Children’s cemetery over 2,200 years old found in Norway

MADRID, (EUROPA PRESS). – Bones extracted from a complex of more than 40 circular stone tombs discovered in the autumn of 2023 on the outskirts of Fredrikstad (Norway) revealed that it was a children’s cemetery.

Archaeologists discovered circle after circle made of meticulously placed stones. The circles were about one to two meters wide. The stones were placed close together, like paving stones on a street. Several of the graves had a large stone in the center. Beneath them, archaeologists found remains of pottery and burned bones.

After examining the bones, experts were able to announce the biggest surprise: almost all of the graves belonged to children, except for two graves for adults just outside the burial site, according to a statement from the Norwegian History Museum.

Many had died as infants, while others were between three and six years old when they died. The infant mortality rate was probably high in this period. This children’s cemetery is unique in the Norwegian context and opens up many questions to which the answer is still unknown: Why were children buried in a separate place? Why here? And how was this tradition maintained for several hundred years?

The exhibition includes a reconstructed stone tomb and offers an insight into the delicate and sometimes emotional working process of the archaeologists who carried out the excavations. Through photographs and video material, visitors can gain insight into the context and significance of the find, as well as into the life and death of our predecessors.

The children’s graves date back to the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Most of them were buried between 800 and 200 BC. The children’s graves were found in an area rich in cultural heritage, including many rock carvings from this period that speak of travel and sun worship. The newly discovered children’s graves open up new questions about the people who lived at that time.

These excavations began because a local quarry was to be expanded. Archaeologists believed they would find traces of the Stone Age and had no suspicion that they would find graves from the transition between the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.