Ancient Gothic burial grounds in Northern Poland

I am a bit fan of travelling. I haven’t been outside of Europe yet, unfortunately. However, on the Old Continent I have seen a lot – I have visited a lot lot of different countries and have also lived in quite many of them, especially in Western Europe.
I think visiting different places gives you a better perspective, enriches you as a human being and gives you an opportunity to grow as a person. Therefore I thought it might be a good idea to share some photos and memories of the places I have visited over the years. My biggest question was – where to start? I have seen a lot of places, so I have decided to start with one of the places which is closest to where I come from, and currently live.

It is a place, which is often referred to as “the Polish Stonehenge”, which is, off course, pretty far fetched, but gives you an idea about what it is. It is, in fact Europe’s second largest collection of stone circles left nearly intact in an undisturbed condition.

Odry is a small village in Northern Poland. It is off any bigger and more important roads – in fact there is no actual road, that leads to the village itself. No highway, no asphalt, just a simple dirt road, which leads to a village with around 400 inhabitants. There is a museum dedicated to the burial grounds, Goth’s circles and archeological excavations in the area near the village located in the village center, which can be visited after negotiating with the locals (there is no premanent staff there I believe even though there are people taking care of it dedicated). It is easier now, in the summer to arrange it tahn in winter. I haven’t visited it in a long time, last time I was there it was closed, so the Wikipedia photos will have to be enough in this case:

A lot of sources claim, the place has been avoided by the locals due to the tales of magic, witchcraft and evil in the surrounding forest. Well, that is not entirely true to my best knowledge, as one of my family members happens to be born in that village and was growing up in these surroundings. The local kids did dare each other to spend the nights over in these haunted places and were even organizing parties there in the 60s and 70s when there was no fence and no guards there. Disappointingly, nothing has ever happened to anybody 😉

The Goths used to live here from first to second century AD before they moved further to the West. There are altogether 12 circles, each with a large stone in the center, ringed by 16 to 29 boulders. There are over 600 small burial sites called barrows around the circles, each of which containing the remains of one to three people. The function of these stone circles is not 100% clear, they are believed to be places, where the inhabitants used to gather and discuss or perform rituals.

If you are interested to get to know more facts about the place’s history and the history of the archeological work – you can visit the museum. You can enter the burial grounds for a ridiculously low fee of 4 złoty (less than 1 USD). There is also souvenirs and books to be bought at the entrance in case you are interested.

The neighbourhood is in the middle of the woods, the river Wda creates one of the natural borders of this mysterious site. One place is believed to be rich in magical energy and famous for it with dowsers these wand wielding doctor – magician guys. It is up to you to decide if you want to believe it, but they claim it has ridiculous amounts of energy cumulated there. In fact, it is a place, where I always used to find peace and a sense of contact with something ancient, where I was able to pick myself up and put my life in the right perspective. But maybe it was just the effect of the legends I heard… There is a sense of balance between nature and culture which I am able to find there.

Please excuse the poor quality of my photos, but I am not a professional photographer, just an amateur with a phone camera. If you ever consider visiting – the village is located about 90km southeast of Gdansk, there is not many ways of getting there apart from a car or perhaps a bike if you stay nearby. There are road signs explaining how to get there and showing you the distance, saying “Kamienne Kregi” in Polish. The site is open for visiting every day except for Mondays.

Below some more photos I have made on my trip there just a few weeks ago. If you like this article please upvote, comment and share your thoughts and feel free to share the article with your friends.. There will be more to come 😊