Summary of the book that finished the first stage of the Finja project

Transcription

1 Summary of the book that finished the first stage of the Finja project Events by a road: The Finjasjon district with the medieval Hovdala castle in the centre from the Migration Period to the Age of Greatness (Händelser längs en vag: Finjasjöbygden med Hovdala i centrum från folkvandringstid till stormaktstid) In the province of Skane in the south of Sweden there are 167 sites of castles or former castles. The density is greatest in the southern part of the province, but some can also be found in the forest region in the north. In northern Skane, near the town of Hassleholm, we find the lake Finjasjon. South of this lake there is a castle named Hovdala. It is still standing, and according to iron figures on the facade of one of the buildings inside the moat it was built in Dendrochronological dating also confirms this dating on the wall. However, the name Hovdala is recorded as early as the 14th century in written sources. The question for a long time was where to find the site of the predecessor of the present castle. In 1946 the manor of Hovdala was expropriated by the army and fields, forests and meadows were turned into a tank training field. During work on a new tank road on the western slope of Aspehojden, a couple of hundred metres east of the standing castle, the former landowner Casimir Ehrenborg found the site of the old castle. The place was surveyed by the Historical Museum in Lund and later covered with a blackthorn shrub to protect the remains. In 1999 the excavation started again, and every year since then until 2010 excavations have been taken place at the site. Some years the fieldwork was for a couple of days with amateur archaeologists and some years for several weeks with archaeology students. This book contains two parts. The first part concerns the empirical material and starts with a description of the excavations, year by year. This is followed by the written archive material concerning Hovdala and the parish of Bronnestad, where the castle is situated. Finally the historical map material

2 is presented. The first inhabitants on the site came in the Viking Age. Some pottery, some beads and a couple of post-holes indicate that a farming family lived here on the fertile soils of Aspehojden. This period, archaeologically interpreted as peaceful and low-intensity, was interrupted at the beginning of the 14th century by the building of a bigger establishment on both sides of the passing main road. Military items like spurs, crossbow details and bolts indicate one of the purposes of the structure. Three wooden houses stood by a courtyard south of the main road and north of the road were the farm buildings. This first small military outpost, which might have had a function as a road checkpoint, was burned down in the 15th century, probably by the Swedish intruder Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson, who led a rebellion against the Danish king Erik the Pomeranian ( ). In 1436 Engelbrekt was on an expedition along the Swedish east coast and across the northern part of Skane. The purpose was to burn the royal castles, and on this occasion Hovdala was probably besieged. Shortly after the destruction of the first modest military structure it was replaced by a much more magnificent and castle-like establishment. The cobbled courtyard was expanded and on the western side was built a magnificent house with timber-framed walls of oak and brick panels. The roof was tiled, and the windows were of glass with lead window bars. Another dwelling house was built on the eastern side of the courtyard. The houses were surrounded by ramparts of earth and timber. Even after the building of the New Hovdala in 1511 the Old Hovdala was kept at a high standard with the installation of new tile stoves and investment in new sets of Venetian glass. On the northern side of the main road were the farmhouses. Judging by the sillstone rows and the amount of brick chips the houses were timberframed with brick panels, just like the main buildings behind the ramparts. The end of Old Hovdala came in February 1612 when the Swedish king Gustavus II went down on an expedition to Skåne and burnt a lot of villages and the town of Wä. On the way back to Sweden he passed Hovdala. He tried to take the New Hovdala but the tower was to strong. Instead he burned

