Sparresminde gravhøj

The Sparresminde graveyard between Damsholte and Neble on Møn is definitely one of Denmark's "Top-10" graveyards. This fantastically beautiful mass grave was built by the Funnel Cup culture in the Peasant Stone Age around 3,200 BC. The burial chamber best illustrates the building abilities of the early peasant communities and the colossal investment of both time and labor that was put into the construction of the tombs. The fact that the Sparresminde burial chamber is so well preserved is mainly due to the fact that the grave was already protected voluntarily in 1883 at the request of the National Museum, which had made the first registration of the burial chamber three years earlier. The tomb had already been opened at that time, as Merchant Gustav Hage from Stege in the 1850s carried out an "excavation", which we unfortunately know neither of finds nor information from. Gustav Hage also examined another of Møn's well-known burial chambers, the large " Kong Asgers Hø j" and the beautiful Jordehøj burial chamber . On the south-east side of the mound, a small opening can be seen from the 7-meter-long chamber passage that leads to the large burial chamber. The outer three decks above the corridor are missing and therefore access to the tomb today is not nearly as difficult as in the Stone Age, where you had to crawl through a small, narrow opening at the far end of the corridor. The chamber passage consists of no less than 7 sets of supporting stones, which face a flat, possibly split side towards the passage. Also notice how both the large support stone of the hallway and the chamber slopes a little bit into the hallway, which, with the large overlying pressure from the deck and the mound, gives a more solid construction. Inside, the corridor for a little more than half of its length is covered by 6 decks, where the innermost - the so-called "keystone" - forms the transition to the large burial chamber. On the keystone, the two middle of a total of 7 giant decks rest in the chamber and the enormous pressure from the decks and the mound of earth is thus distributed perfectly on the two innermost cornerstones in the hallway. In the chamber passage, two sets of narrow frame stones are also seen between the supporting stones. They carried an outer and an inner wooden door or stone slab, which sealed the tomb completely from the outside world. The outer frame stones are seen between the 3rd and 4th set of supporting stones calculated from the outside and the inner ones between the 5th and 6th supporting stone sets. The doors in the hallway floor were supported by a transverse doorstep - a so-called "threshold stone", but these are no longer seen. The Sparresminde burial chamber is also special, as in the ceiling by the inner frame stones a transverse, pulled-down deck stone can be seen, which forms a counterpart to the threshold stone in the floor. In the lower edge of the stone an arch has been carved, but it is uncertain whether this was originally or later carved to facilitate access to the chamber. All spaces between the corridor and the burial chamber's supporting stones are filled with beautiful, original dry walls of stacked stone tiles and in the Sparresminde burial chamber they are in several places laid in chalk mortar, whereby the corridor and the chamber are sealed against penetrating water and soil. From other graveyards we know the use of rolled birch bark and tar for the same purpose. After crawling through the narrow chamber passage, you arrive at the burial chamber's large common burial chamber. The 10 meter long and 1.8 - 2.5 meter wide burial chamber has no less than 21 large supporting stones. The chamber is smallest in the middle at the mouth of the chamber passage. It is a characteristic, local feature that is seen in several other of Møn's large burial chambers. Only one of the tombstone's 7 covers rests directly on the supporting stones. During the construction of the burial chamber, the supporting stones were first erected and subsequently filled in the gaps with drywall.

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