Sigtuna

This paper contains geophysical analysis of the largest town square in Sigtuna, Sweden. The studied area is approximately 736 m2. The purpose of the study was to search for early medieval house remnants and to possibly find structures matching those found during excavations in other parts of the town. The hypothesis is that the town of Sigtuna was planned and that the yards of the town were put out in a special pattern following the main street, which is the same as today. During the day of the geophysical prospection the weather conditions were not optimal. A lot of water at the surface disturbed the instrument and gave a blurred image. It turned out that a lot of contemporary pipes and a large traffic island from the 1930s covered the area. Archaeological structures could only be seen in smaller areas in between later structures. Vague oblong structures could be seen, as well as a distinct smaller square on the eastern part of the area. A large rectangle close to the main street was also observed. None of these structures could be seen in modern maps or photographs and are therefore marked as something that could be of archaeological interest. Some of the structures that were noted were probably part of the original medieval town plan, as judged by their size and location.

This paper focuses on a geophysical survey conducted in Sigtuna, Sweden, one of the oldest still standing medieval cities in Sweden. The survey was carried out with Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR). The purpose of the survey was to examine if one could see remnants of a medieval stone church thought to be located near the area where the geophysical survey was conducted. In the vicinity of the surveyed area, previous excavations had yielded finds such as parts of a medieval churchyard, fragments of an old procession street and various other smaller finds related to ecclesiastical life.

The results of the geophysical survey showed a rectangular structure in an east-west orientation. This has been interpreted by the author as the remains of a medieval stone church.

Birka, Sigtuna and Medelpad—Glimpses of Three
Writing Environments in the Viking Age.

The author discusses some aspects of vernacular literacy in the Viking Age by analysing the runic material from three different places in Sweden: the towns of Birka and Sigtuna in Uppland and the province of Medelpad in Northern Sweden.

In 1961, an iron anchor was found in Sigtuna's occupational layers. Stratigraphically, it can be dated to some time before about AD 1200. It may thus be Viking Age or even older. Typological dating seems impossible due to the scarcity of finds of early anchors in northern Europe. Swedish text, English summary.

Manfred Björkquist – Leader of the Young Church’ Movement and Founder of the Sigtuna Foundation

