Uppåkra
Uppåkra is a village and parish in Staffanstorp Municipality, in Scania, southern Sweden, located five kilometres south of Lund. The village is known for its Iron Age archaeological site, which has been actively excavated since 1996.
Uppåkra was situated on the ancient main road between Trelleborg and Helsingborg in what was to become the Danish kingdom. The original foundation of Uppåkra is dated to the last century BC, although its importance appears to have increased in the fifth century. It seems likely that the rulers of Uppåkra by then wielded influence over most or all of West Scania, i.e. the land along the Trelleborg–Helsingborg main road, known for extraordinarily fertile plains.
Uppåkra declined and was possibly relocated to Lund in the 990s. Knowledge about the decline of Uppåkra and the relocation to Lund is still unsure. Hence Uppåkra is held to be the direct predecessor of the city of Lund.
A Bronze to Iron Age settlement was found in 1934, when a farm was built close to the church. The first excavation that year was done by the Archaeologist Bror Magnus Vifot. Geological studies carried out in the 1930s, by a sugar company, revealed that the site around the church of Uppåkra was extremely rich in phosphate, the highest concentration of it in Scania. Phosphate is important for sugar beet cultivation. Since excrement contains phosphate, this indicates the presence of many cattle and people over time. The study was conducted by Olof Arrhenius over most of the Scania province.
In the middle of 1990 the first investigations, with metal detecting, revealed almost 30,000 gold, silver and bronze objects Archaeological excavations in a 100-acre (0.40 km2) field, intensified in 1996, show Uppåkra to have been among the richest and largest Iron Age–Viking Age town on the Scandinavian Peninsula. For centuries, maybe for most of the first millennium, Uppåkra was a place of religious and political power; remains of a pre-Christian temple excavated during 2000–2004 demonstrated that it was also an important cult place.
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