Uppåkra temple

Lars Larsson (2007) argued that the find represents "the first Scandinavian building for which the term 'temple' can be justly claimed".

The remains of the building consist of holes and trenches for the placement of the pillars and walls that once stood there.

The walls on the long sides were made of slightly convex, rough-cut oak posts or "staves," which were sunk into a trench in the earth more than one meter deep.

The central part of the building, which stood free of the outer walls, was formed by four gigantic wooden columns.

[4] Two large iron door rings were found, one in the fill around a post, the other about 10 meters from the building.

[1] In 2004 the Foteviken Museum published a reconstruction with the four central columns interpreted as the framework for a tower.

The two-meter-deep postholes indicate a very strong construction, not least since the four columns formed a square, which made possible effective cross-bracing (as depicted in the above illustration).

Finding such large numbers of them where the posts and walls of the Uppåkra hof stood indicates that they were offered in association with the erection of the temple.

[6] North of the building, a large number of weapons were found, many of them deliberately broken like the offerings left in Danish bogs.

A few meters further to the west there had been a small building; a gold bracteate was found on a collapsed clay wall.

[9] To the east of the building there had been several longhouses and firepits at different times, and several grindstones were also found buried in an almost straight line, some smashed and others intact.