Ancient Forts (‘Fornborgar’) in Sweden
by
Vincent H. Malmström
Emeritus Professor of Geography
Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH 03755
In Sweden, no fewer than 1296 “fornborgar”, or “ancient
forts”, have been identified and registered by the Royal Antiquities
Commission. The oldest of them may well date back as far as the
Stone Age, but without question, the greatest majority of them
most likely date instead to the Iron Age (400- 1100 AD). The
latter was an unsettled and strife-torn period when the political
consolidation of the Svear tribes in the Mälar district of eastcentral Sweden and the Gothic tribes of the Central lake plains
was taking place, as the overwhelming geographic concentration of
these features in precisely these regions seems to suggest from the
map below. (See Figure 1.).
Figure 1. Distribution of Fornborgar (‘Ancient Forts’) in Sweden
As the map reveals, the largest number of these defensive
installations is found in the county of Södermanland (‘The Land of
the South-Men’) where some 388, or 29.9% of the total, are
located. Situated on the topographic divide between the Mälar
valley and the East Gothic plains, this was the most central, and
hence, the most contentious of the border areas between the Svear
and Gothic peoples. Uppland county, the core area, or hearth, of
the Svear, to the north of Lake Mälaren, ranked second in the
number of ancient forts with 187, or 14.4% of the total, suggesting
that even in the very heart of their domain there was reason to fear
attack, either from the Goths to the south or from trans-Baltic
pirates to the east. In third place, the exposed frontier county of
Östergötland numbers 142 ancient forts, thereby contributing a
further 10.9% to the country’s total and resulting in the clustering
together of no fewer than 55.3% of all of Sweden’s earliest
protective outposts in these three neighboring political
jurisdictions. Figure 2 shows the actual number of ‘fornborgar’
recorded according to the earlier political subdivisions known as
‘landskap’, not all of which accord with the boundaries of the
present ‘counties’ or ‘län’.
Figure 2. Numbers of Fornborgar Identified by Landskap.
A final map analyzes the ancient forts of Sweden according
to their geographic centralization or concentration. Figure 3 in
effect reinforces the contention that the bulk of Sweden’s
‘fornborgar’ were built during the nation’s struggle for national
unity, rather than as border outposts between, for example, the
Swedes in the north and the Danes in the south. However, the
smaller, secondary concentration of ancient forts that appears in
both Figures 1 and 2, near the southernmost border of Norway,
suggests that this frontier zone was also an active zone of
engagement at an early date in history, as was the island of
Gotland in the Baltic Sea.
Figure 3. Geographic Center of Ancient Forts (“Fornborgar”) in
Sweden.
As the map above reveals, the concentration of ancient forts
in Sweden has its focus in the northeastern borderlands of the
province of Östergötland near the present town of Rejmyre. This
region is a continuation of the rugged upland area known as
Kolmården, the traditional buffer zone between the Svear and
Götar, so its location comes as no surprise to anyone familiar with
the history of Sweden’s internal struggle to achieve political unity.
On the other hand, the site depicted in the photographs to follow is
one that is situated near the southern limit of the circle that defines
50% of the distribution of ancient forts in Sweden, at a place called
Blaxhult. It is located on top of a 90-meter prominence whose
steep sides were reinforced on the northeast with stonewalls and
very likely a wooden palisade as well. It lies in close proximity to
the headwaters of a stream that winds westward and southward to
join the Emån, southern Sweden’s largest Baltic-flowing river.
The latter was known to have been navigable as far upstream as to
Tveta in the late Viking period, in other words, to within about 30
km (20 mi.) to the southwest. Blaxhult may well have been even
more accessible to water-borne traffic at an earlier date.
Figure 4. The view toward the southwest from the top of the
Blaxhult hilltop. Part of the stone arrangement shown by an “R”
on the large-scale map of the area (Figure 6) is visible in the open
lowland just to the right of center in the photograph above,
between the two tall trees.
Figure 5. Remains of the stone breastwork that reinforces the
northeastern corner of the Blaxhult hilltop.
Figure 6. Large scale map of Blaxhult area. The ancient fort is
identified by the “R” symbol at the summit of the Borgekulle
(“Fortress Hill”). In the open plain to the southwest, another “R”
symbol identifies a stone arrangement (Stensättning) near the
confluence of the two small streams that empty southward into the
Emån River. The latter is just visible between the trees to the right
of center in Figure 4.