Sättuna Barrow Seen from Boat

Posted by Martin R on August 14, 2007
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My dad tried out his new motorboat recently, going with my extra mom from Stockholm around Scania to Gothenburg and then across the country through the Göta Canal to Norrköping and back north to Stockholm again. Passing through Lake Roxen he sought out Sättuna in Kaga parish on the lake’s SW shore and took the above picture for me of the Sättuna barrow from the water. Below is a pic I took myself in September 2006. I want to radiocarbon date that mutha before the resident badger trashes its innards completely!

I’m glad to have a picture of the site from the lake, as Sättuna means “the tuna by the lake”. And tuna very likely meant something along the lines of “princely abode” 1500 years ago.

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Comments

  1. #1 Tobias
    August 15, 2007

    Didn’t see the barrow on the second picture at first. Dont’t blame it on the sunshine, blame it on the beautifully harrowed field…

  2. #2 Martin R
    August 15, 2007

    Gee, yeah, when you’ve done some work with a metal detector you get kind of passionate about newly harrowed fields…

  3. #3 Mary
    August 16, 2007

    o what do you recon is in thet mound?

  4. #4 Martin R
    August 16, 2007

    It’s either

    a) a few Early Bronze Age inhumations plus a gang of secondary Late Bronze Age cremations, or

    b) a late-1st Millennium AD cremation.

    The associated 6th-8th century aristocratic settlement has either been attracted by an EBA barrow or erected its own.

  5. #5 Mary E.
    August 18, 2007

    The associated settlement would be in either case like I asked you about once before, using an “ancestor” to validate a land claim?

  6. #6 Martin R
    August 18, 2007

    Yeah, mounds and land inheritance were closely linked in late-1st Millennium Scandinavia. At Sättuna, either they’re appropriating some forgotten Bronze Age chieftain’s resting place, or they’re building their own. If the barrow’s from the 1st Millennium, it’s actually most likely to be 9th or 10th century and so later than the aristocratic finds we’ve made. Perhaps they capped the settlement site with a barrow when it was abandoned? It’s been documented elsewhere, e.g. Högom.