Helgö is an island in Ekerö Municipality in

Stockholm County Stockholm County ( sv, Stockholms län, link=no ) is a county or '' län'' (in Swedish) on the Baltic Sea coast of Sweden. It borders Uppsala County and Södermanland County. It also borders Mälaren and the Baltic Sea. The city of Stockholm ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

. Helgö is an island situated in Lake

Mälaren Mälaren ( , , or ), historically referred to as Lake Malar in English, is the third-largest freshwater lake in Sweden (after Vänern and Vättern). Its area is 1,140 km2 and its greatest depth is 64 m. Mälaren spans 120 kilometers from e ...

. The island's greatest width is about , it is about long and covers .

Excavations at Helgö

The island is perhaps best known for a major archaeological area. The old trading town on Helgö began to emerge around the year 200 AD, 500 years before Birka at Björkö. The first archaeological dig in 1954 uncovered the remains of the early settlement, including a workshop area which attracted international interest. The most notable finds included a small Buddha statuette from North India and a christening scoop from Egypt, both dating from the 6th century. The Indian Buddha statuette, the Irish

crozier A crosier or crozier (also known as a paterissa, pastoral staff, or bishop's staff) is a stylized staff that is a symbol of the governing office of a bishop or abbot and is carried by high-ranking prelates of Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholi ...

and the Egyptian

Coptic Coptic may refer to: Afro-Asia * Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya * Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century * Coptic alphabet ...

scoop which were found on Helgö, are presently on display in the

Swedish History Museum The Swedish History Museum ( sv, Historiska museet or Statens historiska museum) is a museum located in Stockholm, Sweden, that covers Swedish archaeology and cultural history from the Mesolithic period to present day. Founded in 1866, it operat ...

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

Kaggeholm Castle

The site where Kaggeholm Castle (''Kaggeholms slott'') is located was first mentioned in a land title document in 1287. During the 1500s the farm was owned by members of the families Grip and

Bååt Bååt was an important Swedish noble family, originally from Småland in south-eastern Sweden. The family is especially known for its long association with Viipuri/ Vyborg Castle in Finland (at present in Russia), the bulwark of the then Swedis ...

. In 1647, Count

Lars Kagg Lars Kagg (1 May 1595 – 19 November 1661) was a Swedish count and military officer. He was a political ally of King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden, a member of the Privy Council of Sweden and Field Marshal during the Thirty Years' War. Kagg was bor ...

(1595–1661) acquired an estate which he named Kaggeholm. Kagg was a political ally of King

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, a member of the Privy Council of Sweden and Field Marshal during the Thirty Years' War. The château-style manor house was built in 1725 after drawings and designs by Baroque architect Nicodemus Tessin the Younger (1654–1728). Since 1939 it had been owned by the

Swedish Pentecostal movement The Swedish Pentecostal Movement ( sv, Pingströrelsen i Sverige) is a Pentecostalism, Pentecostal movement in Sweden. Many, but not all, of these, are members of the The Pentecostal Alliance of Independent churches, Pentecostal Alliance of Indep ...

and is used as a training center by nearby Kaggeholm College (''Kaggeholms folkhögskola''). Today Kaggeholm is operated as a conference center managed by the Swedish property development company Sisyfosgruppen Holding.

Royal Swedish Academy volumes

The findings from the excavations at Helgö have been reported in a series of volumes published by the

Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities The Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities also called simply the Royal Academy of Letters or Vitterhetsakademin abbreviated KVHAA ( sv, Kungl. Vitterhetsakademien Historie och Antikvitets Akademien or or ) is the Swedish royal ...

, beginning with Volume 1 covering the period 1954–1956. Volume 18, the final volume in the series, was published in 2011.''Excavations at Helgö XVIII: Conclusions and New Aspects''
Royal Swedish Academy.

Images

References

External links

Kaggeholm websiteWikimapia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Helgo Archaeological sites in Sweden Islands of Mälaren Viking Age populated places Former populated places in Sweden Vendel Period