Next stop after Rauma is Sammallahdenmäki a bronze age burial site which again is a Unesco World Heritage site. Here we get lucky as the rain stopped just enough for us to take a good stroll around the site. There is a nice trail about 1.5 km long one way that goes to the main sites (“Long Ruin of Huilu” and the “Church Floor”) through the forest and most information is available also in English including, if needed, a local guide. We do not need a guide and start strong by visiting the remains of a prehistoric camping site near the burial site, probably they were related.
And then the burial mounds start. They are similar by being built of of rocks but the shapes can be quite different. All of them were built 3,000 years ago and each was a burial site where people were interred mostly cremated. At that time the site was right on the Gulf of Bothnia, the water has retreated quite a bit since.
We follow the trail the best we can, usually we can see the next mound from the previous one, the only problem is that none of them are marked or described, quite weird really.
Walking around we enjoyed the quiet and tried to imagine how the area must have looked that many years ago. Our conclusion was that it was very similar but with the water nearby. We have these philosophical musings only on the short stretches when we can relax, otherwise due to the wet stones we are on high alert so we don’t fall.
The major mound is the Long Ruin of Huilu, a long and extensive sequence of mounds, very impressive. It is probably the only one besides the Church Floor that we were able to identify correctly. And then it is time to return to the car we still have one more site planned for today.
