Yareah Magazine

Casandra Eason

Throughout Scandinavia ancient stone circles are set in the formation of ships stern and prow stones

Ales Stenar, the stone ships

My own favourite and one of the most beautiful is Ales Stenar, It consists of 59 huge boulders, set on a grassy headland ,above the beach of Kåseberga village near Ystad in Skåne, overlooking the Baltic It is suddenly visible as you reach the top of the winding stone steps truly the place where Sky, Earth and Sea meet. Each stone has different energies and dowsers have been rewarded by images of past worlds of the Vikings.
Most significantly for me, there is totally free access, as there are to all such sites in Sweden You can walk in, pray, make offerings and even camp there – and there is not a single piece of litter or graffiti.
Ales or Als means sanctuary in e ancient Nordic language, though the place may have been named after a Viking chieftain who lived some time before 1000 CE.
Another version of its origins is that the Viking chieftain, Olav Tryggvasson, was buried on this ridge together with his ship. Oskar Montelius
The dates for the monument vary from 3600 BCE to 600 CE Most likely they were built 540-650 CE in the later Viking period.
More than a thousand stone ships have survived in Southern Scandinavia.
The stone ship - symbolized Vikings' belief that death was a voyage into
the unknown., steering North to the realms of the dead. The Ales Stenar ship-setting has been aligned to the winter and the summer Solstices.