Sammallahdenmäki is a Bronze age burial site in the village of Kivikylä, on a hill in a remote area off the road between Tampere and Rauma. Originally, it was near the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia, but the land has risen, so now it is 15km from the sea. It was designated by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1999, under the name Bronze Age Burial Site of Sammallahdenmäki, and includes 36 granite burial cairns dating back more than 3,000 years, from 1500 BC to 500 BC. Four of the cairns were excavated by archaeologist Volter Högman in 1891, including Kirkonlaattia (Church Floor), an unusual rectangular cairn covering 16 x 19m with a flat top, and Huilun pitkä raunio (long ruin of Huilu), which is surrounded by an ancient stone wall.
Stone burial cairns constructed of boulders, without earth fill, over cists of stone or wood, were erected on cliffs with a view on the sea all along the coast of Finland, being identified more than 3,000. They contained both cremation and inhumation burials of members of the community with all the associated funerary objects. The site is associated with Sun worship rituals, a cult that spread from Scandinavia over the entire region. It is also a manifestation of land ownership by kinship groups, a practice introduced with agriculture.
About the stamp
The stamp, depicting Common Blackbird (Turdus merula), is a 1st class one and was issued on January 15, 1998.
References
Sammallahdenmäki - Wikipedia
Sammallahdenmäki, Lappi - National Board of Antiquities
Bronze Age Burial Site of Sammallahdenmäki - UNESCO official site
sender: Anu Nurmi (direct swap)
sent from Kouvola (Kymenlaakso / Finland), on 02.05.2013
photo: Altti A. Salo
Such an interesting card! A friend of mine and I were doing a research on a prehistoric site Monkodonja here in Rovinj:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkodonja
There's also a burial site called Mušego about 1km from Monkodonja, but it doesn't have its page on Wikipedia.