Around Alvastra

The area between Lake Tåkern and Hästholmen was intensely populated at an early stage. There are traces of continuous settlements since the Stone Age, and also barrows and rock-carvings from the Bronze Age. Fertile soil and the proximity of the Tåkern and Vättern lakes made this area attractive to the first immigrants.

This area also includes the Alvastra complex, which must be regarded as an entity, containing a lake-dwelling from the Stone Age, Bronze Age mounds, Migration Age hillforts, a manor with early Christian burials under the church crypt, and last, but not least, the monastery from 1143. According to the Cistercian rule, convents were to be located in or near wildernesses. But practice was different. In Alvastra the monastery was located at the intersection of two important roads, where people had been living for thousands of years.

There are three hillforts on Mount Omberg – Hjässaborgen, Borggården, and Drottning Ommas borg. Hjässaborgen and Borggården are supposed to have been part of the Alvastra power sphere, including the Hälle sacrificial well, where people used to gather at Whitsuntide even in the 1940´s. Västra väggar (the West Wall) on Mount Omberg has been identified as a suicidal precipice, somewhere to jump down for men who did not want to die in their beds. Hollow ways indicate that the mountain had light desiduous forest, intensely grazed in the Middle Ages, and provided a good road for travelling, as the lowlands to the east were still marshes, difficult to pass in spring and autumn.

Hästholmen is situated on a sheltered bay shore line on Lake Vättern, which was why it grew into an important harbour and market place in the 12th and 13th centuries. The joint court site for the Dal and Lysing hundreds was also located here. A seal from the 14th century indicates that Hästholmen even had a town charter. It was also the point of departure from the east for the island of Visingsö where there were two Royal demesnes – Näs and Visingsborg. Hioo (today Hjo) on the west side of Lake Vättern, was linked with Hästholmen by an old road to Skara in Västergötland.

From Hästholmen, the Royal Route continued to Ödeshög and then further south on the Western Hollow Way, to the village of Uppgränna.