Video: Ven Island, Sweden

Mankind has lived on this island in the Oresund Channel between Sweden and Denmark for about 12,000 years. Its earliest inhabitants apparently were the same Eurasian people, who lived at Windover Pond near Cape Canaveral, Florida. Their pond burials were identical. Later, the island seems have been the beginning point for the Scandinavian Bronze Age Civilization. About 3,000 years later, it was a key base for Viking ships.

Ven is an archaic Norse word meaning “pasture.” It is also the root word for Venland – more commonly written today as Vinland. Thus, the original Scandinavian word for North America referred to green grass, not wine.

My articles often mention my vivid memories of Ven Island, while living nearby in Landskrona. This is because there appears to be many cultural ties between this area of Europe and Southeastern North America. In this video, you will get a brief birdseye view of the pedestrian village that I designed for Ven! 

The fact is that there is virtually no difference between the burial mounds and Neolithic-Bronze Age houses near Landskrona and those being constructed at the same time by the Adena Culture People in the Southeastern United States. The Southern Sami lived in Adena-type “beehive” houses until the late 1800s. The copper hatchets and ingots found in southwestern Sweden are identical the copper hatchets and ingots found the Etowah Valley of Georgia. As I have already mentioned, the petroglyphs are identical, also.

How these cultural similarities occurred has not been explained, but if you don’t ask questions, you won’t get any answers. Thus, I thought readers might enjoy seeing what Ven looks like today. 

When I was there, it was like walking through a time machine to the 1800s. There were no paved roads or internal combustion vehicles . . . very few tourists. On dates, we would go skinny dipping in the Oresund near the 1100 year old church, without fear of being gawked at by tourists. Britt went topless, when we biked around the island. The farmers merely smiled with pleasure and waved at her. Alas, that time is gone with the wind.