Manfed Björkquist (1884-1985) was born in the northern part of Sweden. His father, Jonas Erik Björkquist (1845-1912) was a country vicar and a staunch follower of confessional Lutheranism and Pietism. His parish became a model for renewed Lutheran church life in the last decades of the 19th century. Jonas Erik Björkquist  supported and encouraged the Church of Sweden Mission and its missionaries in south Africa and India and was a pioneer in using the organizational methods of the new social movements to vitalize local church life. Young Manfred Björkquist became early a devoted advocate of Christian Missions and started a Children’s Missionary Association at the age of ten. His activities for children and young people in the local church continued throughout his youth. During secondary education in Härnösand he came involved with the temperance movement and learned more about the possibilities of their organizational methods.  In 1902 Manfred Björkquist began his studies at the University of Uppsala, with the goal of becoming a Lutheran priest and missionary. Although taking coureses in Biblical Languages and theology, his greatest interest turned out to be philosophy and pedagogy. At the same time he was active in the Christian Student’s Association, especially its Missionary department. When the Young Church’ Movement began to form 1907-09 Manfred Björkquist became its predominant leader, supported by older theologians like Einar Billing, Nathan Söderblom and J.A. Eklund.  Manfred Björkquist’s theology, like the rest of the Young Church’ Movement at this time, was a blend of Pietism, confessional Lutheranism, and Idealist philosophy.  At the same time the movement distanced itself from the traditional Low Church Pietism of Uppsala and Sweden, while accepting the historical-critical methods of Biblical research. More than anything else there was a rediscovery of the Church as the  historical expression of the grace of God offered to the Swedish people. Manfred Björkquist became the leader of the movement through his active and inspiring personality, working tirelessly and innovatively on creating an organizational network for promoting the new movement and its theology. Among the influential and important longterm initiatives launched by Manfred Björkquist 1909-11 the following could be mentioned : »Crusades »,  The Voluntary Church Association, a monthly journal, courses for training of youth workers in the Church of Sweden and an « evangelical monastery ». The crusades were preaching tours by theological students from the universities at Uppsala and Lund. They reached between 600 and 700 parishes in two years, and then became a standing tradition for over twenty years. The journal lasted nearly one hundred years and was finally laid to rest in.  « The evangelical monastery » was realized through the Sigtuna Foundation 1915, which came to be his life’s work and the platform for many types of activities and institutions until 1942. Before the Sigtuna Foundation came into being, Manfred Björkquist was thrown into political controversy through his campagin for a voluntary contribution to the Swedish defense forces 1912-14. After the outbreak of World War One and the election of Nathan Söderblom to archbishop for the Church of Sweden, Manfred Björkquist began to change his Nationalist stand while empasizing Christian universalism as a superior value.  The Sigtuna Foundation buildings were opened on Martin Luther’s Day. October 31 1917.  They housed a hostel, a junior college, and conference facilities. The hostel became a favorite resting place for many Swedish novelists during the following decades and not a few of them were influenced by its combination of tolerance and Christian piety. The junior college became quickly very popular and reached a student population from the whole of Sweden and from different confessions and social groups. During the 1920s and 1930s it had one of the larger student bodies in the country. Maybe the most influential events staged by Manfred Björkquist during the 1920 and the 1930s were the conferences. The conferences brought together representatives of theology and church and representatives of labor organizations, writers and sport. The meetings between empoyers and employees helped give birth to the « Swedish model », meaning of spirit of mutual understanding and commitment to peaceful negotiations among labor organizations representing employers and employees. The ideological foundation of Manfred Björkquist’s activities related to the Sigtuna Foundation was Christian humanism, seeking common denominators among different social and cultural groups in the Swedish socities with the overall goal of fosterin a new kind of Christian culture in Sweden.  Manfred Björkquist was also active in supporting a revitalization of lay involvment in the Church of Sweden, cooperating with the Church of Sweden in founding The Church of Sweden Layman’s Educational Institute in Sigtuna in 1922. In 1927 he founded an upper secondary school with an emphasis on the old languages (Greek and Latin), Modern Languages, history and religion.  Quite rapidldy it established itself as a prestigious institution, recruiting students from the higher echelons of society. The present King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustav, and the former prime minister, Olof Palme, are among the more well-known pupils of the school.  In 1942 Manfred Björkquist was suprisingly apppointed Bishop of the new diocese of Stockholm. During his time as Bishop of Stockholm (1942-54) Manfred Björkquist met new and maybe even larger challenges, in trying to reach the gradually more and more secularized population  of the capital. After 1954, Manfred Björkquist returned to Sigtuna and continued being active in different agencies related to the Sigtuna Foundation until the 1970s. He died in 1985, being the oldest living Lutheran priest of Sweden. His legacy is very wide and influential but is still rather unresearched. It holds a number of keys to different developments in society and church in Sweden in the 20th century.

Summary. Seven small tiles of green porphyry
and one of serpentine have been found in Sigtuna.
They are likely to have been used in portable
altars. This high number is unique in Scandinavia
and can only be compared with six porphyry
tiles found in Hedeby/Schleswig.
Red, black and green porphyry was prized by
the emperors in Rome and Constantinople and
later by Early Medieval monarchs. Green porphyry
was quarried in Greece. These quarries
were not in use during the Early Middle Ages.
Instead, the material was scavenged from the remains
of Roman buildings and reused e.g. to
cover the reliquaries in portable altars.
The Sigtuna tiles probably came from the ruins of
Cologne.
The Sigtuna tiles are particularly interesting
since they were not found in Medieval churches,
but when excavating the town plots. They appear
in contexts dated to the 11th and 12th centuries.
The earliest finds date from a time when there is
no archaeological or written evidence of any
churches, even wooden ones, in Sigtuna. It is
therefore suggested here that Christian cult then
took place in private banqueting halls, which
seem to have stood at the far end of each of the
more than hundred town plots in Sigtuna.
The first wooden churches were probably
built c. 1060 when a bishopric was established in
Sigtuna. About 1100 the building of six or seven
Romanesque stone churches commenced. They
are among the oldest masonry structures in all of
Sweden. Except for the cathedral in the middle
of town, all churches were built along a new
street, parallel to and north of the main street and
the settlement area. Sigtuna’s church topography
reflects an intention to create a sacred townscape
for ceremonial processions where both King and
God were praised. It also reflects the idea of the
holy and heavenly city.

Sten Tesch - Separate burial grounds, worlds apart – Early Christian graves, churches, town properties  and manorial estates in Sigtuna the Lake Mälaren region (2014)

This article uses Early Christian graves and burial grounds as source material in order to analyse and discuss the social and political tensions that characterized the Late Viking Age/Early Medieval society in the Lake Mälar region, Sweden. A supplementary issue is the almost total absence of archaeological evidence of wooden churches from the early Christian period and in turn how Mass could be celebrated before there were any properly consecrated churches. The article concludes with a hypothesis about which strata in the society who built the first stone churches, in Sigtuna and in rural areas.

