How often can you come across ancient stones or ruins while traveling

Any Irish or Scandinavian fags wanna give their accounts? Pictures hopefully if you're the adventurous type?


Good thread for acquiring first hand historical knowledge, will bump

>>1706162
What do you mean by ancient stones?

Only runes or also other megalithic structures?

I'm a burger but I've been to Ireland and there were a number of dilapidated castles or ruins with no signage or anything signifying what it was. Especially in the southeastern areas.

>>1706174
Any stone or ancient structure that is man made, and still visible in the modern day.

>>1706184
burger as well, that is astonishing. Is it illegal or considered rude to explore the ruins?

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>>1706196
Yes it's full of them in Italy

>>1706216
Wtf went on in Sardinia

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>>1706221
Nuraghi

>>1706162

Depends where you are, large parts of Europe are souless modern cityscapes or industrial farmland but there are areas that are festooned with ancient sites, typically in the more remote areas that are unspoilt by modernity.

>>1706221

It has it's own Bronze Age culture, the "Nuragic", and was apparently a major player in the bronze age and the source of much of the period's copper.

>>1706162
Depends on where you live.

I'm in the populated section of Sweden and they're everywhere. Closest one to my house is a 20 min walk.

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Walking past archeologists digging like birds for maggots every day in this city I study in.

Where I grew up ther is a stave church, a pilgrim path, old mines and mossy stone houses on the mountains, and some trapper pits from the neolithic dug everywhere.

>>1706301
>>1706309
This might seem like a lame question but do you feel like living close to historical sites and structures has contributed to your idea of heritage, or your cultural/national identity? I have this over-romanticized view that a child growing up near castle ruins will have a better understanding of his nation's history than someone who lives in a newly cultivated area without visible history.

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Irishfag here.

Yeah, they're everywhere but it varies depending on where you are in the country. In some areas there are Gaelic-Norman tower houses (pic related) every few kilometers, in others there are megalithic tombs all over the place, etc.

From the Neolithic (3750 - 2200 BC) there are about 1500 megalithic tombs. From the Bronze and Iron ages there are dozens of stone 'forts', massive earthworks, wooden bog roads and stone circles. From the early middle ages (c. 400-1169 AD) there are about 45,000 known 'ringforts' (earthen embankments surrounding farmsteads), 12,000 known crannogs (man-made island settlements), plus hundreds of cashels (stone ringforts), early monasteries and churches and about 330 ogham stones. From the later Middle Ages (1169 - 1607) there are dozens of large Norman castles, plus over 2000 smaller tower houses (surviving intact, compared to an estimate of around 8000 actually built), Gothic cathedrals and friaries (these are everywhere). I'm less familiar with later stuff but there are countless plantation houses, landlord estates and a lot of Industrial archaeology. That's just the most common stuff.

A lot of the time you just drive or walk past this stuff without noticing. Within walking distance of my house are a couple of neolithic tombs, four medieval churches, four late medieval tower houses/castles, an 18th century famine folly, a bunch of signal towers from the Napoleonic wars, a 19th century experimental railway, and probably a bunch of other stuff I'm forgetting, but you wouldn't notice half of it if you didn't know about them already.

To get an idea of how common this stuff is, zoom in on this map; http://webgis.archaeology.ie/historicenvironment/
Each red dot is an archaeological site from the neolithic to the early modern period (mostly boring stuff like fulacht fiadh and ringforts though, but also churches, castles, megalithic tombs, etc), while blue ones are a more recent buildings of architectural value.

>>1706897
Not really, it's very common to have runestones or ruins within walking/biking distance around here. I find it interesting from a historical perspective, but I don't really identify with the finds on a personal level.

Croatia here.
There are no megaliths here, we have many Illyrian forts, but they are not something you would find on every corner.
Roman buildings and ruins especially on the coast are not rare.
There are many buildings and little churches from medival times and on.

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>>1706897
I'm >>1706911. Spending my whole live visiting stuff like forgotten tombs and abandoned villages, massive castles, inspiring monasteries, etc, is definitely the biggest thing that got me into history in general. Being surrounded by visible remnants of the past definitely makes you more aware of it.

I wouldn't say much about heritage or national identity though, after all half the stuff here was built by the English. If anything, a better understand of history made me less nationalistic in the ethnic sense, though at the same time far more appreciative of this country's culture.

Burger here visiting Sweden in Skande and the rural villages. Lots of runes in churches or cemeteries. There were some stones right off peoples backyards and they had a road literally running edge to edge of ancient stone circle (Disas Ting). I saw lots of burial mounds too. The best runes though have been moved to museums.

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>>1706897
Yes. I'm from a small rural town, and there are lots of other like it in Norway. The connection is real because you know you have friends and family there that are passed down from those who marked their early prescence.

This summer I also discovered I have relatives from a farm who've been living right next to a pagan stone circle for eternities. I feel like Varg right now.

Stones? Not too common, only stones I've seen is Stone Henge when I was passing once. Probably depends on where you are though, Scandinavia probably has more. Ruins are everywhere though, no matter where you go. You're guaranteed to be near some old castle or abbey or fortress.

there is about 10 standing stones within 20k of my house -irishfag

>>1706162

i drove past stonehenge a few times.

the free range pig farm is more interesting desu. i've also hiked up dartmoor a lot and seen stone circles. it's quite interesting, but i think to get the most out of it you have to be in the right frame of mind.

i imagine some of those stone circles on a clear moonlit night would be quite awesome. less so in a foggy downpour at the end of 4 mile hike from Postbridge, when your socks are wet through because you took a wrong turn and waded through a sequence of bogs and gorse.

