The Vrå people

Vrå Culture

The Discovery

The soil in the area around Stora Malm is rich in prehistoric finds, mainly consisting of stone weapons and tools. A teacher at the school in Forssjö, Mr Enok Lindahl, was one of the first collectors of such items, and he worked in close collaboration with the Museum for Sörmland. Then some narrow necked stone axes were found near the Vrå-cottages and a new and deeper interest was directed towards the location. Mr Ivar Schnell, the head of the County Archive, visited the local vicarage one weekend. During a leisurely evening stroll Mrs Schnell happened to kick a potsherd with her foot. Upon inspection it was found to be decorated with a pattern and the shape indicated that it could well have come from a cooking pot or jar. A more thorough search was immediately initiated.

Born out of bits & pieces

Ivar Schnell received the generous and full co-operation of the landlord, count Carl Gotthard Bonde. A labour force was freely made available for the necessary preliminary excavations at the site. Under the leadership of the amanuensis Sten Florin several shafts were dug over an extensive area, and they yielded the still visible foundation stones of a square hut along the shoreline of the erstwhile Litorina Sea. A further two foundations were found but their location is unknown today.
During the summer of 1935 archaeologists collected some 88 Ibs (40 kilograms) of pottery pieces. They could be related to the 'funnel-neck beaker culture' with it's characteristic 'corded' ornamentation around the neck. Such finds had previously been made in southern Sweden. After some extensive and frustrating work on this giant puzzle, enough pieces could be fitted together to give a clear and definite testimony to the original shape and structure of the type of pot made at this site.
In the sherds were imprints and hollows caused by various forms of grains and seeds present during the process of firing. They proved to be from grains of wheat, barley, sorghum and -sensationally- grape pips! The adjacent lake called Stensjön was investigated and Mr and Mrs Florin took samples from the silt layers of the equivalent period and found the presence of pollen from all these plants. Thus the finds could be dated and proved to come from the oldest known agricultural settlement in central Sweden. Some 6000 years ago people lived here at Vrå in the transition-period between the nomadic hunter tribes and the dawn of more settled land-tilling people. This period has been recognised as that of the Vrå-culture, a name that is to be found in most history-books today.
New finds were unearthed in 1993 and 1994 as Telia dug trenches for their phone-cables. New excavations were carried out under the leadership of Britta Kihlstedt east of the road between Vrå and Lerbo, and outside the area protected under the Ancient Monuments Act. Among the objects unearthed were grinding-stones, arrow-heads and more potsherds. The original site proved to have been much bigger than previously estimated.
The entire Stone Age site is now under the protection of the Ancient Monuments Act.

The New people at Vrå

Knowledge about the past is a major concern of the school-books of our day. To know how people lived and toiled in the stone-age attracts and fascinates children and teachers alike. The teachers in the vicinity eventually realised that the site offered a perfect way to make history come alive. Here the dry facts of the text became tangible realities. But this did not happen at once. Although the finds and the final report by the amanuensis Mr Florin caused much scientific debate, local interest was scarce during the following decades. It was once again up to a teacher at the school in Forssjö, Mr Åke Ostling, to awaken the interest of the local inhabitants.
He wrote a play depicting the life of the Stone Age farmers in Vrå, and his students performed the play in the open meadow next to Fridhem. The accolade that the play received soon brought the general public and created in the local authorities and cultural societies a genuine interest in the site and its possibilities. The stage was set for the next phase of the emergence of the Vrå-culture. In the fall of 1985 the foundation stones were laid for a 'reconstructed stone-age dwelling' east of the main road and adjacent to the Ancient Monument Area. The landowner, Count Carl Jedvard Bonde and his son, Carl Göran Bonde, made land available for the reconstruction. They also permitted timber to be brought from their forest at Ericsberg and assisted the project in many other ways.
The initiators were some 10 parents from Forssjö. They formed a building society and with some help from other local craftsmen constructed the first hut.
This building-project became an integral part of the school curriculum.
In 1987 this loose structure became the more formal non-profit 'Society of the Vrå People', and in 1992 it became the local cultural society and was listed as one of the officially recognised societies concerned with the cultural heritage of Sörmland.
Today the society has it's own building for exhibitions and various meetings in Forssjö.

