Gillhög, Barsebäck

Gillhög is a restored footbridge from the Neolithic Age in Barsebäcks parish in Kävlinge municipality in Skåne.

The walkway is located in a burial mound that is approximately 25 metres in diameter and 2.5 metres high. The chamber is rounded rectangular and 5.7 by 2.3 metres in size. It has four boulders on each long side, 1.2 to 1.75 metres high and 1 to 1.5 metres wide, and two boulders on each gable, 1.1 to 1.5 metres high and 0.5 to 1.1 metres wide. The chamber is covered by three 2-3 metre high roof blocks. The aisle, which opens to the south-east, is 5.5 metres long and 0.7 to 0.8 metres wide, constructed of five blocks in each long side, 1-1.2 metres high and 0.5-1.2 metres wide, and two barely metre-high thin doorstones or keystones protruding slightly into the aisle, or portal stones. The aisle is covered by four 1-2 metre high roof tiles, the innermost of which is a key stone, which means that the middle roof block of the chamber rests on it. Between the ground-fixed wall stones there is often a finely executed cold wall, and between the wall stones and the roof there is a collar consisting of slightly larger stone blocks, which aims to seal the space in between.

The walkway belongs to the younger part of the funnel beam culture and should have been built around 3300 BC and then used for the next few centuries. Typologically, the presence of the collar makes it the youngest type of walkway and thus the final construction period for megalithic tombs in the area that is now Sweden.

A 1932 survey of the passage found, among other things, skeletal material, amber beads, pot sherds, flint tools and two secondary graves in the form of rock coffins just outside the chamber, indicating that a fairly large part of the surrounding mound is secondary. Just to the north of Gillhög are the remains of a Stone Age settlement. The walkway is linked to the Hofterups site. According to local tradition, it was named after the Viking chieftain Erik Gille.

To avoid the risk of collapse, the walkway was restored in 1986. Anyone is free to take a torch and crawl through the passage to the chamber and be fascinated by how Stone Age undertakers managed to build a roof out of several tonnes of boulders.