First Week Of 2015 Excavations At Landsjö

Like Stensö, Landsjö Castle has half of a rare perimeter wall and is known to have been owned by a descendant of Folke Jarl – or rather, by his daughter-in-law, the widow of such a descendant. Last year we found that the high inner bailey has a previously unseen southern wall with a square tower at the east end, and we found five coins of AD 1250-75 in a deep layer that seem likely to date the castle’s construction phase. But unlike Stensö, in three strategically placed trenches we found no trace of the missing bits of the perimeter wall.

This year we started a few days early with half the team at Landsjö, and I write this on Monday night of the second week with full staffing. We’ve opened four sizeable trenches this year, of which G showed conclusively that the steep outer bailey has never had the missing half of its perimeter wall. It seems that the castle started with an L-shaped perimeter wall defending only the west and south sides of the inner bailey, and the north and east sides left unwalled – which worked thanks to steep high drops there. But the outer bailey seems never to have reached a defensible state. With it the castle looked rather impressive from the lakeshore, but if you wanted to get into the outer bailey you could easily bypass the unfinished perimeter wall. All we found in trench G was an 18th century jacket button most likely belonging to the smallholder who lived on the islet at that time.

Trenches F and I (just SSE of F) are in the basement remains of stone buildings built in the inner bailey as part of its western perimeter wall. Both basements are full of rubble, which we are still removing, and both are yielding ample finds of bones and small iron objects. Trench F also shows clear signs of a major fire, with lots of cracked stone in the rubble, with the inside of the walls visibly flaked by the heat, and with a charcoal layer just emerging this afternoon. If we’re lucky, then nobody’s been poking around in that burnt layer since the fire went out.

Trench H has been both a disappointment and a boon. It has not yielded any of the walls we hoped for. No gatehouse. Rather it seems to be on an enormous spoil dump from the digging of the dry moat across the castle islet. But in this spoil we’ve found Early Red Ware, a High Medieval pottery type, and, intriguingly, a sherd of Late Neolithic pottery along with some knapped quartz. Neolithic pottery experts who have seen a photograph agree that this is Malmer type J ware from the final phase of the Battle Axe Culture about 2300 cal BC. Fun and unexpected!

Just inland of the swamp woods and rushes covering the shore of Lake Landsjön, the manor’s overseer Roger Österqvist kindly helped us machine a 50-metre trench along the shore just where the distance to the islet is least. And there, under a metre of Carex peat, we found pointed stakes rammed into the clay at six spots. Most of these are probably from simple jetties and fish traps. But two are thick enough to belong to bridges over to the islet. Radiocarbon and maybe dendrochronology awaits. We also found a beautifully preserved iron ard tip, part of an agricultural implement of likely High Medieval date.

Lotta Feldt of the County Museum told me something extremely interesting Monday. A tight and reliable radiocarbon date for mortar can be had for €700 at the University of Turku. This would allow us to date every major construction event at these castles – because we have been taking mortar samples. I’m definitely looking into that!

Now we have three days of excavation left, plus half a day of backfilling before I return most of the tools to the museum and our team disperses. I say most of the tools, because I have had to buy eleven orange plastic scoops designed for bailing small boats. We use them to catch trowelled soil when we clean between stones. I’ve decided that this is a fine statement of wealth and status. I own more bail scoops than any private individual I know, and I don’t mind telling all and sundry.