Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Gotland from as far afield as Samarkand, Persia and Afghanistan, others from England.
In a room of the treasury, the world's largest find of Viking-age silver, the
Spillings
Hoard
, is proudly exhibited in a vast glass cabinet. Discovered in a farmer's field in the
north of Gotland in 1999, the hoard, which lay buried for 1130 years, is truly
breathtaking. It comprises 87kg of silver and bronze, including over 14,000 coins (the
earliest dating from 539AD), neck rings, armbands and spiral rings. Elsewhere in the
museum, look out for the two skeletons displayed in glass cases. The occupant of one,
a 40-year-old man buried in foetal position with two pieces of antler and flint arrows,
is, at roughly 8000 years old, one of the oldest in Sweden.
6
Gotlands
Konstmuseum
St Hansgatan 21 • Mid-June to mid-Aug daily 11am-5pm; mid-Aug to mid-June Tues-Sun noon-4pm • 50kr •
W
gotlandsmuseum.se
A couple of streets up from the Fornsal museum, Gotland's
Konstmuseum
has some
innovative temporary exhibitions of contemporary painting and sculpture, and
installations which tease the eye. Though for the most part much less exciting, the
permanent collection on the top floor is given over to twentieth-century Gotlandic art;
among the few notable classics is Axel Lindman's 1917 oil of Visby from the beach,
showing brilliant dabs of sun before a storm. The eye is also drawn to a stunning
picture by William Blair Bruce of his wife, the sculptor Carolina. The painting, from
1891, shows her at work, and the lifelike qualities of the style are remarkable.
The town wall
The oldest of the towers in Visby's
town wall
is the dark, atmospheric
Kruttornet
(Gunpowder Tower) by Almedalen, built in the eleventh century to protect the old
harbour and offering some grand views of Visby. The
wall
itself, a 3km circuit enclosing
the entire settlement, was built around the end of the thirteenth century for a rather
different purpose: it was actually aimed at isolating the city's foreign traders from the
locals.
Söder gravar
Just outside the wall to the east of Söderport (South Gate),
Söder gravar
is a mass
grave, excavated in the twentieth century, of two thousand people; more than half were
women, children and invalids who were slaughtered when Danish king Valdemar
attacked the town in 1361. There's a cross here, erected by the survivors of the carnage;
the inscription reads: “In 1361 on the third day after St James, the Goths fell into the
hands of the Danes. Here they lie. Pray for them.”
Valdemar's Breach
A section of the wall near Söderport was broken down to allow Valdemar to ride through
as conqueror.
Valdemar's Breach
is recognizable by its thirteen crenellations representing,
so the story goes, the thirteen knights who rode through with the Danish king. Valdemar
soon left, in possession of booty and trade agreements, and Visby continued to prosper
while the countryside around it stagnated, its people and wealth destroyed.
Domkyrkan Sancta Maria
Daily: mid-June to mid-Aug daily 9am-9pm; mid-Aug to mid-June 9am-5pm
At the height of its power, Visby maintained more
churches
than any other town in
Sweden - sixteen in all, most of which are dramatic ruins today. However, one, the
Domkyrkan Sancta Maria
, is still in use. Constructed between 1190 and 1225, it was
built for visiting Germans, becoming the German parish church when they settled in
the city. In 1300, a large Gothic chapel was built to the south, the eastern tower was
elevated and the nave was raised to create storage space; this was where the burghers
