The North Mound and the South Mound

The two large mounds at Jelling are called the North Mound and the South Mound. In the North Mound, which is the earliest, a burial chamber was built in 958-59 AD. The core of the North Mound consists of a much older mound from the Bronze Age, which was enlarged in the Viking Age – either to make the construction work easier or perhaps because the ancient mound had a special significance? All of the contents of the North Mound’s burial chamber, as well as remains of the dead, were removed in a robbery during the Viking period. The South Mound is the largest of the two, measuring 10 m in height and 70 m in diameter, and was constructed around 970. It did not contain any burials. Hidden underneath the mounds lie the remains of the oldest monument at Jelling: a huge, ship-shaped stone monument or ‘ship-setting’. With a length of c. 360 m it is the largest known example in Scandinavia.