Gettlinge

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Gettlinge's granite standing stones are visible from Route 136, the highway that rings Öland's western coast. Arranged in the outline of a ship, those stones mark one of Öland's largest burial grounds. The gravefield received the dead of multiple civilizations over three thousand years. Communities from the late Bronze Age, through the Iron Age, and into the Viking Age all buried their dead here. All of them chose this exact strip of ground. What drew so many different peoples to the same narrow place across three millennia? And what do the rare wildflowers growing above that ground have to do with the people buried beneath them?

  Gettlinge sits on the western edge of the Stora Alvaret, a vast limestone plateau on Öland's southern half. The geology of that plateau shaped where people settled and where they buried their dead. It also determined which plants have survived here since the last ice age.

  1

• 2. Geology of the Ridge

  ›

  The Ordovician limestone beneath Gettlinge formed at least 600 million years ago. Glaciers grinding across that rock during the last ice age produced nearly all of Öland's thin topsoil. When the ice retreated, the land rebounded, and Öland rose as an island from the post-glacial sea. Wave action during that period of uplift shaped a narrow ridge running north to south along the island's southwestern coast.

  Across most of the southwestern coast, soil reaches a maximum depth of two centimetres. The ridge provided the only exception: enough depth for burial mounds, building foundations, and agriculture. Every community that settled on southern Öland concentrated on this narrow strip. Beneath the burial layer, an extensive limestone formation has been quarried for local building material since medieval times. The granite standing stones of the Viking ship burial came from elsewhere entirely. Glaciers carried them as moraine material from the Scandinavian mainland. Long before any human hand arranged them, ice moved them here.

  1

• 3. The Gettlinge Gravfeld

  ›

  Near the village of Alby, a few miles east of Gettlinge, excavators found Öland's best-preserved examples of Stone Age wooden dwellings. The fieldwork ran across multiple years in the latter half of the 1900s. Bone spears, elk antler harpoons, and flint tools revealed the hunting and gathering techniques of the island's earliest inhabitants. Among the animal remains recovered were bear, marten, seal, and porpoise. Those first islanders likely crossed the Kalmar Strait from the Swedish mainland before the glacial cap had fully melted. An ice bridge still connected the two shores at that time.

  The Gettlinge Gravfeld stands close to the coast highway and holds Bronze Age barrows alongside the more prominent Viking stone ship burials. Some individual standing stones are thought to predate even the Viking era. Artifacts recovered from other gravefields on Öland include bronze chains and a bone needle case.

  Viking graves at the Hulterstad Gravefield and the Strandvalle Gravfeld, both on Öland, indicate that Gettlinge was not an isolated site. All three locations form part of a connected network that ran along the island's southern coasts. Most Viking activity on Öland was concentrated on the southeast, where the open sea was within easier reach. Stone Age settlements at sites like Gettlinge are counted among the key resources on Öland that supported the Stora Alvaret's designation as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

  12

• 4. Linnaeus on the Alvar

  ›

  In 1741, Carl Linnaeus visited Öland and became the first scientist to formally describe the biology of the Stora Alvaret. His assessment was precise: "It is noteworthy how some plants are able to thrive on the driest and most barren places of the alvar."

  Some species growing on the limestone pavement around Gettlinge are relicts from the glacial age. They persist in dry, thin-soiled conditions that have excluded more common plants. Named plants of the alvar include stonecrop, dropwort, kidney vetch, and Common spotted orchid. Artemisia Oelandica, found nowhere on earth outside Öland, grows here as well. Most of the wildflowers bloom between May and July. Meadow Oat-grass and Sheep's Fescue hold the ground between them. Where orchids grow, fungi tend to follow; Hygrocybe persistens and Lepiota alba are among the species recorded on the Stora Alvaret. The alvar's severely dry conditions are visible in the dried appearance of the ground cover by midsummer. Those same conditions have kept this unusual assembly of species intact for thousands of years.

  Around Gettlinge's burial stones, rare and endangered species of both plants and animals live at the alvar's edge.

  12