The Western Hollow Way

In the centre of Ödeshög, there are standing stones, indicating prehistoric settlements and burials. But the Middle Ages have also left their mark – the church tower is from the end of the 12th century with features suggesting a “royal gallery” structure.

People have lived in Svämb since the Stone Age. There is a sepulchre containing the remnants of 19 persons, maybe an extended family. Svämb also has a “bridgescape” with three parallel bridges of various ages. The oldest is the Markbron which was built in the 16th century using a dry-stone medieval technique. Svämb was an important ­place ­before Ödeshög, it had a church and a grand manor, indicating royal influence.

The oldest court site for the Lysing hundred was Tingstad, which is now a little village in the middle of nowhere. The Tingsberget court mountain and stone circle show where the hundred court was located.

The Näs stronghold on the island of Visingsö was built about 1150, serving in practice as a central royal residence in Sweden in the early Middle Ages. The island had a strategic position in the feud between the royal families in eastern and western Götaland, and kings died or were murdered there. Magnus Birgersson was the last king to pass away at Näs, in the year 1290. The castle was burnt in 1319, but the ruins have been excavated and restored.

The oldest route for the Western Hollow Way is hidden between the E4 motorway and the ­“tourist” road. The old way winds from Stava towards Isgårda and Uppgränna. The regional border between Östergötland and Småland is the Narbäcken rivulet “in the middle of the woods”, a few kilometres north of Uppgränna. This is where the “Ten hundred´s men” took over responsibility for the king´s safety up to the Junabäck brook (in Jönköping) where yeomen from Västergötland were to meet up with their “surety”.

At Uppgränna, there was a chapel dedicated to St. John the Baptist, with a sacrificial well called the Chapel Well. There may also have been a simple shelter for travellers on the dangerous Hollow Way, standing at the point where the Östergötland part of the Royal Route ended.