News
Skeletons found near Round Tower
admin
February 1st, 2015
Share
This article is more than 9 years old.
Old cemetery found in central Copenhagen
If you walk near the Round Tower in central Copenhagen you may get a feeling that Halloween is around the corner.
Archaeologists from the Museum of Copenhagen are digging under the cobblestones and unearthing skeleton upon skeleton in what was once an old cemetery, reports Berlingske.
So far, more than 100 skeletons have been found, and according to Jacob Mosekilde, one of the archaeologists, they are from before the 1800’s, though they haven’t been precisely dated yet.
“The most interesting thing about them is the fact that they do not have holes in their teeth,” Mosekilde tells Berlingske. “And that means that they are from a period where we had not traded sugar from the colonies.”
Most of the bones found belong to people between the ages of 30 and 40. The cemetery is part of the nearby Trinity Church, but is located in an area where poor people lived.
Kirsten Sandholt, the vicar at Trinity Church who has written books on the church and cemeteries, explains to Berlingske that since the skeletons were buried in layers and were farther away from the church then they were “undoubtedly poor citizens”.
Though the area is now part of one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the city, in the late 1600’s it was the opposite case.
“At times the neighborhood was completely dilapidated,” Sandholt told Berlingske. “Children ran around and played in the cemetery and we found notes about rampant pigs that also ran around the cemetery.”
Share
