Imagine

It's sometime between 300-700 A.D. You are standing in the centre of one of the most powerful villages on this island, with at least 15 widely spaced farms, fields and meadows surrounded by stone walls. Right in front of you is the largest building, a 55 metres long house built for meetings and rituals, -and as a showpiece for the chieftains power. The walls of the building was stone, with wooden planking on the inside. Two rows of wooden posts held up the roof which was covered with turf of reeds. Cooking was done over open fire.

Some of the text is borrowed from an information sign close by. The place is part of my walk through the Grove quite near to where I live. I find it exciting to walk past here, in these historic grounds from long before Sweden was a country, just a good place for people to live with enough food in the forest and farms, fish in the sea and fields where the crops grew to feed everyone in the community. You needed to protect yourself against intruders so maybe it wasn't very peaceful in those days. Power was important and meant richness and the chief needed to show he could protect the villagers he was set to lead.

Only recently this village is being excavated by archeologists, I've mentioned this in an earlier blip. What you see in the blip are the ruins of the outer walls of the main long house. The trees weren't there then, of course, the oldest ones are less than a hundred years old. It would have been an open landscape then, grazed by cows, horses and sheep, with ducks and hens, pigs and lots of people. It had stone fences and lanes to move the cattle through and meadows and fields. Today it's taken over by trees and bushes and you can't clearly see where the old boarders were.

We have developed the methods of growing crops and to build societies but still haven't worked out how to live in peace with each other, share the abundance with others and to have only what we need to be happy.