly large and wide earthwork built by the King’s warriors, and furthermore, two of the islanders were buried here and on another island nearby, together in earth and sand.

The borgh holmen mentioned by Bergius can be recognized as the island of Borgholm in the village of Jumo in Iniö. The shores of the island are walled in by a rampart in nine separate sections. The total length of the sections, which in all probability are the remains of the earthwork mentioned by Bergius, is approximately 450 metres. The lowest point of the rampart is at the height of 8.1 m indicating that the fortified island was not in use before the Viking Age (Tuovinen et al. 1992). The rampart which had been constructed in ancient times, as mentioned in the letter written by Bergius, was a dry-stone wall like those of the Iron-Age hillforts, which suggests a dating to the Late Iron Age; building the wall too far from the shore would not have been prudent since that would have given the invaders the opportunity to perform a landing on the shore zone. What is actually more interesting than the age of the hillfort, is the statement that two islanders had been buried together on a nearby island in earth and sand. This description suits best the island of Långholm which is separated from Borgholm by a narrow strait. This island is more sandy and more gravelly than most of the adjacent islands. In the middle of Långholm there is a cairn (102), which has been constructed, very exceptionally, in a terrain of gravel and pebbles.

9.4.2. Långfuruholm

In the cairn of Långfuruholm at Högsåra, Dragsfjärd one could still see in the early 20^th century well-preserved parts of a human skeleton between the boulders. This grave, discovered by Volter Högman in 1886, and the apparently late remains of a human skeleton inspired Svante Dahlström to write an animated essay in 1940 (Dahlström 1940). In this essay he deals with a statute in the provincial code of Uppland in Sweden from the year 1296. It decreed the procedure to be observed if a member of the crew on a vessel belonging to the Swedish marine military organization, called ledung, should be taken ill. If the disease lasted long and was serious, the vessel had to be sailed to a harbour, and the crew should be forbearing, watch and observe the state of the patient. The suspense went on until all the members of the crew agreed about the death of the patient. The deceased had to be taken then to an uninhabited island and buried between stones and turf – mællum stens ok torfwo. Only after this did the vessel sail off. The passage of the statute concludes with the statement that if the sailor after all survived, was rescued, and was able to name the vessel and its crew, he was entitled to receive a remuneration of 140 marks as a compensation for being buried. The final clause should be interpreted as a determination of the liability for remuneration, which made the crew consider very carefully the resolution concerning the death of the patient.

But mællum stens ok torfwo; Dahlström interpreted this expression as a cairn. The association between the old law text and the cairns is naturally liable to discussion: it might be arbitrary to build a bridge between a medieval provincial code and the grave at Långfuruholm. On the other hand it might be thinkable that the simply and unsophisticatedly described procedure in which the decision concerning death is made in the community around the patient, derives from a prehistorical common tradition in the country. The possibility of the survival of the patient brings forth the unsought reminiscence of the tradition described by cultural anthropologists of treating the patient as deceased and of initiating the mortuary ritual before the biological moment of death; I refer here, for example, to Lauri Honko’s description of the burial tradition in Melanesia with the patient as a participant (Honko 1960: 49–50; see also Honko 1981 b: 161–162; Nenola 1985: 185–187). If the death of a sick Skolt was delayed and turned into a difficult process, the death was sometimes hastened by setting a copper pot beside the patient the wrong side up; this upside-down position reflected the principle of inversion in the realm of Death (Storå 1971: 207). It is thus a matter of cultures where the biological moment of death is not regarded as the decisive point of transition from the living to the realm of Death. Bringing the dying member of the community into the category of the deceased is rather a cultural procedure attended to by the community, and the biological death is only one momentary phase in this procedure, though of great importance, to be sure. Maybe this example will remind us of the fact that archaeology provides only a limited means of comprehending the mortuary ritual behind the cairns.