Gamla Uppsala Burial Mounds:
Graves of Fierce Swedish Kings
Now a Peaceful Summer Stroll
The Gamla Uppsala burial mounds, graveyard of ancient Swedish kings, link to Beowulf through the Ongentheow story and also suggest why King Beowulf, with his Swedish family connection, received two funerals.
From
the Museum we walked to nearby Gamla Uppsala kyrka (church), but I'll
save those pics for the Quick-Look-Round page. We're now walking around
the Osthogen or East Mound (below). This picture looks southwest:
The three stone markers on the northeast face mark the place where Bror Emil Hildebrand began a 20-meter tunnel into the mound, with important results.
Where's the Water?Below,
we've turned the corner and are looking westward at a wide, green plain
with large fields and woodlots stretching to the horizon. We know the
northern tribes liked to situate their burial mounds in sight of
navigable water. Beowulf specifically asks for this (lines 2802-2808),
and the kings at Sutton Hoo
had mounds overlooking the River Deben. This plain before us was once
under water. The land is still rebounding from the decreased burden of
kilometers-thick glaciers which receded from here roughly 10,000 years
ago. So the waters visible from here 1500 years ago have since
receded.
 How do I know this? I read the following sign (the English part):  
Below, we've come around the three great mounds and are looking back toward Gamla Uppsala kyrka; you can just see its roof.
Climbing another hoo (or mound, or hog [Sw.] or hoj
[Dan.]), and looking south, we see the Uppsala Cathedral spires in the
distance. When the Cathedral was built (beginning ca. 1270) this town was renamed Uppsala. The village behind us then had its name changed to Gamla (Old) Uppsala.
 (Left) Here's a closeup of the wildflowers you can just see in the picture above.
(Right) And more Swedes enjoying a stroll past the ashes of ancient kings.
 I
was expecting the Gamla Uppsala mounds to be dreary, overgrown hills
with a fence round them, a necessary stop on my Beowulf pilgrimage.
Instead I found myself involuntarily falling in love with this spot. I
don't know why, but I believe others feel it as well.
I hope to be back, with more time to look round.
Question 1: Why did Beowulf need two funerals?After Beowulf dies of his wound from the dragon, his nephew Wiglaf orders the warriors
to fetch from afar wood for the balefire
for the good man. (lines 3113-14)
Then,
The Geatish people made ready for him
a pyre on the earth (it wasn't a small one)
hung with helmets, battle shields,
and
bright byrnies, as he had asked.
3140
The
poet tells us that a woman sang a dirge for Beowulf, and as the pyre
burned, "Heaven swallowed the smoke." (line 3155). Some people would
think that enough of a funeral for anybody. But next,
The Geatish people then wrought
a mound on the cliff; it was high and broad,
widely visible to sea-voyagers,
and they constructed in ten days
the war-hero's beacon, the ashes of the fire 3160
surrounded by a wall, in the best design
the cleverest men could come up with.
They place treasure in this barrow (AS beorg), and
Then around the hill rode battle-fighters,
princes'
sons, twelve in all,
3170
to mourn their loss, and lament for their king,
to make him an elegy,...
... so it is fitting
that a man praise in words his friendly lord, 3175
with his heart love him, when he is led
onward, out of the body's house.
In a very interesting and informative essay, "The Tomb of Beowulf", Fred C. Robinson notes that:
The
hero's obsequies have ... been regarded as problematic by scholars of
the poem, who are troubled by the fact that Beowulf's funeral rites are
not merely grander than the funerals of other characters described in
the poem, but peculiarly complex in a way that makes them unique.
--(Fred C. Robinson, "The Tomb of Beowulf', reprinted in Beowulf: A Verse Translation [by Seamus Heaney] New York and London: Norton, 2002; page 182.) Reprinted elsewhere, too.
Answer:--(a) because Beowulf's family was Swedish, and that's how the Swedes buried their great nobility; and
--(b) you can't do the second part until the barrow's finished. It takes a while to build a large barrow
This longitudinal section of the Osthogen, East
Mound (from another information signboard on the walk), shows the
tunnel dug into it by Bror Emil Hildebrand in 1846. The top of the
mound is 8 meters (about 26 feet) above grade. The structure in
the centre is a stone cairn built around a funerary urn
containing fragments of bone and other objects. Other materials such as
melted glass, iron rivets and bits of personal items were found in the
grave. Theories as to who was buried there have included (a) King Aun,
King Adils, or King Egil (= Ongentheow); (b) a young boy; (c) a woman
aged 20 to 30; (d) b plus c.
My point is that in order to bury someone like this you'd have to go through the same process outlined in Beowulf. That is,
1.
