Nucleus

At the lighthouse of Kampen lies a group of burial mounds. One of them are the Brönshooger, which consist of the three mounds Gurt Brönshoog, Litj Brönshoog and Hünshoog (I guess in Frisian “Gurt” means “big/great” and Litj means “little”). The mounds are located southwest of the lighthouse and west of the Brönshooger Weg. On the other side of this roads are the Jüdelhooger group and the Gonnenhoog.

To my shame I have to admit that I didn’t even realize the largest mound of the group Gurt Bröndshoog at first, because it is overgrown and I focused more on the lighthouse with my photos. Unfortunately, I only noticed my mistake at home. Therefore, the burial mound unfortunately only occupies a small section of the pictures compared to the Lighthouse of Kampen.

To get to the burial mounds, coming from Wenningstedt on the L52, turn right at the traffic lights in Kampen into the Braderuper Weg. After 180 m, just after you pass the Restaurant Club Rotes Kliff on the left side, turn right into Alte Dorfstraße. After about 100 m turn half left into the Brönshooger Weg. The roads leads directly to the lighthouse of Kampen, however about 300 m before you reach the lighthouse, so you have to walk this distance.

Visited September 2020

taken from the on-site hünen.kulTOUR information board:

Gurt Brönshoog

The Gurt Brönshoog is the mightiest burial mound on Sylt today (picture below). In the past, the Biike fire of Kampen was lit on the Gurt Jüdelhoog every year. » According to legend, the names of the mounds go back to the battle of the giants, the dwarfs and pukes. The king of the giants Bröns was buried on his golden chariot in Gurt Brönshoog, his son rests in neighboring Litj Brönshoog. Even his dog got a mound, the Hünshoog. In the Teewelkenhoog the personal physician of King Bröns was buried alive by the dwarfs. The kings of the puks Nißchen lies in the Nessenhoog. «

The Roten Kliff in Kampen is one of the many sunset hotspots on Sylt. So I also went to this place on one evening of my holiday stay on Sylt to visit the sunset and watch the light that the sun throws on the cliff, making it glow red.

More or less by chance I walked past a huge boulder at the entrance to the sun terrace at the parking lot. And what an impressive stone this is. The stone weighs around 20 t and is 3.5 m high. It was brought here from the beach in 2005. On one side drill holes are visible.

So if you spend your vacation on Sylt and want to visit two natural wonders at once, plan one evening at the Roten Kliff during sunset (all of which are really magical on Sylt due to the more or less precisely west-facing coast) and visit this very impressive boulder on the occasion.

Visited September 2020

taken from the on-site information board:

The Kampen boulder from the Roten Kliff

Data on the boulder:

Type of rock: biotite gneiss
Size: over 3.5m high
Weight: about 20 t (400 quintals)
Location: next to a groyne on the main beach
Salvage: March 2005

The boulder from the Roten Kliff is a stone that weighs around 20 t and is more than a billion years old. It is a gneiss from the Scandinavian mountains.

The stone used to be a granite with unregulated minerals. In the depths of the earth, at high temperatures and great pressure, the granite was transformed into gneiss. The individual minerals are arranged parallel to one another.

In the boulder there are inclusions (lenses) of dark foreign rock that penetrated during the transformation into the then plastic granite and were also adjusted. During the Ice Age over 200,000 years ago, part of a gneiss complex in Scandinavia broke loose from the mighty glacier and was transported hundreds of kilometers to Sylt in the ice stream. This stone, rounded off by the transport, is now called a boulder and could thus be recovered from the Kampen beach.

In the middle of one of the most expensive residential areas in Germany on Hoboken-Weg in Kampen lies the Soonjihoog, a Bronze Age burial mound.

The Soonjihoog was almost completely destroyed in the Second World War by the construction of a flak position, and was restored in the 1950s. Two stone boxes were found during an excavation.

The Soonjihoog is located directly on a beaten path between the Heideweg and Hoboken-Weg and can only be reached on foot.

Visited September 2020

taken from the on-site hünen.kulTOUR information board:

Soonjihoog

The Bronze Age burial mound was almost completely destroyed in 1940 when a flak position was built. In 1954 it was restored by the Schleswig youth development organization (picture below).

During excavations, two stone cists were found as graves. Among other things, blades of bronze razors were found as grave goods.

The Krockhooger (Frisian for the yellow flowering plant charlock) is the most beautifully preserved group of burial mounds on Sylt. The burial mounds are located at the northeast end of Kampen between the L24 to List and the lighthouse Quermarkenfeuer Rotes Kliff.

The group consists of a total of seven burial mounds from the Bronze Age (1500 BC). Buried bodies, cremated remains and many grave goods, such as magnificent bronze swords, were found.

Visited September 2020

taken from the on-site hünen.kulTOUR information boards:

Krockhooger

Die Krockhooger sind die schönste noch erhaltene Grabhügelgruppe auf Sylt. Einige der Hügel wurden aber für den Bau der Inselbahn abgetragen. Heute sind noch sieben Hügel deutlich sichtbar. Sie wurden 1952/53 wiederhergestellt.

Die Grabhügel stammen aus der Bronzezeit, ein Langhügel vermutlich bereits aus dem Mittelneolithikum. In den Hügeln fand man sowohl bestattete Körper als auch verbrannte Leichenreste. Die Krockhooger enthielten die reichsten Männergräber der Insel. Gefunden wurden viele Grabbeigaben, darunter prächtige Bronzeschwerter.