There's a half-crumbled guard tower built in the 1600s here, in view of the highway, surrounded by farmland. It's pretty cool.

>>1706970

Ireland's Normans were not "English". There were no stone castles in Britain either until the Normans arrived with dat superior French tech.

>>1707346
The Normans in Ireland described themselves as English in their own writings. Later some became Gaelicised while some Gaels became Normanised and identities became more fluid, but they didn't fully loose their English identity until the 17th century when identities were reformed around religion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_invasion_of_Ireland#Terminology

>>1707372

>wikipedia

Anyhow, there's a big difference between "from England" and "English".

Given how soon after the Norman conquest of England the big Norman families came to Ireland, they would have been entirely Frenchified in language and culture.

In fact, the English upper classes didn't stop speaking French until the reign of King Edward III.

>>1707391
Are you seriously just going to dismiss textual evidence because you don't like the site it's presented on?

>For example, Expugnatio Hibernica almost always describes them as English; so too does the Song of Dermot and the Earl, a source which uses the term "English" about eighty times, whilst using "French", "Flemings", and "Normans" in only one particular line.

Read the citations or better yet, the primary sources, if you don't believe it.

>Given how soon after the Norman conquest of England the big Norman families came to Ireland
There was over a century in between.

>the English upper classes didn't stop speaking French until the reign of King Edward III.
Believe it or not, ethnicity and identity =/= language.

>>1706162

http://www.spottinghistory.com/tag/ancient-sites-in-sweden/1/

Enjoy dude.

>>1707434

You're not listening at all. Your original point was that "English built Ireland's castles". My argument is that that is not true.

When they called themselves English, this meant living in England and loyal to 'The King of England'. Not English as we would understand it today.

The superior castle building/governing/military skills England had over pre Norman Ireland were entirely due to those innovations being brought to England by England's new French elite.

>There was over a century in between.

If anything the aristocracy of England had become more french, gven the Plantagenets huge (and more wealthy/populous) domains in France.

Europe must feel like a museum to Americans. I live within eyesight of an 700 year old fortress.

Plenty across Scotland

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>>1707517

This is in my city and this bad boy is 800 years old.

We had this haggard ass statue of Captain cook that was a hundred years old.

>>1706168
Around me i have 1600-century castle, dozens of rune-stones, many more iron-age graves and a 2 miles from a old pagan temple.

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>>1707541
>>1707541

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>>1707528
Check mate, Castle from 1067.

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>>1707547
They recently repainted him.

:/

>>1707553
lmao, is it some deep subtle message about american capitalism taking the meaning out of things?

>>1707568
hahaha I wish, they were going to demolish it. But then we heard some great local business bought it and was going to repaint it.

That's what we got.

>>1707550

Beautiful. Middle age England did produce some very impressive castles. Is that in your town?

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>>1707547
>>1707553
That's an unfortunate arm pose

>>1707478
>Your original point was that "English built Ireland's castles".
I never said that. Plenty of the smaller ones (what we call tower houses, but which were known as castles) were built by Gaelic lords.

>When they called themselves English, this meant living in England and loyal to 'The King of England'. Not English as we would understand it today.
The Normans in Ireland called themselves English, that makes them English. That this doesn't fit with your personal idea of what is or isn't English doesn't matter. If they don't fit the modern idea of 'Englishness', that's irrelevant; they fit their own idea of Englishness enough to call themselves English which is all that matters.

>The superior castle building/governing/military skills England had over pre Norman Ireland were entirely due to those innovations being brought to England by England's new French elite.
And that "French" elite called themselves English by the time they invaded Ireland.

>If anything the aristocracy of England had become more french, gven the Plantagenets huge (and more wealthy/populous) domains in France.
Ireland wasn't invaded by Normans from the English possessions in France, it was invaded by Normans from England and Wales who identified as English.

Stop trying to look at past identities in relation to modern ones and start looking at what they actually called themselves.

>>1707586
english != pre-norman anglo saxon

>You will never live in a country with standing stones.

>>1707704
Do you at the least have Cairn markings on mountaintops?
>mfw Steinman
>mfw Varde

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I remember some britanon that said that when he went on walks in the woods, he would find lots of stuff like pic related carved on rocks, plain and simple.

Britain is filled with undocumented stuff from the celtic times

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>>1708602
Another one, he said that this shape "knossos labyrinth" is extremely common in southern england woods

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OP here. Thanks all for sharing your info and experiences. They have fed into my assertion that I should move to Europe.

>>1708605
Varg used this symbol on a Burzum album. Does it appear outside of the UK?

>>1709151
Too bad its basically impossible to move to Europe as a white North American.

>>1709325
Yes it's everywhere

>>1706162
We have one at Avaldsnes where i live. most likely its an iron age stone circle or something. The christians build a church on top of it, and only one stone is left. The stone is leaning towards the church wall, the top of the stone is chopped off. This is because people believed the world would go under when the wall and stone touch.

>>1706168

Yeah, I'm Irish and into hiking so I often come across cairns and the occasional ruin / church. It's not hard to find them here.

>>1706216
What map is that?

>>1706162
Irishfag here.

I could literally walk 40 minutes from my house and I'd see an old castle,Church,abandoned village and an old monastery. It's weird how normal these thing seem to me whereas a foreigner could be in awe of these things.

>>1709327
No it isn't. Stop memeing.

do kurgans count?;^)

>>1709327
and vice versa

>>1706162
Within a twenty miles radius of my house there are a handful of operating 17th century windmills, one castle and castle ruin, two cities with star fortification, a couple of dozen bronze age farms being dug up and tons upon tons of 17th century houses.

Where I live there are a lot of burial mounds from neolithic to Viking age. They're nothing much to look at, though.