Archaeology

The sight of Borgholm Castle standing atop the slopes of the Landborg cliffs, close to Kalmar Sound and surrounded by the barren Alvar land just south of Borgholm, will leave no visitor unaffected. Yet, our knowledge of Borgholm Castle and its inhabitants is surprisingly limited.

Though archaeologists have been excavating Borgholm Castle on different occasions (in 1929, 1938–39, 1963, 1972, 1974–78, 1988 and 2004), only a fraction of the castle area has told its story to us present-day people.

In the year 2002 the starting shot went off for a great EU funded project “The Castle of the Future”, carried out by the National Property Board, the administrators of Borgholm Castle, the Municipality of Borgholm, which operates the business, and the Regional Council in Kalmar County. The project includes among others a number of new, preliminary archaeological investigations.

Part of the project “The Castle of the Future” is to construct a new building at the entrance to Borgholm Castle. A preliminary archaeological investigation of the site contemplated (in January 2003) showed that there were remains of medieval buildings in alternating layers from 12th to 14th century. Kalmar County Museum and the National Heritage Board (UV East) along with Jönköpíng County Museum, Smålands Museum and Borgholm Castle did the final investigation in the autumn of 2004. The investigation aimed at analysing the original state and function of the place. Among the constructions we found were the remains of nearly twenty houses, quite a few with fireplaces and limestone floor. At the best, six or seven houses may have stood in the same place during a restricted period of maybe a few hundred years. The finds within the stone foundations mirror that life could be both quiet and troubled. Among the things that the archaeologists found were crossbow arrowheads, ring-mails, horseshoes, spurs, coins, knives, ceramics, glass, beads, combs, game pieces and dices.

At the present moment report work is going on, and the cleaning, registration and preservation of the thousands of finds that were made. The final report is expected to be finished in May 2005. We are all looking forward to the result.