Locaton: Öland Map
Eketorp Castle is a unique circular Iron Age citadel situated in Oland region of Sweden. Judging by archaeological digs conducted in the region it was established that Eketorp Castle was established in the 5th century AD. Indigenous people who live here had contact with the Romans and other Europeans indicating they were a maritime culture. Eketorp Castle is unique in a sense that it was not abandoned for most of its history. Instead people who lived here enlarged the settlement and improved its fortifications. Today much of Eketorp Castle have been excavated and this circular fortress itself became an open air museum open to the public.
The native population of the Iron Age built the original
fortress around 400 AD around the time then Öland natives came in
contact for the first time with the Romans and other Europeans. It
is believed that ringfort in that era was used to officiate
religious ceremonies and to serve as a refuge for the local farming
community when a foreign enemy appeared. According to the studies
carried out, the circular design was chosen because the ground is
level, so that there is no place from where the attacks are
more probable; the original diameter of this circular stone fort was
approximately fifty-seven meters. In the following century, the
stones were moved to construct a new circular structure, almost
eighty meters in diameter. In this conjuncture, fifty individual
cells or small structures were included within the fort as a whole;
some of these cells were in the center of the ring, and others were
directly added to the walls.
At the end of the years 600, the ringfort was mysteriously
abandoned, and it was not used until the beginning of the 11th
century. The work carried out in this century consisted in the
reconstruction of the first fort, with the difference that the
interior cells of the stone were replaced by wooden structures, and
a second external defensive wall was erected.