The Krockhooger are the most beautiful group of burial mounds still preserved on Sylt. However, some of the mounds were removed for the construction of the island railway. Seven mounds are still clearly visible today. They were restored in 1952/53.

The burial mounds date from the Bronze Age, a long mound probably from the Middle Neolithic. Both buried bodies and cremated remains were found in the mounds. The Krockhooger contained the richest male graves on the island. Many grave goods were found, including magnificent bronze swords.

Bronze age

With the emergence of the new material bronze, the New Stone Age (Neolithic) passed into the Bronze Age. A mixture of 90% copper and 10% tin gave bronze. Its malleability and resistance to corrosion and wear have made bronze a sought-after material for equipment and weapons. First, finished bronze objects were introduced. Imported bronze was later processed further. Since bronze was still very valuable, the flint stone initially remained the most important material.

The Bronze Age began here around 1,800 BC. And lasted about 1,000 years. The mighty burial mounds of this time dominated the landscape of Sylt for thousands of years. More than 420 burial mounds from the Bronze Age can be found on Sylt (right image). The picture (left) shows the Tiideringshooger in Kampen before their destruction.

Settlement in the Bronze Age

As in the previous Neolithic, Sylt was densely populated in the Bronze Age. This was probably also due to the island’s importance for sea trade on the west coast as a station between the Elbe estuary and North Jutland. Their wealth at that time was based on this importance.

When trade, presumably from the younger Bronze Age, increasingly shifted towards the Baltic Sea, this wealth declined.

The graves of the Bronze Age

At the beginning of the Bronze Age, the bodies of the deceased continued to be buried in stone boxes or tree coffins, as in the previous Neolithic (New Stone Age). Subsequently, the cremation of the corpses increasingly prevailed. Urns were now buried, still in stone boxes or stone packs. Later the urns were also buried in the mound. For subsequent burials, the grave mounds were usually enlarged and raised. For example, 35 graves were found in a burial mound in Morsum.

The most valuable grave goods during the heyday of the Older Bronze Age were magnificent bronze swords. The sword was one of the most important innovations of the Bronze Age. It was a weapon of tremendous superiority, but it could not be made from flint. Particularly beautiful swords from this period were found in rich men’s graves in Kampen, for example in the Krockhoogern.

Kampen 3 (aka Steingrab 180 / Stone Grave 180), a so-called extended dolmen, was originally located on the Rotes Kliff (Red Cliff) and was exposed by a storm in the 1950s. When the dolmen threatened to fall onto the beach, it was relocated to the footpath that leads from Kampen to the Rotes Kliff or the Hotel Sturmhaube.

The 3.1 m long chamber has three large supporting stones on each long side, which are strongly inclined inward. The width is 1.10 m at the bottom, but only 0.3–0.5 m at the top. On the narrow side, instead of a supporting stone, a large stone slab is leaning against the chamber at an angle. Above it lay a fragment of a large stone slab that may originally have belonged to the cover.

Half of the access side is closed with an upright stone, and there was a low threshold stone in the remaining entrance opening. A somewhat irregularly built passage made of two or three supporting stones connects to the access opening. It is about 1.4 m long and 0.5 m wide. No capstones could be detected for the passage corridor and the eastern part of the chamber.

The gaps between the supporting stones were very carefully filled with stone slabs, especially at the transition to the passage corridor, and covered with clay. All supporting stones were encased on the outside with fist-sized to double-fist-sized or larger rolling stones, which were embedded in clay, so that the cover packing was very firm.

Visited September 2020

taken from the on-site hünen.kulTOUR information board:

Stone Grave 180 & Wachtmannshoog

The Neolithic “Stone Grave 180” was originally located on the Red Cliff west of the former Curehouse (German Kurhaus – picture below). It was blown free by storms in 1956/57. There was a stone chamber in the flat burial mound. Bones were found in the chamber. The remains of Bronze Age urn burials lay in the hill. When the grave threatened to fall onto the beach, it was moved to its current location.

In the middle of the heather is the probably Bronze Age Wachtsmannshoog. The formerly completely excavated burial mound was restored in 1952 by the youth development work.

Kampen 1 (aka Steingrab 2 / Stone grave 2) is a relatively small, oval passage grave, which is not a polygonal dolmen only because it has two instead of one capstone. The tomb is located on the edge of the dune belt, west of the Westerweg. All seven supporting stones and two cap stones of the chamber as well as a short corridor have been preserved. The eastern capstone is broken, according to the information board, probably since the Bronze Age. The passage in the south-westerly direction consisted of two pairs of supporting stones, one of them and the cap stones are missing here.

To get to the tomb drive through Kampen towards List (north). Right in the middle of Kampen turn left (at a traffice light) into the road Zur Düne Uwe. Drive to the end of the road and turn right into the road Westerweg and park here. The tomb is located around 65m from the road and there is an offical sign on the cycle path, so it is easy to locate.

Visited September 2020

taken from the on-site hünen.kulTOUR information board:

Stone grave 2

While digging trenches in 1915, a megalithic tomb from the Middle Neolithic was discovered under the dunes.
It is one of the few well-preserved megalithic tombs from Sylt. The polygonal passage grave was located in a round mound made of yellowish sand, and subsequent burials were still carried out there in the Bronze Age. During the excavation some grave goods and urns were found. The eastern capstone has probably already broken in ancient times, perhaps during a subsequent burial for which the capstone had to be lifted. In 1951 the grave was finally uncovered by scouts (picture below).