in the western part of Ireland

A Viking necklace that suppose to be about 1150 year old has recently been discovered in Burren National Park. The cave, in which the necklace was found, is located in the western parts of Ireland.

Photo: Thorsten Kahlert, copyright Marion Dowd

Archaeologists are surprised about the discovery, since the evidence of Norse settlements in this region of Ireland hasn’t been very much.

Dr. Marion Dowd announced the finding this week. She is an archaeologist from the Institute of Technology Sligo, and she is the leader of the excavation.

“The necklace is the largest Viking necklace to have been found in Ireland. Normally, Vikings necklaces that have been found have five to six glass beads, but this has 71 glass beads covered with gold foil.“, she said to the reporters.

She continues;  “It is really bizarre how this necklace from a high-status Viking came to be in a cave in the Burren. There is no parallel for it in Ireland and it is puzzling on a number of fronts. The necklace would have been imported into Ireland from Scandinavia in the late 9th and early 10th century.

Small numbers of these beads have been found with Viking burials at Kilmainham, Dublin, but nothing like the number found in Glencurran Cave. Such necklaces were worn by high-status Viking women and they might denote a woman’s cultural and religious affiliations. These were certainly prestigious items.”

How the Viking necklace got there

The 9th century Viking necklace is believed to have come from Gaelic chieftains from Burren, whom bought the necklace from the town of Limerick and brought it back home.

The Burren National Park is quite small, just about 1500 hectares and the cave in which the necklace was found is located in a remote site of the park.

Dr Dowd says that the park “has been the site of important archaeological discoveries since 2004. It is the largest cave excavation in Ireland and the finds have been enormously significant.”

If you want to read more about this, please visit the following sites:
Remains.se – pictures from Ireland (Donegal, Glencolumbkille, Malinbeg, Enniskillen, Slieve League)
Irish Times
Irish Herald
Independent

The photo of the necklace:  Photo: Thorsten Kahlert, copyright Marion Dowd

- a small medieval stone church in Sweden

The “Södra Vings Kyrka” is one of the few Christian monuments from that time around Ulricehamn, Sweden. The church is a stone building whose oldest section was built in the 1130’s.

The original chancel was demolished in the mid to late 1200s and was replaced by current conditions in the Gothic style with a little church sculpture here and there. During the 1400’s was the nave ceiling cross vaults, which were decorated with murals, I think it was by the same people who built the ancient castles around the area that did the job with the Christian buildings aswell. The sacristy was built in the 1600s and 1700s expanded the church with the tower and the nave was extended westward.

Inside the old church:

- Current altar with carvings derived from the Middle Ages.
- A image of Holy Mary in late gothic style, is a relic from an altar screen from 1400.
- The pulpit in Baroque style was added in the 1600’s.
- In the church tower are two medieval bells. The big clock was donated in the year 1293 (by Tune Anundson who was patron of the church). The smaller bell is from 1400.

Here follows a gallery with images from the medieval stone church “Södra Vings Kyrka” in Ulricehamn, Sweden. If you want to watch other nice pictures of Church monuments, Christian buildings and ancient castles, please visit the main site, www.remains.se.

- the San Cristobal cathedral in Havana, Cuba

It was the spanish who founded Havana (Habana). The old parts of the city is listed on UNESCO’s world heritage list. There are a lot of old, american cars driving around on Cuba, but the don’t have the american engines left, they are replaced by Russian made diesel engines.

When we went to Cuba a while ago, we found this old and very beautiful cathedral (Catedral de San Cristóbal de La Havana) next to a very nice square. It looked very dirty at first, but then I realized that it is suppose to look like that. Anyway, the dirty look made it look so beautiful. I went inside to take some pictures, but there was a lot of tourist hanging around that particular day, so I went up in one of the clock towers instead. The stairs was very small and you shouldn’t have any problems with small spaces if you decide to go up there. And the view from up there wasn’t as good as I thought; maybe that is because I had to stop after one stair. There was a bee nest or something, under the next stair, which made me stop. I think I’m allergic to those guys.

I have uploaded 79 photos on the San Cristobal cathedral in Havana, Cuba. You can see them on the main site, http://www.remains.se. A galleri with some of the images you will find under this text. Enjoy!

