Site Overview
The largest quarry in northern Europe, where stone was gold
Millstone Park in Hyllestad is an outdoor museum in the largest stone quarry landscape from the Viking period and Middle Ages in northern Europe. Here you experience another side of history: the Vikings as skilled craftsmen and traders.
Stone: the Gold of Hyllestad
Stonemasons worked in hundreds of stone quarries, carving millstone after millstone to be shipped across Norway, to Denmark, Sweden, Germany and the islands in the Atlantic. The millstone was a fundamental item. There was no food without the millstone! If you wanted to eat bread or porridge, you first had to grind the grain using a quern stone or water mill in order to make flour. The millstone trade in Hyllestad was a good source of income – for those who owned the land and held the power.
Take Part
At Millstone Park you can take a tour through the stone quarries. The Vikings toiled here more than a thousand years ago, with skill, sweat, and perhaps tears when yet another stone got a crack and broke. This was a world in which it was essential to be able to make things with one’s own hands.
After the tour of the quarries you can also use your hands: you can grind grain, bake bread, carve soapstone, try weaving on a loom – or just relax by the fire and enjoy.
Key Attractions
- Market and trade
- Viking Voyages
- Industrial Sites
- Artefacts
- Excavations
