Helgö is an island in

Ekerö Municipality Ekerö Municipality ( sv, Ekerö kommun) is a municipality in the province of Uppland in Stockholm County in east central Sweden. The name derives from the name of the main island within the municipality whose name is Ekerön, and literally mean ...

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 Birka (''Birca'' in medieval sources), on the island of Björkö (lit. "Birch Island") in present-day Sweden, was an important Viking Age trading center which handled goods from Scandinavia as well as many parts of the European continent and ...

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 Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a śramaṇa, wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was ...

statuette from

North India North India is a loosely defined region consisting of the northern part of India. The dominant geographical features of North India are the Indo-Gangetic Plain and the Himalayas, which demarcate the region from the Tibetan Plateau and Central ...

and a christening scoop from

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

, both dating from the 6th century. The Indian Buddha statuette, the Irish crozier 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

Gustavus Adolphus Gustavus Adolphus (9 December Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates">N.S_19_December.html" ;"title="Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="/nowiki>Old Style and New Style dates">N.S 19 December">Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates.html" ;"title="/now ...

, a member of the

Privy Council of Sweden The Council of the Realm, or simply The Council ( sv, Riksrådet or sv, Rådet: sometimes in la, Senatus Regni Sueciae), was a cabinet of medieval origin, consisting of magnates ( sv, stormän) which advised, and at times co-ruled with, the Ki ...

and Field Marshal during the

Thirty Years' War The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (80 ...

. The château-style manor house was built in 1725 after drawings and designs by Baroque architect

Nicodemus Tessin the Younger Count Nicodemus Tessin the Younger (May 23, 1654 – April 10, 1728) was a Swedish Baroque architect, city planner, and administrator. The son of Nicodemus Tessin the Elder and the father of Carl Gustaf Tessin, Tessin the Younger was the middle ...

(1654–1728). Since 1939 it had been owned by the Swedish Pentecostal movement 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, 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