LEGEND OF ANCIENT SWEDISH ISLAND

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31170, 21 September 1966, Page 22

LEGEND OF ANCIENT SWEDISH ISLAND

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter) GOTLAND (Sweden). Increasing numbers of tourists are discovering the Baltic Sea island of Gotland as a hunting ground for amateur archaeologists, botanists, and geologists. Legend has it that Gotland was originally under the spell of evil powers. It was, the story goes, an island only by night. As each new day dawned, it sank under the choppy waves of the Baltic sea. Then, one night, thousand of years ago, a man named Tjelvar landed on the island, lit a fire on one of its limestone crags—and broke the spell. Mrs Laila Modin, senior guide with the Gotland Tourist Association, tells visitors how, some 400 million years ago, shells of innumerable primitive sea animals formed a giant reef on the bottom of the tropical Silurian sea, which then covered a large part of present-day Scandinavia. After the last Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago, the reef rose to the surface bringing with it fossilised remains of trilobites, primitive molluscs, coral colonies and early water plants. Today, tourists make the 35minute flight from the mainland to Gotland to collect thousands of fossilised specimens from among the pebbles on the beaches.

Stone Age men came to Gotland 7000 years ago, building villages along the coast. Bronze Age chieftains left

magnificent burial mounds all over the island and during the Roman Iron Age, Gotland became a major trading centre, linked closely with Gothic conquerors who terrorised Europe and finally helped to overthrow the Roman Empire. Vikings from Gotland explored Russian rivers, travelled to Constantinople and the distant court of the Caliphs of Bagdad, returning with treasures of Roman gold and Arabic silver, which they buried for safety. Much of their buried treasure has now been uncovered by archaeologists, and can be seen by visitors in the Museum at Visby, the island’s picturesque walled capital and chief port. In the thirteenth century, Gotland became a world commercial power controlling most of the trade between eastern Europe and the ancient trade centres of the West. Lubeck raiders sacked and burned all but one of the Visby churches in 1525. Gothic ruins are major landmarks for the modern visitor to the ancient city. There are still more than 1 90 county parish churches which are gems of Roman or Gothic architecture.

For 300 years, the island was passed back and forth between the Swedes and Danes, Knights of the Teutonic Order and independent pirate lords, until, in 1679, it was finally incorporated as part of the Kingdom of Sweden.