The ancient site of Skårby, situated about twenty kilometres south of Stockholm, includes one very large cairn enclosured by a stone wall with a small cairn attached to it. Cairns are originally thought of as graves, but resent research shows that they are more likely to have been religious objects. The constructions are seated on a small hill with a view over the lake Bornsjön which used to be a bay of the lake Mälaren. This place has been the object of worship throughout the whole Bronze Age. Over the years the manifestation of the worship changed, but the place for it stayed the same.

The excavations conducted on the Swedish prehistoric hillforts are very limited. However, a lot of people are drawn to them because of their impressive size, which include preserved walls that can reach over three metres in height. They are frequently associated with legends about giants who once lived there. The majority of the hillforts in Sweden were built during the Roman Iron Age and the Migration period. The purpose for which the hillforts were built has been the subject of intense debate, but it is now generally accepted that not every hillfort would have served the same function. The goal of this thesis is to map the hillforts in Eskilstuna municipality, Södermanland County, in order to better understand their purpose, their topographic locations, and the number of other hillforts that could have been seen from each hillfort. This will primarily be achieved through literature reviews of prior studies on the topic and the use of GIS.

This essay concerns the hill forts in Halland. The hill forts in Halland haven’t been archaeologically examined and they haven’t been studied as well as hill forts in other parts of Sweden. The focus of this essay is to determine the use of the hill forts in Halland.  Comparative studies will be made between Halland’s hill forts and the hill forts of Bohuslän and the hill forts of the Eastern part of Sweden. The results of the research have yielded that the hill forts in Halland strongly reminiscent of the hill forts in Bohuslän when it comes to the positioning in the landscape, as well as the general appearance of the hill forts. There are remains of houses in some of the hill forts in Bohuslän. Because of the similarities with the hill forts in Bohuslän, there is a possibility that there have been houses on top of the hill forts in Halland. It is not possible to say whether the hill forts in Halland have been places of “safe haven” and/or permanent residents. Most of the hill forts in Halland have great view over seas or the ocean, as well as over the inland. They tend to be located close to old roads and would have had a great overview of them. It’s possible that the hill forts were connected to trading posts. Signaling between the hill forts in the northern part of Halland is possible because of the closeness of them. Drawings of the hill forts have been made successfully; they show roughly where the walls of the hill fort are situated and where the precipices and inclinations are situated. The drawings make it easier to compare the hill forts in Halland to hill forts in other parts of Sweden.

This thesis concerns the Gotlandic hill-forts (sw. fornborg) situated on a cliff or in an elevated position and which traditionally have been referred to as cliff-forts (sw. klintborg/höjdborg). The study derives from the notion that these monuments, diverse in size and shape, by archaeologists have been viewed and treated as a homogeneous category of ancient remains. The author’s key aim is to challenge this perception by identifying various subcategories from the 28 cliff-forts on the island. Ever since the archaeological discipline initiated the study of cliff-forts in the late 1800s and more or less to present day, the interpretations have been almost solely dominated by explanations of the military and defendable nature of them. As a reaction towards this rather single handed view, research influenced by the so called post-processual archaeology in the 1990s and early 2000s emphasized on the mental and ritual aspects of these remains. Although these later studies stimulated a field of research which with few exceptions had been sleeping for some time, the author claims that neither one of the approaches could in a satisfactorily way portrait these complex monuments. A midway between these schools is thus desirable, where the dissimilarities of the remains are considered.Based on the quite spare but existing local archaeological data, complemented by interregional records from Sweden mainland (Mälardalen and Östergötland), the author identifies and describes three separate types of remains within the material: Type 1) a fortified farmstead from the Migration period; Type 2) a defensive con-struction from the Roman Iron Age; and Type 3) a cultic enclosure from the Bronze Age/Early Iron Age. When approaching a field of research with this amount of inherited pre-understandings it is vital to be aware of earlier works, and in a critical manner process them. An important step in this is to reflect upon which terms are used in the discourse. In particular, the phrases hill-fort/cliff-fort is rather unsuitable due to its connotation to fortification and other military issues. Furthermore, the author points out that there is a connection between the preconceptions of archaeological features and the later antiquarian recording of it, which in turn may affect the methodological approach if excavated, and indeed the subsequent interpretation.

Uppsatsen syftar till att undersöka hur informationsskyltar bidrar till större förståelse av kulturarv genom att undersöka kontexten samt informationen som ges på skyltarna och hur det genom dessa aspekter skapar perspektiv på platsen. De kulturarv som analyseras är Eketorps fornborg, Kalmar Slott och Södra Ölands odlingslandskap.    Källmaterialet består av kulturarven, deras informationsskyltar och den kontext de verkar i samt hur de samverkar. Här tolkas både den text och de bilder som finns på skyltarna.    Skyltarna finns uppsatta vid kulturarven och verkar i dess kontext. Det är möjligt att tala om att kulturarvet behöver skyltarna, dels för att platsen ska förstås dels för den effekt en skylt åstadkommer. Vidare används skyltarna för att belysa det som är unikt för den specifika platsen, informationen som finns påvisar vad som är viktigt för besökaren att se. Genom att belysa dessa egenskaper, skapas det för besökaren ramar för tolkning av kulturlandskapet. Dessa ramar är det besökaren minns utifrån, samtidigt som de minskar möjligheten för egen tolkning av vad kulturlandskapen har att erbjuda.

