In the letter, Schøyen writes of his thoughts about what the mounds might be. He also writes about the investigations he undertook on the largest mound: 

They all have the same form, in that they all have a hollow in the middle, and as I and others dug into one of them (the largest), we saw stone blocks on edge (upright) arranged in a rectangle at the bottom.

About the mounds

The grave mounds here at Skasenden are called hunting ground burials (fangstmarksgraver) because of their outfield location, far from farm settlements. 

The five mounds before you all have pits in the top of them. These are called looting pits. It was not unusual for looters to plunder graves even shortly after burial, and decomposition of the contents of the grave would also contribute to the formation of hollows at the top. 

From Schøyen’s letter we know that by 1904 all the graves had “a hollow in the middle”, but we also know that Schøyen himself dug in the largest mound. No archaeological investigations have been undertaken here. 

A reasonable amount is nonetheless known from similar grave mounds, as well as from Schøyen’s letter. There does not seem to have been any grave goods, but Thorvald Schøyen’s description of the upright stones means that these are likely grave mounds from the Late Roman Iron Age (200 – 400 AD) or the Migration Period (400 – 600 AD). 

The upright stone slabs formed a stone coffin where the deceased was buried. Weapons, tools, food and other items were buried with the deceased and taken along on the journey to the underworld.

Automatic Protection

The grave mounds are automatically protected by law. All interventions in or near archaeological sites are prohibited as per the Cultural Heritage Act §§ 3, 4 and 6.