Adelsö is an island in the middle of the lake Mälaren in Sweden near southern and northern Björkfjärden . The administrative center of the important Viking settlement Birka (on the neighbouring island Björkö) was situated at Hovgården on Adelsö. Birka and Adelsö form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Geography
The Adelsö landscape consists of pine-clad rocky hills and
moraine ridges varied with fields and beautiful leaf trees, mostly
oaks. The highest spot on Adelsö is Kunsta mountain with its 53.2
m above the sea level. The top of Kunsta mountain has a beautiful
outlook tower which offers a great view of the middle of lake Mälaren.
Demographics
The permanent residents is around 700 people, a number that
has been quite stable through out the centuries. Most of the
working force today commute to Stockholm but there are also a lot
of farmers and a couple of active fishermen. During the summer months,
a lot of summer guests comes to the island, making its atmosphere
more lively.
Transportation
Transportation to Adelsö is very good. Buses (line 311 and 312)
start out from the bus terminal Brommaplan in the middle of
Bromma and goes to the ferry berth Sjöängen on Munsö .
Buss number 312 takes the car ferry and goes around the whole island. The
ferry goes every half hour during the days and every hour during the
evenings and nights. The night ferries goes more seldom during the
summer months.
History
The history of Adelsö starts with the stone age. Adelsö was on
that time only some smaller islands which was rising from the sea
since the end of the ice age. Lake Mälaren with its
freshwater did not yet exist so the skerries that was
to become Adelsö lay in a bay of the Baltic Sea.
Fishing, bird and seal hunting created the foundation for
the life of the people living there. Graves from the older and younger
stone ages exist, but most of the gravefields comes from the Iron Age,
mostly the Viking Age. There are also two ancient hillforts
(fornborgar) on Adelsö, one of them, situated on Skansberget near
Stenby is unusally well preserved.
Adelsö, earlier called Alsnö or Alsnu and the great
royal mounds (Kungshögarna) at Hovgården shows the importance
of Adlesö during the Viking Age. The king lived on the King's House (Kungsgården)
next to Hovgården on Adelsö and ruled from there over the greatest
Viking city of the time, Birka. During the latter part of the
12th century a christian church was build next to Hovgården and
Birger Jarl's sons built Alsnöhus , a splendied castle where
king Magnus I of Sweden in 1279 called for the Meeting of Alsnö.
At that meeting the Alsnö stadga was estblished,
introducing the privilegies of the Swedish nobility.
During the middle ages, Alsnöhus was used as a summer palace for
kings and governors but it fell later into ruin. What is left of the
castle and several graves near Hovgården was dug up during extensive
archological investigations conducted between 1916 and 1926.
At the same time as the Birka excavations during the 1990s
several excavations was conducted on the area of Hovgården. Birka and
Hovgården became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993.
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