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Menhir (Iron Age)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Menhirs continued to be raised in Scandinavia during the Pre-Roman Iron Age and later, over the graves of deceased. In Denmark and Sweden, they are called bautasten and bautastenar respectively. They were raised both as solitary stones and in formations, such as the stone ships and few stone circles.
Sometimes, they were raised only as commemoration to great people, a tradition which was continued as the runestones.
The tradition was strongest in Bornholm, Gotland and Götaland and appears to have followed the Goths to the southern shore of the Baltic Sea, (now Northern Poland) where they are a characteristic of the Wielbark culture [1][2].
Even if knowledge that the menhirs were usually graves was later lost, it was still fresh in the 13th century as testify these lines by Snorri Sturluson in the introduction of the Heimskringla:
- As to funeral rites, the earliest age is called the Age of Burning; because all the dead were consumed by fire, and over their ashes were raised standing stones.[3]
- For men of consequence a mound should be raised to their memory, and for all other warriors who had been distinguished for manhood a standing stone; which custom remained long after Odin's time.[4]
In the same work, Snorri wrote that the Swedes burnt their dead king Vanlade and raised a stone over his ashes by the River Skyt (one of the tributaries of the River Fyris):
- The Swedes took his body and burnt it at a river called Skytaa, where a standing stone was raised over him.[5]
The tradition is also mentioned in Hávamál.