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The medieval fortress at the town of Kungälv, Sweden

Bohus Fästning (”The fortress of Bohus”, originally Bagahus) is situated at the former Swedish / Norwegian border. It was Haakon V Magnuson, the king of Norway (between 1299-1319) who gave the construction order. He also initiated the construction of Akershus in Oslo, Norway. At this time, Bohuslän (where Kungälv is situated), belonged to Norway.

Bohus fortress was invested 14 times and badly damaged, but not once taken. At one point, the border was moved north and the fortress was to no-use to Sweden anymore. Then the norweigans built Fredriksten fortress.

Photo galler of Bohus Fästning (Bohus Fortress)

yet another temple in ancient Egypt

Edfu can also be spelled as Idfu or Edfou. It’s situated very close to the city of Luxor. In Edfu lives about 60 thousand people. The Edfu Temple was built between 237 B.C and 57 B.C, and it’s the temple that is best preserved of all temples in Egypt. It doesn’t look very inviting when you first see it from the “big road”, but as soon as you see what’s beyond the entrance, you will not regret the visit for a second. The temple has a  lot of beautiful pillars, hieroglyphs,  statues and other, classic Egyptian remains. A perfect place for tourists that are fund of egyptian remains, and would love to see the remains of the work of  every Pharoah Egypt had had.

Just outside the temple entrance you will find a very nice taverna. Near the area you can also find the Colosses of Memnon. All those site gets you thinking of if ancient Cleopatra every wandered around on those premises? She probably did, during her Egypt Dynasty, checking out the Egypt Kingdom that was in so many ways very impressive. I would love to go back sometime, and then maybe not just running around, taking a lot of photos, but stand still and breathe the old, Eegyptian air and think about what happened within those walls. Cool.

Here are some photos from the Horus temple / Edfu temple. Please visit www.remains.se for more photos.

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The egyptian architect

- here on the blog are some pictures of his market in the Kharga Oasis, Egypt

During our honeymoon to Egypt, we decided to go for one night in the Sahara desert, near the Kharga Oasis.

On our way there, we passed a market place that was designed by one of the greatest architects in the egyptian history, Hassan Fathy. Unfortenately, the marketplace was never to be completed, but I guess it was a very good start.

Here you have some pictures from the Kharga marketplace in New Baris. Look at the very nice “air cooling system“.

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You can read more about Hasan Fathi and also see pictures of his other works here. Thanks to our driver Bachchan Blog, who I don’t believe read this blog?

get an account on mostphotos.com and sell YOUR photos

I joined Mostphotos the other day, to try sell some photos I’ve been taking on castles and similar stuff, but also photos that hasn’t got any historic interest. The thing is that anybody can earn money by uploading their photos and sell them, even Bachchan Blog! Even if you’re not a profesional photographer.

Go ahead and join Mostphotos.com today!

- the little country that I love

At last! I’m going back to Estonia in a short while. Hopefully I will be able to drive around and take some pictures. I’d love to go to Narva. The thing is that I thought the coolest part of the fortress there was on the russian side of the border, but I just got the wonderful info that it is in Estonia!

I’m still working on the new design for remains.se, but so far I haven’t come up with anything new. Next step is to upload ALL remaining photos I’ve got, it’s about 5000+ pictures! Gulp.

Well, stay tuned!

Coptic Christian historical graves in Egyptian Oasis

I felt of writing quite a long blog post today, I hope you don’t mind

On our honeymoon, we decided to go to historical Egypt. It was kind of swedish summer there at the time, which suited us perfect (I find it kind of difficult to function proper when it’s too hot). We saw some really interesting places there, like our excursion to the Coptic Christian mud tombs and graves, in the Kharga Oasis!

The Coptic Christian religion is the biggest christian church in Egypt.

It was fantastic to actually see those extremely old frescoes on the walls and roofs. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take flash photos of those paintings, but the guide, as always, said that it was OK. The only issue was money, nothing else. It sure was very tempting to do so, but I never did. I thought that, okay maybe I can do this once, just to show people around the world what the frescoes looks like, on the remains site. It was probably once in a life time opportunity. But no. Both me and the poor guards could get into real big trouble if I had done that and somebody actually checked my camera.

