Gamla Uppsala
or Hill & Mound
Start or Nurture an Obsession with Ancient History
About Gamla Uppsala
Today, you are invited to choose one real-world site from the ancient past: a sacred grove or a man-made hill whose purpose is still uncertain, for example. Not a place that merely feels ancient, but an actual, historically significant site, preferably one still being actively researched. Gamla Uppsala, the day’s namesake, is one such candidate. It’s a Swedish royal necropolis with a dark, complex history. But if that doesn’t speak to you, find a site that does. The goal is to cultivate a long-term obsession with your chosen site, a place where the threads of archaeology and folklore have become tightly knotted. Read the excavation reports. Note what was built, what was burned, and perhaps what was deliberately buried. Stand—at least in your imagination—in the estuarial shallows where myth and memory have silted together. Think of this as the anthropologist’s version of Epic (Day 103). Over time, you will become an expert in the known history of your site, and its unknown history will fuel wild speculations. Eventually, you will make a pilgrimage to your site to walk its perimeter and feel, firsthand, the distance between ourselves and our ancestors. They are not gone entirely, but dispersed like background radiation, faintly pulsing at the edges of what we still remember.
Ways to observe
(A) Low effort
Choose your sacred site. It could be Gamla Uppsala or something closer to home. Read the Wikipedia article, watch a short documentary, or scroll through excavation photos. Mark it as the place you’ll return to.
(B) Recommended
Begin your descent. Print a map of the site. Read at least one excavation report or archaeological article. Make notes, sketch its layout, or collect its myths. Let this be the start of a years-long fascination.
(C) High effort
Host a miniature symposium. Gather a few curious friends. Present your findings: the myths, the facts, the weird gaps in between. Serve dark bread, goat cheese, and something fermented. Make the case for why you, as a team, should visit the site.
Inspiration
Gamla Uppsala sits in central Sweden, its grassy burial mounds serene under an open sky, but once it was said to be the sacred center of the Norse cosmos. According to medieval chroniclers, a great temple stood here, filled with statues of Odin, Thor, and Freyr. Every nine years, the Swedes supposedly gathered for a festival involving animal and, allegedly, human sacrifice, rituals meant to ensure fertility and win the favor of the gods. How much of this is accurate is debatable; the sources are fragmentary and the details uncertain. But the strangeness of the place remains, calling irresistibly to some. I readily admit that the theme of this day will only appeal to the tiny faction of people who schedule vacations around solstices. It is the final flourish on an idea running through this entire book: we are bound together across millennia by a primordial urge to give thanks in the darkest days. At least 85% of readers abandoned ship after Soup Day, and the remaining 15% have been unsettled by an increasingly morbid undertow. Which leaves only you, dear reader, a rounding error. So let us celebrate by casually theorizing the origins of Göbekli Tepe.
Adornments
Watch
The Northman (2022)
Robert Eggers’s Norse revenge saga draws from the medieval legend of Amleth, following a Viking prince’s long path to avenge his father’s murder at the hands of a treacherous uncle.
The Witch (2015)
The Witch follows a strict Puritan family in 1630s New England who are gradually terrorized by an unseen evil in the surrounding woods. Its atmosphere feels timeless and archaic: stark forests, period dialect, and Biblical superstition.
The Wicker Man (1973)
A cult folk-horror about pagan tradition and sacrifice. A devout police sergeant visits a remote Scottish island to find a missing child and discovers the locals have abandoned Christianity for old nature gods.
Read
The Mabinogion
A medieval Welsh collection of eleven prose tales from Celtic mythology.
The Kalevala
The national epic of Finland, compiled in the 19th century from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore. It begins with the origin of Earth and follows cycles of magic, strife, and revenge over a mystical northern land.