On a low rise north of Gamla Uppsala, Valsgärde preserves the traces of a long-used Iron Age cemetery: boat graves, cremations, chambers and coffins. The field is distinct from the nearby Royal Mounds; many celebrated finds are now held at Uppsala University Museum Gustavianum.
Quick facts
Excavations documented 15 boat graves, 15 other inhumations and 62 cremation graves at Valsgärde.
The first systematic excavations began in 1928; fieldwork resumed after the war and ended in 1952.
Many finds from Valsgärde are held by Uppsala University Museum Gustavianum; they are separate from the outdoor burial field.
Get directions to Valsgärde Burial Field. Confirm the visitor entrance and current access with the venue before travelling.
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Valsgärde does not announce itself with towering royal mounds. Its evidence lies in a low rise above the Fyris River: long depressions on the slope, the traces of boats laid into the ground, and a landscape whose quiet surface once held more than ninety graves. Here, generations made burial into a public statement—sometimes by placing a person, weapons, food and animals in a clinker-built boat, sometimes through cremation, a chamber, or a coffin.
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