I actually DID take a photo of an old mummy, with the guide’s permission, but as we left, the guards stopped our vehicle and I erased the photo very quickly, just in case.

Anyhow, as my wife was resting in the jeep and our driver was fixing a tyre, I went into the tombs, like a historical tomb raider, to check them out. My guide at the moment, couldn’t almost speak any english. He had a stick that he would point at the old, flaking frescos. I remember most of them; they all had the christian themes and they were all from the Bible and I found them very, very interesting and it was almost unreal to actual be where this ancient culture use to be placed. The guides never went alone with the tourists; they always had to bring a guard as well (so they said). And it was a little bit annoying to have this huge soldier behind my back all the time, even if he seemed kind of nice. Unlike the other guards and soldiers I came in contact with, this guy was unarmed.

Anyway, I would love to see all the historical coptic christian tombs, but they seemed to have a special route for the tourists. I had to beg him to go to some other tombs, and in the beginning he was willing to do so. But I guess he was kind of sleepy and didn’t want to spend all day with me, so he got more and more, well I don’t wan’t to say aggressive, but he tried harder and harder to get me back to the entrance.

So at the end, I just took a lot of pictures on everything historical I saw on my way out. Some of them was kind of good. Here are the pictures, I will probably not upload all of the images on the remains site as well at the moment, but I will do this when the next release / upgrade has been done.

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To see more images of ancient Egypt with all the pyramids, fresc writings, sphinxes and other historical stuff, visit www.remains.se . Remember that you can also buy high-res photos from me, you can leave a note under the post if you are interested in this.

- an unique grave ship was recently found by swedish archaeologists.

The viking-aged grave ship’s discovery was placed in Sunnerby, a place clos e to the castle of Läckö, near the lake of Vänern (see a map from the area here) . The ship is probably from the 7th century.  At least two human remains, one young and one old person, was found. It seems to have been a very highly placed person’s funeral.  There was also remains of sacrified animals. The ship was burnt after the funeral.

Only in England has a grave ship like this been found before.

At remains.se, you can find a photo gallery from the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, Norway.

The ancient temple of Karnak in Luxor, Egypt

I´ve uploaded 426 new pictures from the Karnak Temple in Luxor, Egypt. Those fantastic Egyptian remains are full of  ancient tombs, small sphinxes, wonderful statues, osiris and much more. When I was visiting the Karnak temple, I RAN for about 2 hours in this enourmus place, while my wife sat at a typical egyptian café right outside the temple, reading a book. I think she even managed to read the entire book before I was back.

But still I missed about 1/5 of the entire temple area. Unfortenately, I realised this as I came home to Sweden again, checking Google Maps… But what can you do? How patient you think you are, sooner or later you just don´t care if some guy with blue jalabia says “PSSST!”, pointing behind a big monument and tries to get you in there, so that he can point at a stone, not like a very interesting stone, but a really ordinary one. And they you´ll have to pay him. Sure.

At one of those magical moments, I pointed behind the guy´s back. He turned around and had a look and when he turned back to me, I just smiled and silently put out my empty hand. It didn´t work.

So next time I go to Egypt and visit the great temples, I´ll run faster, then I hopefully get to take even more photos of the statues of Ramses, Amon, Horus and the other cool, ancient guys.

How ever, you can watch the Karnak photos at remains.se here.

In thursday, Dresden Elbe Valley was removed as a U.N. World Heritage site. It is the the second landmark that has been removed from the list ever. The reason was that a four-lane motorway bridge was built over the river.

Read more at UNESCO’s website

For pictures of castles, forts and other historical remains, visit http://www.remains.se

They did never see each other again.

My brother Rikard took some closeup photos.

Here I will write a short description of my road trips to different historical places, where I take a lot of photos and enjoy the most often beautiful environments. I´m not a professional photographer, but I´m doing as good as I can, to show you how nice those leftovers are. You can read anything about castles and, castles medieval times, medieval castles history, middle ages architecture and other.

Please let me know if you have any questions or suggestions! And be sure to visit the “main page”; http://www.remains.se

Kind regards,
Henrik