The Bautastein outside the City Museum in Bodø
Outside the City Museum in Prinsens gate stands a 3.55-meter-high stone block. It is a monolithic stone from the Early Iron Age, erected between 1,500 and 2,500 years ago.
From Outer Hernes to the city center
The monument originally stood on the farm Ytre Hernes, on a farm called Pilegården. The farm got its name because there were five such monuments scattered throughout the landscape. In Salten, tall monuments were often called "pil".
Photographed 1960 - 1985
Hernes was a central area in the Iron Age with several burial grounds and monuments. When the construction of Bodø When the airport was opened in 1952, the runway passed over Hernes. The old cultural landscape was lost under concrete and asphalt. The Bautasteinen was dug up and moved into the city center before the construction machines reached the site.
Hernes is the southernmost town on the Bodø peninsula, where Bodø airport is located today. Before the airport was built in 1952, the area was farmland with farms. Pilegården, where the monument stone outside the City Museum originally stood, was one of the farms in this landscape.
In the pictures below you can see the monument in front of the City Museum in Bodø Photo: Marta Anna Løvberg
How the stone was erected
The archaeologists found that 1.4 meters of the stone was buried in the sand. It was supported by smaller boulders below ground. Around its base was a circle of flat boulders.
The archaeologists also found a small burial chamber near the stone. It was empty. In the Early Iron Age, the dead were often burned, or the monument stone was erected as a memorial to a person who died elsewhere.
A legend from the fjord
Before archaeology provided answers to why such stones stood in the landscape, people made up their own explanations. A legend tells of a war between the petty kings of Hernes and the kings on the other side of the fjord. The Seine King became so angry that he drew his bow and shot an "arrow" across the fjord. It bored into the ground at Hernes.
The monument stone at the City Museum is not the only one in the area. At Vågønes farm by the Bodø River there are three other monuments from the same period.
