Björned, Torsåker

The Skeleton Field

Skelettåkern — the Skeleton Field — is an old farm burial ground in Björned, in Torsåker parish, Kramfors. The folk name came first, long before the archaeologists: for generations the people of the village found bones in the soil where they worked. In the 1980s the field was excavated, and the bones were given a context. It is a farm grave field and an early Christian burial place, from the centuries when the district was passing into a new faith. Twenty-eight individuals were taken from the ground. Their teeth told of toothache. Their bones told of kinship, health and diet — of lives lived here a thousand years ago, in a village that was changing and did not know yet into what. The people of Björned had known about them all along. The field kept giving them up, one ploughing at a time.