Lindholm Høje

A Viking burial ground and settlement on the hill above Aalborg, though the site is older than the Vikings, the higher northern part goes back to the fifth century, the lower southern part to 1000–1050. Excavation from 1952 covered 589 of roughly 700 graves, most of them cremations. The settlement stood where the Limfjord could be crossed (here, or far to the west at Aggersund, with swamps closing off everything between) and glassware, gems and Arab coins found here show what that position was worth. It was abandoned around 1200 as sand blew in from the deforested west coast, the same sand that then preserved it.