PDF 1 Summary in English      PDF 2 Paper in Swedish with figures.

Tesch, Sten (ed.). 2017. THE SHIFT - Viking Age religious custom and Christian faith. A multidisciplinary perspective on the Christianization process in the Mälaren area (Sweden). Published by Artos förlag.  Utgångspunkt för denna antologi om Mälarområdets kristnande är en seminarieserie med rubriken ”Det långa skiftet – ett forskarmöte om kristnandet och lokalsamhället under vikingatid och medeltid ur ett Mälardalsperspektiv” på Sigtunastiftelsen 2011–2013. Deltog gjorde forskare från olika discipliner – arkeologi, historia, runforskning, religionshistoria, ecklesiologi och teologi – intresserade av att diskutera detta specifika forskningsproblem. De flesta av bidragen är skrivna av de forskare som medverkade med föredrag eller deltog i denna seminarieserie. Snarare än svar på hur skiftet fick sin religiöst organisatoriska form, är bokens syfte att med sina tretton enskilda bidrag problematisera och öppna för ett fortsatt fördjupat samtal.

The original aim of the research project "11th century glass-working and silverprocessing in the Sigtuna mint" (2012–2019) was to re-examine all the fired clay from the 1990–91 Urmakaren excavation ("the Sigtuna mint") with fresh eyes in order to trace possible fragments of glass crucibles and furnace lining. In addition, an examination of slag from the excavation was made to secure possible traces of silver processing – melting and refining – that could be expected in a mint. The project grew a lot from the original goals over time, into a survey of several crafts performed at the site from c. 980 to c.1230 AD – noble metals, minting, weight manufacture, glass bead making, iron smithing, stone masonry, antler work and walrus ivory, writing, painting, pottery and textile crafts. The project came to highlight the activities on a site that probably belonged to the Royal Crown from the 990's and up into the 13th century. The report is written in Swedish.

Summary:
Sigtuna is the oldest town still extant in Sweden. It was founded c. 980, almost two hundred years before urbanization, the real expansion of towns, took place in medieval Sweden. Sigtuna is situated on Lake Mälaren in East Central Sweden, c. 35 kilometres north of Birka and 35 kilometres south of Gamla Uppsala (Old Uppsala). The settlement area stretches along the southern tip of what once was a large island (7 x 4 kilometres), now the Sigtuna peninsula, located between the waterways leading to Uppsala (fig. 1a and b). When the town was founded sea level was c. 4-5 metres higher than today and Lake Mälaren formed part of the Baltic Sea. The only place suitable for settlement and building was a narrow flat strip of virgin land on the tip of the island, about 100-150 metres wide, between the shore and a steep rocky ridge. Topographically, a hilly area separated the town from the rural settlements on the island. It was also distinct from the rural settlements on the opposite side of the waterway, as these did not regularly face the water. Strategically, however, Sigtuna was centrally located at an intersection of important waterways, which facilitated access to large parts of the Mälar region by boat or by ice in the winter. In other words, this location seems to have been very deliberately chosen: in the midst of, but separate from, the surrounding society.
The first part of the article focus on the physical structures that existed in early Sigtuna - houses, plots, townyards, cemeteries and churches along with the town plan. I will also discuss why and by whom the town was founded, the staging of the town as a setting for political power; who the inhabitants were and how a Christian Mass could be celebrated in the absence of regular church buildings. This is followed by a discussion on whether or not Sigtuna had an interactive relationship with the aristocrats in the Lake Mälaren region. The article ends with a comparative perspective on Scandinavian and European urbanization during the late Viking Age and Early Middle Ages, with main focus on town plans.

Dear reader,
Please note this article is published with Brepols Publishers as a Gold Open Access article under a Creative Commons CC 4.0: BY-NC license.
The article is also freely available on the website of Brepols Publishers: https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/abs/10.1484/J.JUA.5.121528 under this same license.

One crucial problem dealing with the earliest urban development in Scandinavia is not only the emergence of urban settlements, but their discontinuity. By examining the case studies of Birka and Hedeby, this paper does not only deal with the likely causes for the towns’ decline, but also takes a more detailed look into the closer chronological sequence of this very process. While Birka seems to become abandoned around c. AD 975, almost contemporaneous with Kaupang, Hedeby in contrast appears to prevail almost a hundred years longer. The possible reasons for this anachronism will be discussed and a so far unobserved, extensive transformation phase in Hedeby suggested.

