Background story - The visible ancient monuments

32,000 visible ancient monuments

In Denmark, we have almost 32,000 visible, protected ancient monuments from antiquity, the Middle Ages, and more recent times. However, these visible ancient monuments are only a very small part of all the traces that humans have left behind during the almost 15,000 years that have passed since the last ice age.
In total, around 150,000 sites and finds from the past have been registered. Lost, used, or hidden objects and tools, settlements with huts and houses, and burial grounds under flat fields are not directly visible in today's cultural landscape and only come to light through earthworks and archaeological excavations.

Monuments to the dead and living culture

The vast majority of protected ancient monuments are burial monuments from ancient times: the many burial mounds of the Neolithic period, the impressive dolmens and passage graves, and the large groups of mounds from the Bronze Age that crown the highest points of the landscape all represent "dead cultures." However, the burial monuments also show where people lived in ancient times, and the society that built the graves is usually directly reflected in the form and content of the graves. The burial monuments thus also contain a lot of information about the living culture behind their construction.
If this knowledge is supplemented with data from the "living culture," such as that obtained through excavations of settlements and structures, a more and more nuanced picture of our common past emerges over time.

Archaeology from a time without written sources is like a jigsaw puzzle with an unknown number of pieces. Occasionally, a piece belonging to the frame is found, which gradually defines the motif, and together with the pieces inside, little by little a picture of the initially unknown motif emerges.

From the end of ancient times and from the Middle Ages and more recent times, there are also visible monuments from living culture: rune stones, fortifications, castles, ruins, monasteries, canals, holy springs, and old buildings bear witness to our shared past and history and describe the development of society.

The protected ancient monuments are the visible part of our cultural heritage. They represent our shared memory of why and how humans and society developed!

Under the menu item "Background History," you will find a brief outline of the main lines of Danish history based on the visible monuments that we have preserved from the various periods.
If you want to know more, use your local library, the internet, and, not least, the museums, where you can find information about both finds and ancient monuments in your area.

The past is our baggage in the present and the basis for our understanding of the future!