The Burial Ground at Prestsetra

You are now standing at Prestsetra, which was once the farm of the Priest at Kvernes. If you look around you, you can maybe see many small mounds in the landscape? Can you see them? They aren’t big, but after you have noticed the first one then it is easy to see that there are many of them. For you are now actually standing on a burial site. Around you, archaeologists have found 72 burial mounds which they believe date from the Bronze age. The Bronze age in Norway spanned from around the year 1800 BC to 300AD. At that time the sea level here at Kvernes was higher than it is today, there was also no dense forest at that time, so the place we are standing at now had a good view out towards the fjord. And it was important to lay the dead so that they could be seen by people on their way to the camp. You can find traces of pre-historic times around the whole Cultural Area and this burial site is one of many in the area. In Kvernes you can walk in a landscape that reflects 4000 years of burial customs.