Sammallahdenmäki is a Bronze Age burial site located in Finland, in the city of Rauma within the Satakunta region. The site has 33 granite burial mounds that are over 3,000 years old, dating from 1500 to 500 BC. Sammallahdenmäki is one of the largest, most complete, and most significant Bronze Age sites in Fennoscandia. It was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999.
Description
The burial site is located on a long ridge in a remote area near the road connecting Rauma to Tampere. The site includes 33 burial cairns, which are grouped into separate clusters along the top of the ridge. Each cairn was built using granite rocks taken from the cliff below the ridge or gathered nearby, as was common during the Bronze Age. Of the 33 cairns, 28 were built during the early Bronze Age, and the remaining five were built during the early Iron Age. The cairns vary in shape and size. Two unique cairns are the Huilun pitkä raunio ("long ruin of Huilu"), which is surrounded by an ancient stone wall, and the Kirkonlaattia ("Church Floor"), a large rectangular cairn measuring 16 by 19 meters with a flat top. The "Church Floor" cairn is the only one of its kind found in Scandinavia.
The Sammallahdenmäki cairns were originally built to provide a view of the coast and the Gulf of Bothnia, a feature common in early Bronze Age burial mounds. Over time, the ground has risen, and the ocean is no longer visible from the site. The cairns may be connected to rituals honoring the sun, a belief system that spread across Scandinavia during the Bronze Age. They also show that families owned land, a practice linked to the development of farming.
Discovery and Excavation
The stone cairns were first listed in a record of ancient sites in 1878, along with an unclear description of an excavation, but no details about it remain. Four of the cairns were excavated by archaeologist Volter Högman in 1891, such as Huilun pitkä raunio and Kirkonlaattia. Out of the 8 cairns that have been excavated, 6 are from the Bronze Age, and 2 are from the early Iron Age.