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Our exhibition does not show the Viking period yet, nor the Early Middle Ages. You can have a couple of samples anyway. By closely searching selected fields with metal-detectors (field reconnaisance), amateur archaeologists have brought many finds out into the light of day. The ¯sterlars area had been a central location in Viking times. Rich graves are found here with, among others, a man, his weapons and his horse! Also rich women's graves with beads, jewellery and knives. Quite probably an important man had lived in the vicinity. He could well have been present on a Viking expedition to England, or along the Russian rivers. A ship that belonged to the English king Alfred the Great was once on a trading trip, a little before the 900's. The ship's skipper - Wulfstan - relates that Bornholm had its own king at that time! Maybe he ruled from Gamleborg in Almindingen, which is thought to have been built in the Viking period. Later the sagas tell of some of the Danish king's men on Bornholm - Veset and Blood-Egil. Not gentlmen one should get too close to! Even though the sagas exagerrate to tell a good story, violence and war were every day things in Viking times - even if most people were farmers. The Bornholm vikings traded with people in both east and west. They traded, plundered or exchanged weapons, gold, silver, women, slaves, etc. That it was an unquiet time is witnessed by the many finds of treasure. Silver and gold were buried until better times. Many of the treasures were not retrieved until our time. Most of the island's treasure finds are kept in the National Museum in Copenhagen. It looks like the Bornholmers became Christians a little later than the rest of the country. Many of the Bornholm runestones were not, as is most common, raised by heathen Vikings but by Christian descendants of Vikings. Maybe still Vikings? In any case, two large cemeteries of a unique kind from the 1000's (at Gr¿dby in Aaker and Munkegrd in Pedersker) indicate that the Bornholm Vikings went over to Christianity late. In these cemeteries the dead are buried with faces turned to the east, so they can see Christ when He returns. But they also have goods with them! Clay vessels, jewellery, knives and coins. They held fast to some of the old traditions too, not accepting Christianity all at once.
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