Eketorp

Eketorp is an Iron Age fort, located in southeastern Öland, Sweden, and extensively reconstructed and enlarged in the Middle Ages [1]. Eketorp is the only one of the 19 known prehistoric fortifications on Öland that has been completely excavated, yielding a total of over 24,000 individual artifacts [1]. The indigenous peoples of the Iron Age constructed the original fortification about 400 AD [1]. The ringfort in that era is thought to have been a gathering place for religious ceremonies and also a place of refuge for the local agricultural community when an outside enemy appeared [1]. The original diameter of this circular stone fortification was about 57 metres [1]. In the next century the stone was moved outward to construct a new circular structure of about 80 metres in diameter [1]. At this juncture there were known to be about fifty individual cells or small structures within the fort as a whole [1].