The Vrå Village - Tourist attraction & Educational Aid

The Society of the Vrå People took upon itself the three-fold task of the preservation of the local environment, the study of Neolithic culture and information about the life and times of the Vrå People. The village was built for this purpose. As of 1995 there is one round hut, and two smaller and one larger hut of the ridge-pole roof type. They are sturdily built with oak-timbers and a roofing of bulrushes. A fifth hut is recessed into the ground with low stone walls and a ridge pole-roof covered with horizontal tight fitting half-timbers. These are covered with birch-rind and peat. This hut has the same size and orientation as the hut found during the first excavation. All the huts have latticed gables which have been daubed with clay over the years. The floors are made of trampled earth. Much of this work as well as the maintenance and care-taking of the Vrå-village has been ably carried out by workers within the ALU-project. These huts are examples of how the huts built by the people of the Vrå-culture may have been built. We have no certain evidence for the obvious reason that there are no Stone Age huts that have stood the test of time.
However, the materials are those that were available to the Vrå People. The joining of the various parts has been done with strips of rawhide from moose, elk and reindeer. As far as possible the builders have maintained Stone Age techniques in the construction.
The Vrå village is situated in such a way that the field in front of it is to be understood as the shoreline of the one-time Litorina Sea. Protected from the northern winds by the forest the village contains small areas of arable land and a cooking-well. Upper and lower millstones have been brought to the site also.
The number of guided tours carried out at the site increases year by year. Annually some fifty school-classes and other groups visit the site. Several camp-schools have been held. Several thousand visitors have by now visited the place and that is not counting the unannounced spontaneous visits from people who happen to pass the signs by the road. The village is always open to families and small groups. Should you desire to join a guided tour a booking can be made at the local Tourist Office in Katrineholm, Phone 0150 - 572 1 1.
At the end of the tour you may wish to purchase some of our souvenirs. The Vrå-pot, a picture by the artist Calle Jonzon, postcards or correspondence-cards carrying a picture of Vrå.

The Vrå pot. A reconstructed ancient artifact

This is the foremost symbol of the Vrå-culture and the only recoverable item from the time period in question. It must be stressed that the pot is a reconstruction and not a complete find. Even so it clearly shows the handicraft skills of the Stone Age people, in particular the sense of artistic elegance of the womenfolk.
The Vrå-pot was made in the ring-style. Clay from the local deposits was softened and worked smooth with water. The material was rolled into strips, shaped into suitable sized rings which then, layer upon layer, were fastened on top of one another, smoothed with wet hands and then finally given the corded ornamentation around the neck before being fired in an open kiln at a fairly low temperature. Hjördis Emericks, Björkvik, is currently making our version of this pot. But the firing is done at higher temperatures today. The varying colours in her pots are caused by the composition of the minerals in the clay as well as the slight differences in temperature in the kiln. This corresponds to the varied colours found in the sherds of the past.
The Society of the Vrå People has the copyright to the design of the pot, and the name is protected by the Swedish Office for Patents and Rights.

Vrå People - What were they?

Many theories have been proposed in answer to this question. The agricultural settlements to which they belonged were a part of the 'funnel-neck beaker' culture and appear to have been in existence for only a short while in Middle Sweden. The most credible assumption is that the Vrå-culture represents a transitory stage between the earlier hunter-people and the later more stationary farming t ribes. The Vrå People used cereals - such as wheat, barley and sorghum and vegetarian products such as grapes, as a complement to what they could catch in the sea and in the forest.

How did they live?

The material conditions were favourable to the Vrå People. There was plenty of prey in the woods: moose, various deer, wild pigs and bears and wolves. The sea was rich in various kinds of fish, salmon is just one example. On the smooth rocks schools of seals provided additional fur, meat and blubber. We know nothing about their spiritual life or religious practices. Every visitor to Vrå can make up his own mind about these matters. This will add a dimension of self discovery and make your visit to this era of the cultural history of Sörmland all the more memorable.

The Settlement

..was facing south near the shoreline of the very salty Litorina Sea. The sea level was some 150 ft higher in those days, and the flat land around Lake Mälaren was in effect an archipelago. The site appears to have been chosen very carefully from the point of access to both fish and landlocked prey. The settlers built their huts where the stone-ridges of Katrineholm and Köping meet. These mighty ridges, built by the runoff-rivers of the receding ice-cap only a few thousand years earlier, traverse the landscape line upon line, side by side, creating extended narrow islands, here and there broken by irregular islands of moraine debris where stranded icebergs dumped their contents of rock, silt and clay.
Higher up on the ridge a pit formed by 'dead ice' held the vital deposit of fresh water without which no permanent settlement could have existed. In a sea of very salt water, only the largest islands would have held significant and lasting fresh-water deposits. It is not within our knowledge to say whether the Vrå-settlement was temporary or permanent.

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