Archaeologists have uncovered ancient stone circles at a Norwegian burial site
The burial ground was already extensive. Now it has grown even larger after new discoveries have been unearthed beneath a field in eastern Norway.
Drone photo and the archaeologists' map showing the circles uncovered at the site. The circles measure several metres across.(Photo/Illustration: Museum of Cultural History / Science Norway)
Archaeologists are currently excavating a large area at one of Norway’s most spectacular burial sites: the Hunn burial ground in eastern Norway. On what is known as the South Field, there are many well-known circles of standing stones.
Archaeologist Anne Lene Melheim points out the stone circles that have stood here for more than 2,000 years.
Alongside the already known stone circles, archaeologists have now uncovered what they believe to be additional stone circles that had remained hidden beneath the topsoil.
The discovery was made in a new area near what is known as the West Field.
Anne Lene Melheim on her way out to the South Field at Hunn.(Photo: Lasse Biørnstad / Science Norway)
The area contains many large burial mounds, but no visible stone circles. When archaeologists removed the topsoil, however, clear traces of circular structures emerged.
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"One of the circles shows traces of 15 stones that have been removed," Melheim says of the new discoveries.
Melheim is an archaeologist and professor at the Museum of Cultural History and has worked on the Hunn site for several decades.
The archaeologists have also found several possible graves that may contain human remains, although these have yet to be analysed.
The map shows the archaeologists' preliminary discoveries beneath the ground at the West Field at Hunn. The circles are ring ditches and mark either burial mounds or stone circles.(Map: Museum of Cultural History)
Stones arranged in odd numbers
The stones that are visible in the South Field today weigh hundreds of kilograms. They were erected according to certain rules. There is usually an odd number of them, for example 9, 11, 13, or 15.
Archaeologist and professor Lene Melheim.(Photo: Lasse Biørnstad / Science Norway)
No one knows why.
The site contains numerous circles of varying sizes, measuring between 10 and 20 metres across.
The stones and graves were created by people during the Bronze Age and Iron Age, roughly 3,500–1,000 years ago. But people used this wider area for a much longer period.
Melheim notes that there is still much about these monuments that remains unknown.
Several decades ago, graves containing both cremated human remains and bones were discovered between the stones. Archaeological investigations have been carried out in several rounds over many years.
But now the archaeologists have uncovered new circles, some of which may have been stone circles, while others may have been burial mounds.
Some of the stone circles at the South Field.(Photo: Lasse Biørnstad / Science Norway)
Here the stone circles can be seen from satellite imagery.
Finds from the Roman period
The Hunn site consists of several different burial grounds.
Graves containing impressive objects dating from around 2,000 to 1,500 years ago have previously been found here.
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The newly excavated area has revealed several rings that had remained buried beneath the topsoil of a large field for hundreds of years.
The land has been repeatedly ploughed and sown over a long period of time, according to the archaeologists.
As a result, it has been a very long time since anyone saw what actually lies beneath the field.
Anne Lene Melheim walking through the West Field, where there are many burial mounds. The newly discovered circles were uncovered at the northern end of this field.(Photo: Lasse Biørnstad / Science Norway)
The field is now going to be drained and is therefore being investigated. The area was first surveyed by Østfold County Municipality and the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research (NIKU), with ground-penetrating radar revealing numerous traces beneath the surface.
The overview map below clearly shows the results: several circles of different sizes.
They are what are knwn as ring ditches. These are traces marking the outer edges of circular structures, where the soil has been disturbed by human activity.
NIKU's overview map, where you can see the row of burial mounds in the West Field. This was surveyed in 2025, and the discoveries have been marked on the map. The newly discovered stone circles and possible burial mounds lie in a line.(Map: NIKU)
"They may have made the circle first in order to plan the construction of the burial monument, or it may have formed because people walked in a circle around it," says Melheim.
Graves containing impressive artefacts from the Roman period, around 2,000–1,600 years ago, have previously been found in the burial mounds nearby.
Because the newly discovered rings are right next to the cluster of burial mounds, archaeologists initially assumed that they too were burial mounds.
An example of some of the finds from the site. These are spurs that a rider could have worn on their feet. They date from the Early Iron Age and were documented in the 1950s.(Photo: Mårten Teigen / Museum of Cultural History)
But several of the circles show clear evidence that upright stones once stood there.
"We are quite certain that standing stones were erected here," says Jakob Jan Edvin Kile-Vesik. He is an archaeologist at the Museum of Cultural History and the excavation director at the Hunn site.
He is standing in the middle of one of the circles. Small piles of stones can be seen protruding from the ground.
"They are like a kind of foundation for the stones," he says of the small cairns. "Two years ago, I helped raise a stone that had fallen over here in the stone field, and when we did that, we saw exactly the same kind of structure."
Jakob Jan Edvin Kile-Vesik at the Museum of Cultural History(Photo: Lasse Biørnstad / Science Norway)
One of the places the archaeologists have marked as a possible location where a standing stone once stood.(Photo: Lasse Biørnstad / Science Norway)
The stone circles in the South Field provide a kind of reference point for the newly discovered rings. But what exactly were these structures used for?
In the past, such circles were interpreted as assembly sites – places where people gathered to pass judgements and make important decisions.
But there are a large number of these circles in the same place, and human remains have been found among some of them, though not all.
"First and foremost, I see them as burial monuments," says Melheim.
Melheim explains that archaeologist Helge Gjessing, who helped excavate parts of this site around a hundred years ago, made no mention of any burial mounds in the area currently being excavated.
He did, however, record traces of fire and large stones in the field, according to Melheim. Those observations may have referred to the stone circles now being uncovered.
This could mean that there were never burial mounds here at all, and that the standing stones were removed a long time ago.
Many layers of history
The entire Hunn site has a very long history, and Melheim believes that some of what they have now uncovered also relates to its early history, before and leading up to the establishment of the burial grounds.
The burial mounds nearby date from the Roman period, roughly 2,000 to 1,500 years ago.
Parts of the area later developed into burial grounds, but people had already been using the site for several thousand years.
During the latest excavation, archaeologists have uncovered numerous cooking pits and remains of buildings, providing evidence of extensive human activity at the site over a very long period.