The paper discusses finds of silver cupellation and assaying waste from Sigtuna and Gotland, in minting contexts as well as in jewellery workshop contexts, and the processes' links to the measuring of value and means of payment in the pre- and early monetary Scandinavian economies of the 10th to 12th centuries AD. It also discusses cold testing methods like pecking and bending, silver standards and the use of symbols borrowed from the monetary sphere in order to lend credibility to Gotlandic currency arm rings.

Artikeln redovisar kortfattat kontexterna till de analyserade degelskärvor från ”Kung Olofs myntaretomt” som Wallace redovisar i sin artikel på annan plats i denna utgåva av Situne Dei (http://arkiv.sigtunamuseum.se/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/situne-dei-2021_Wallace.pdf). Analysresultaten ställs mot andra analyser av liknande degelmaterial från Prag, Västflandern och Novgorod, och värdena från de olika analyserna korresponderar väl med varandra. Denna sorts deglar, skärvlar, tolkas idag tämligen samstämmigt som deglar använda vid testning eller småskalig raffinering av silverprover. De hör på så vis både funktionellt och kontextuellt samman med myntning i Sigtuna, troligtvis både under Olof Skötkonung vid 1000-talets början och under Knut Eriksson vid 1100-talets slut. Fynden korresponderar kronologiskt väl med dessa perioder. Att en anknytning till guldsmide även funnits kan dock inte uteslutas. Myntning, gravering av myntstampar och guldsmide hänger samman.

Metallurgic ceramics form a common group of Iron Age/Early Medieval workshop finds. These highly specialized refractory ceramics carry a lot of information; telling us not just about the blacksmiths’ and goldsmiths’ skills in handling ceramic materials, but also about production and workshop organisation. This paper mainly deals with the question of heating trays, interpreted as vessels used in fire assay, or the refining and analysis of silver. A general connection between assaying and means of payment is briefly discussed, and a hypothesis is put forward that the presence of heating trays may provide information on Viking control over the means of payment and trade, in the same way as the presence of weights and weighing does. The Viking weight economy was dependent on methods for weighing the silver used for payment and methods for checking its purity. Analyses of heating trays from 9th-10th century Birka and of trays from the 10th – 11th century mint in Sigtuna are made and an experimentally produced heating tray is analysed for comparison purposes.

There is a long research history about the place name "Tuna" or names incorporating "tuna" (e. g. Sigtuna). It is suggested that "tuna" originally denoted various locally or regionally important pre-Christian holy fences or enclosures and here and there survived as a place name. Sigtuna's Migration Period hillfort is discussed and tentatively associated with the town's name.

The 2006 excavation revealed a late 10th-early 11th century smithy, where an extensive mass-manufacture of Viking truncated iron/copperalloy weights had taken place. In the latest phase of the smithy itinerant glass workers started to visit the site, working with high lead glass. Glass craftsmen returned to the site several times until the mid 11th century, building a new furnace each time they visited.

"Abstract:  "Whenever discussing the Christianization of Scandinavia, the Lake Mälaren area comes into mind. A large number of rural burial grounds with early Christian graves has been excavated, making this region an ideal point of departure. But, the Mälaren region is more than mere countryside. Here, we also find the town Sigtuna, founded c. 980, allowing us to distinguish between urban and rural burial practices. In urban environments, such as Sigtuna, early burials are relatively uniform and influenced by the Christian standard. At the same time, the situation in rural areas might be best described as “anything goes”. This is usually attributed to a weak ecclesiastical organization. It seems plausible that the diversity seen in rural burials can be connected to the enormous production of rune stones during this period. Should rune stones, thus, be understood a sign of a society in crisis? The old ideology was strongly dependent on ancestral cult that tied individuals to particular farmsteads (oðal). A key question is whether religious hybridity also should be understood as a form of resistance, not against Christianity as such but against new Christian concepts that threatened this ancient oðal ideology – that is monarchy, the church and the individual ownership of land according to canon law. Recent archaeology provides many clues that might contribute to our new understanding of the Christianization of Scandinavia as a process of social change. Hence, individual changes in dress symbols, imagery and building structures, as well as changes in communications by land and sea do not only reflect change on an individual basis but on a greater scale.

The project´s starting-point is a boat grave in which a woman had been buried with dress adornments that (for untrained eyes) may seem generic for a 10th century burial. But a good scientist should never trust first impressions! Instead, the burial took place much later, in a time, when Christianity had been well established in the area. Nonetheless, the heirs chose to stage the burial in a pre-Christian style. The question is of course, why? Another question would be:  is this kind of retrospective burial practice a typical phenomenon during the introduction phase of Christianity in Mälaren region?