3 26 farms belonging to the manor and among them the Old Hovdala. His musket balls have been found. Some had hit the brick walls and some the soft earth ramparts. This was the end of the establishment by Gardstaliden, as the slope on the sunken main road is called. In modern times the castle site has been a popular picnic place and later a milking station for cows. Its last use was as a military training area. All activities there have left remains. After this empirical introduction comes the second part, the analysis, based on a couple of fundamental questions. When was the castle built? Who built it? Why was it built? What was the economy behind it? To find out how the surrounding region was organised the analysis started in the Migration Period. In this period the grave-fields and hoards from the neighbouring region, such as Sjörrod, Sösdala and other places, show a unique character with influence from central/eastern Europe. In an attempt to find the centre of this Iron Age region, the medieval villages were investigated by retrospective map analyses. In Finja traces were found of an Iron Age main farm (storgard) with arable land (ornum), the site of the hall (toft), a grave-field and a probable shrine (hov). In an archaeological excavation at the toft area in Finja, fragments of Frankish glass vessels from the 6th century were found. The shrine site is shown to have been surrounded by a palisade. This might confirm Finja as the seat of the regional court. From Finja, colonisation spread northwards up into the desolate forest 231 area. What was deserted land belonged to the king according to Germanic law. But both Harald Hen ( ) and Knut the Holy ( ) complained that the Mighty Men had taken the forests and made them their own. In Farstorp one man has been found who might represent this group Peder Ebbesen of the Hvide family. At the beginning of the 13th century he donated Fatharsthorp cum omnibus mobilius et omobilius habens wuinwue colones to the cathedral in Lund. This is a good description of a prehistoric

4 main farm and the expansion seen in the five colones (small farms). Back to the Finjasjon region, the analysis of the villages continues and we are once again in Bronnestad Parish where Hovdala is situated. Also here we find a member of the Hvide family Cecilie, daughter of John Lille. She wrote her will in 1307 and bequeathed a book to her former chaplain. Her grandmother s brother was Peder Ebbesen of Farstorp. It is conceivable that the Hvide family had taken the forests back in the 11th century. The churches built in Farstorp and Bronnestad indicate that there were noblemen behind their construction. In 1286 King Erik Klipping was assassinated and the Hvide family were accused of the premeditated killing, and a great part of their properties were confiscated. At the time of the foundation of the first castle, at the beginning of the 14th century, the parish of Bronnestad might have been owned by the king after it had been confiscated and taken from the Hvide family some years earlier. This might be the answer to the question: Who built the castle? The questions of when and why it was built may find their answers in one of the most dramatic events in the history of the neighbourhood: the Battle of Mjolkalanga. In 1318 a strong army marched down from Sweden. The reason why the Danish army met the intruders at Mjolkalanga might be that they were guarding the big King s Road at the ford or bridge over the river Almaan, north of Finjasjon. This big road went from Blekinge to Helsingborg Castle, which was the goal of the invaders. There is a smaller main road south of the lake which passes Hovdala. A troop of cavalry might have used this road and attacked the Danes in the back. This is the only reason why the battle was fought at Mjolkalanga, where the southern road comes down to the wet meadows by the village after having passed through the forest on the Matterod ridge. The chronicle states: There was a battle at Mjolkalanga village, three hundred knights refused to flee. The defenders suffered great losses despite having chosen the battleground. Metal detector surveys have uncovered medieval horseshoes in the former wet meadows at Mjolkalanga. Of course the knights wanted to flee but they could not. By regrouping the defence troops they got stuck in the wet land. The first coins in Old Hovdala are from 1320, two years after the battle.

5 The then king, Kristoffer II ( ), had been on the Swedish side in the battle. He knew about the possibilities an enemy could have along the southern road so, according to the thesis, he arranged a royal checkpoint by the sunken part of the main road called Gardstaliden. Here the lesser nobility were represented by the Rabock and Skalder families, and the Laxmand family represented the high nobility, who in 1511 built a far more magnificent and defensible residence the present Hovdala. Now we know who was the builder, when the castle was built and why it was built. The last question was to find out what economic circumstances had given the castle a degree of wealth that was outstanding in the forest area of Skåne. No answer has been found to that question yet. It might have been livestock breeding, transferring products like tar and iron from the production districts further north to the markets in the south, or something else that is invisible among the finds