Dyster står dösen

Abstract

Monuments are reminders. They keep reminding us of what was in the past and of how past people wished to be remembered by later generations. This paper is about a passage-grave in Lunden on the island of Orust off the West Coast of Sweden. It is a site of death and a site of memory. Death did not only occur in prehistory here, and local memory is not just connected to the imposing megalithic grave. A second monument only a few meters away is a memorial stone for the archaeologist Gabriel Wilhelm Ekman, who died while excavating the passage-grave on 20 September 1915. This paper interprets the Neolithic tomb by tracing the story of Ekman’s death and its aftermath.