As a theoretical framework, we are trying to implement the modern concept of hybridity. Thus, rather than identifying individuals as either Christian or Pagan, many of them should more properly be characterized as both! This new approach might contribute to our understanding of religious identity."

Other papers from the project in the same publication:

Gunilla Larsson. The Boat as a Symbol in a Changing Society.

Michael Neiß. A Lost World? A re-evaluation of the boat grave at Årby in Turinge parish, Södermanland, Sweden.

Anders Söderberg describes the functional role of ceramic shells during the brazing process of iron artefacts (bells, padlocks, weights), focussing on the functionally different workshops at Birka and Sigtuna, in Sweden. The author focuses on how padlock production was strictly embedded in the broader economic medieval world. Scientific analyses also show that the local clay outcrops used for metallurgical purposes were different to those exploited for pottery production.

Nine bronze axe-amulets of a type considered as originating in Kiev Rus were found in Sigtuna, Sweden. It is the largest concentration of this artefact anywhere, inside or outside Rus. The axe-amulets in  Sigtuna probably originate with Scandinavians returning from mercenary duty with the Rus' princes. They are dated stratigraphically to the 11th and 12th Centuries AD.

NB. In 2018 the author (together with Anders Söderberg) published a new study, with an illustrated catalogue, on this subject. The number of miniature axes in Sigtuna now stands at 16. Situne Dei 2018, pp. 34–59. https://www.academia.edu/37724938/

(In Swedish) This article discusses all archaeological finds of dice from Sigtuna that are preserved in the museum’s collections: a total of 90 specimens. It is part of a more extensive study, published 2022, also including gaming pieces:
https://www.academia.edu/76927385/Spelföremål_från_Sigtuna

Sigtuna is Sweden’s oldest extant medieval town. The predominant narrative has been that the town was founded on virgin land around 970/980 A.D. However, in the surrounding landscape there is abundant evidence of an older settled environment, while artefacts of older character have been found in the occupation deposits in the city. Although these archaeological objects have to some extent been taken into consideration in previous research, they have never been viewed collectively in the light of possible activity on the site before 970 A.D. The first part of this study involved identifying relevant artefacts in the collection at Sigtuna museum. The artefacts were then assembled in a database and studied chronologically and contextually together with a visualization of their spatial distribution made in ArcMap. To enable a deeper understanding of what kind of activity that could have taken place before the founding of the town, the site’s different prerequisites for earlier activity have been studied. With this study a new perspective is presented which highlights an activity phase preceding the historical town of Sigtuna, thus extending knowledge of the site’s earlier past.

Fishing tackle, found in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries occupation layers of Sigtuna, are reviewed and discussed in comparison with an osteologist's review of fish-bones from the same site. In Swedish.
(I skriften antas isläggar indikera vinterfiske. Förf. har i senare forskning speciellt behandlat isläggar och då omprövat denna idé.)

Anna Yaroslavna, daughter of Rus’ Grand Prince Yaroslav and his Swedish-born consort Ingegerd in Kiev, married king Henry I in 1051 and thus became Queen of France. After Henry’s death, Anna acted as a guardian of her son, crown prince Philip, still a minor, and executed royal power.  Having successfully avoided papal excommunication after re-marrying, she founded a church and convent near Paris. Recently, Anna has been the object of a political strife between Russia and Ukraine, politicians of both countries claiming her legacy,

"Finds from 11th century Sigtuna have supplied archaeological research with a range of different types of refractory ceramics, of which some have been rather recently identified. One example is melting bowls, i.e. clay packaging material emerging from the brazing of iron weights. These were found in vast numbers in the mint of King Olof Eriksson Skötkonung (late 10th to early 11th centuries). In order to supervise trade, the King probably had to verify the old means of payment by weighing silver, as well as his owh coinage. Another category of ceramic objects found in the mint and in several other parts of town, are heating trays. The paper interprets them as assaying trays, of vital importance for testing silver connected with payment. A short review is made of finds of assaying trays from Nothern Europe, and of analyses showing their characteristic surface composition of lead and copper oxides.

A small experimental series of assaying was made, in order to attain a comparative material for use in the interpretation of the trays from Sigtuna. It is suggested that heating trays used outside the mint could possibly tell the same story as the presence of waste from the manufacture of weights in the mint. The old means of payment and the monetary system, introduced by the King, existed side by side. In the silver economy, the methods for testing purity were probably as important as the equipment for weighing it."