In 1846 in Gotland, you were allowed to establish a general store provided it was situated at least 30 kms from a township. These country stores became important places for getting together - alongside with the church. This was a convenient measure for farmers and rural people -there was no need to travel the long way to the annual market in Visby with your crop and goods anymore.
The Hanseatic city of Visby. Model at the Historical Museum of Gotland.
In 1864, this limitation was abandoned, though, and you were able to open up a store anywhere you pleased.
These photos are taken at the museum in Visby where they above all have a great collection of viking silver treasures dug up from the fields all over the island!
They found one of those very close to where I live.
I have been there, of course, and you still can see the foundations of the longhouse
of these days where they dug their treasures deep into the ground whenever threatened by invaders and enemies.. 
This is part of the largest silver treasure - "the Spillingstreasure" ever found in the world from the viking times. This was found in a field at Spillings in 1999 in northern Gotland. It had been lying there for about 1,100 years. This treasure lay under the floor boards of a viking dwelling and consisted of some 14.000 siver coins. Some of which of islamic origin. The Spillings hoard, described by archaeologists as a once-in-a-lifetime discovery, includes 14,295 silver coins, 486 silver armrings, and dozens of other artefacts, weighing a total of 85 kilograms.
"It was totally crazy," said Bjorn Engstrom, the farmer who owns the land. "I was there for five days when they dug up the treasure. I didn't leave the field," he told reporters.
"The first night we camped there in a tent so nobody could come and take it."
Engstrom, 42, whose family has owned the land since only 1966, was not able to keep any of the silver himself.
Buried treasure was believed to be guarded by dragons in the old days, but nowadays Sweden's law on historical monuments sets strict penalties for anyone searching for treasure with metal detectors, or failing to report any buried gold, silver or copper to the police or local museums. Anyone discovering and dutifully reporting treasure gets a reward in line with the value of the find. Engstrom is still waiting for his, as archaeologists have studied only a fraction of the Spillings hoard, named after his farm.
A church sculpture from a Gotland church at the museum. I gave me the strangest feeling.
As did this pair of glasses recently found as a macabre relic at the Gallows Hill outside Visby (where they today are erecting
modern apartment buildings.
Would you like to live there?). The hill saw many executions and there is now an small exibition at the museum of finds from this location:
Glasses of an executed.
Men they hanged in those days. Women were beheaded ( because if they were hanged the public woud be able to see their underclothing!) or burned in a pyre.
Old photo and a recent of the "Execution hill" in Visby overlooking the sea.
Same spot. Less than a week ago!
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