A big bonfire with the body and lots of fine things to go up in smoke
with the deceased, so he or she would be well outfitted for the
afterlife, accompanied with mourning. (According to Tacitus ( Germania 27), women were allowed to grieve openly; men were not.) Then,
2.
An interment with the ashes and bits of bone enclosed in a cairn,
covered by a huge mound. In Beowulf this phase requires ten days. Then,
3.
A ceremony to dignify the interment, and perhaps a chance for the men
to express their mourning in a socially-acceptable way, such as riding
around the barrow singing praises.
The three great mounds at Gamla Uppsala and Ottar's Mound (Ottarshogen)
at Vendel all cover stone cairns heaped over burnt remains. So
why would it be "problematic" for Beowulf, who the poet reminds us
comes from a Swedish family, to be buried in the same manner?
Question 2: Was Adam of Bremen Misinformed?In the 1070's Adam of Bremen wrote about pagan sacrifices at Uppsala:
That
folk has a very famous temple, called Uppsala, situated not far from
the city of Sigtuna and Bjorko. In the temple, entirely decked out in
gold, the people worship the statues of three gods ...[Thor, Wotan and
Frikko] ... It is customary to sacrifice in Uppsala, at nine-year
intervals, a general feast of all the provinces of Sweden ... The
sacrifice is of this nature: of every living thing that is male, they
offer nine heads ... The bodies they hang in the sacred grove that
adjoins the temple ... Even dogs and horses hang there with men.
( History of the Archbishops of Bremen,
early 1070's, translated by Francis J. Tschan, 1959, quoted on an
information sign at the Gamla Uppsala site; get the unabridged excerpt here.).
To me, Adam's account gets a confirming echo from Beowulf. Toward the end of the poem
we're told about a battle between attacking Geats (pronounced 'yachts')
and defending Swedes, which at first goes badly for the Geats. With
their leader killed, the surviving Geats escape to Ravenswood, where
Ongentheow (who's associated with Uppsala, remember) surrounds them and
taunts them with what he's going to do to them:
... all through the night
he kept threatening that wretched band;
he said in the morning he'd murder some
with the sword's edge, some on the gallows-tree 2940
for birds to fool with.
Two other writers, Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturluson, mention a tradition of human sacrifice at the Uppsala temple.The Beowulf manuscript was written decades before Adam's History, and refers to events 500 years before Adam's time.
Answer:My guess is that there's some truth to Adam's story, even if his information was out of date.
Whatever
happened here in the past, Gamla Uppsala is a beautiful, peaceful place
today and I hope very much to return and spend a longer time here.
References and LinksTwo Books
1. R.W. Chambers:
One early discussion of these graves, with an overview of the
archaeological and scholarly work published up to 1930, can be found in
R.W. Chambers, Beowulf: An Introduction, Third Ed., Cambridge University Press, 1959, pages 408-419. 2. Stuart Pigott: Ancient Europe: from the beginnings of Agriculture to Classical Antiqity.
Chicago: Aldine, 1965 [Paperback]. Well-written survey of European
prehistory. In a map on page 61 Pigott shows that megalithic stone
tombs in western Europe were far from rare; there are 3,500 of them in
the Danish islands alone (page 60). Pigott thinks similar tombs in
France date back to 3,000 BCE. So the Sutton Hoo and Gamla Uppsala
mounds are part of an ancient tradition practiced by peoples of Europe
over several millennia. "Indeed the Viking barrow-burials carried
on the [same] tradition," says Pigott.
Links (leave beowulf-country.org):For more information
about Gamla Uppsala, visit Wikipedia here. For more
on Ongentheow's last battle as told in Beowulf (Gummere
translation), and the Gamla Uppsala connection, visit Wikipedia here. For notes
on the site and Gamla Uppsala Museum, visit the Riksantikvarieambetet site. Greg
Fearon comments on the Beowulf-Uppsala connection and gives a brief
report on his visit, at: GFPK Travels to Gamla UppsalaThe
Global Oneness Commitment has a
page with links for prospective visitors to Gamla Uppsala re
accommodations, etc. To read quotes on the Uppsala Temple from Adam of Bremen's History of the Archbishops ...(early 1070's), Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla (13th century) and Saxo Grammaticus' Gesta Danorum (early 13th century), go to Wikipedia hereShow me the History of the Danes (Gesta Danorum) by 13th-century Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus (in English) There's information on Anglo-Saxon burial mounds and beliefs associated with them, here
Copyright: The translated passages above are from Mike Walton's The
Book of Beowulf (Cayuga, Ontario: Copyright 2007),
pages 119 and 124-126. You may
use the material above in an essay or for private Beowulf
study, but not commercially. Do credit
your source!
Thanks!To
my sister Brenda's friend, Goran Eklund, who picked us up at Arlanda
Airport and acted as our convivial guide, driver and host during our
visit to Sweden.
-- Mike Walton
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