The essay deals with the hill-fort on the mountain Halleberg, Sweden, its wall design, functionality, dating and its possible function as a central location and a place of worship of the ancestors. The Halleberg hill-fort consists of a 1500 meters long at times cohesive stonewalls which together blocked the mountain from its surroundings. Hallberg's natural vertical scree and cliffs along with the masonry blocked the whole mountain from the surroundings. The hill-forts, with few exceptions are largely not investigated archaeologically and its functionality and role in the ancient society is based on outdated research on the subject. The current archaeological interpretation is that hill-forts served as temporary defense in times of unrest or served as center of power for a social elite. The prevailing view in the archaeological sphere is that the hill-forts had a variety of functions and that its functionality and role in ancient society has varied. Halleberg´s strongest wall sections are at the mountain's south-eastern part where the natural driveway, Storgårdsklev is located. Along with the massive masonry of the walls in Bokedalen Storgårdsklev functioned as the hill-forts main entrance. At places along the walls are the remains of what could be interpreted as stacked rocks and possible fire cracked stone. These structural features indicate that the walls were built during the early Iron Age. Very likely has its function like other hill-forts have been varied and changed based on the community, organization and internal and external disturbances. The essay's main interpretation is that the hill-fort served as a defensive fortress. Moreover it is possible that walls of the hill-fort had a symbolic role as a border between two separate rooms in the landscape. The fencing of Halleberg turned the whole mountain to a closed landscape, separated from the surroundings. It may have been a place where people worshiped their ancestors, a place where life's events, life and death was the focus point.

For the better part of the 20th century, Swedish hillforts were seen strictly as an iron age phenomenon, and it was not until the mid-1980’s that we had reliable evidence that hillforts were already constructed during the Bronze Age. At the same time, archaeologists were moving away from the old militaristic studies to make way for studies based on the symbolical aspects of these monumental structures. Unfortunately, as we reached the end of the millennium, the general archaeological interest for hillforts dramatically dropped, causing hillfort research to miss out on the digital revolution as the new GIS technology cemented itself as a powerful tool in archaeological research. Today, nine hillforts have received a Bronze Age dating, why it is now possible to preform high quality research on the material without having to include structures from other time periods. However, the lack of GIS-based hillfort research leads us to seek inspiration from British hillfort research where the incorporation of GIS-methodology has proven successful in analyzing the relationship between hillforts and their landscapes. The purpose of this paper is therefore to continue investigating the symbolical aspects of the Swedish Bronze Age hillforts by investigating how GIS can help us locate and understand visual relationship between hillfort morphology and the surrounding landscape.       The analysis is based on a viewshed-method developed by Jessica Murray in her attempts to analyze if hillforts were constructed to visually relate to certain features of the landscape or the local topography. The resulting viewshed rasters are interpreted from a phenomenological theoretical standpoint since phenomenological aspects give us the possibility to bridge the gap between digital and analogue sensory analysis. The results show that viewshed-based analyses can be successfully complimented by phenomenological theory and that the method has successfully replicated previously observed landscape relationships while also exposing previously unknown visual relationships.

Det finns två huvudområden för hällristningar i Västmanlands län med nära relation till de forntida strandlinjerna. I båda dessa områden finns det fornborgar som hittills inte har daterats. Syftet är att datera Näsborgen och Kastena Skans i östra och västra Västmanland genom att använda geografiska informationssystemet QGIS och forntida strandlinjedata hämtad från Sveriges Geologiska Undersökning (SGU). Dessutom betraktas fornborgarna ur ett landskapsperspektiv och deras relation till hällristningar och skärvstenshögar som styrker en bronsåldersdatering för dessa fornborgar. Analysen använder tidigare bekräftade bronsåldersdateringar av tre fornborgar i Uppland som referens för Västmanlands fornborgar och överblickar andra närliggande fornborgar. Både Näsborgen och Kastena Skans konstateras vara konstruerade under bronsåldern. / There are two main areas of rock art in Västmanland county with a close relation to the ancient shorelines. In both areas, there are hillforts that have not yet been dated. The aim is to date Näsborgen and Kastena Skans in eastern and western Västmanland by using the geographic information system QGIS and ancient shoreline data obtained from Geological Survey of Sweden (SGU). Additionally, the hillforts are considered from a landscape perspective and their relation to rock art sites and heaps of fire-cracked stones, which support Bronze Age datings for these hillforts. The analysis uses previously confirmed Bronze Age datings of three hillforts in Uppland as a reference for the hillforts in Västmanland and provides an overview of other nearby hillforts. Both Näsborgen and Kastena Skans are determined to have been constructed during the Bronze Age.

Hedeby Hochburg, borgen i Hedeby, har fått förhållandevis lite uppmärksamhet, jämfört med själva samhället i Hedeby. Utgrävningen från 2012 har dock väckt ett intresse, med ett antal frågor som behöver besvaras. I denna uppsats analyseras jordprover som samlats under utgrävningen, för att se om de kan visa något om den kronologiska relationen mellan borgvallen och gravarna i borgen. Tre metoder användes, FTIR (Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy), röntgendiffraktion (XRD) och röntgenfluorescens (XRF). Resultaten från XRF och XRD visar på en rumslig relation mellan minst en av vallens konstruktionsfaser och nedsänkningen i ett lager innanför vallen. Relationen med gravarna är inte tydlig än, och analysen gav inga kronologiska ledtrådar. Resultatet kan användas som hypotes för vidare prövning i framti

This paper deals with hill-forts located on and directly south of Selaön, in the center of Mälardalen, Södermanland, dated to the late roman period and the migration period. Of special interest is differences and similarities between the forts when it comes to their morphology and the hills where they were built. Furthermore, their landscape has been examined and I have tried to put the hill-forts in relation to any iron age settlements.