Gotland Museum (Fornsalen)
Island museum in medieval Visby, holding Viking picture stones and the Spillings silver hoard.
Gotland Museum was founded in 1875 by the antiquarian Pehr Arvid Säve and the society Gotlands Fornvänner. Its main building, Fornsalen, grew out of a former distillery bought on Strandgatan in 1880 and now occupies a whole block of limestone houses inside Visby's walled medieval town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The collections run to some four hundred thousand objects covering archaeology, cultural history, art and the island's geology.
The displays include the Picture Stone Hall, with carved Gotlandic stones from the fifth century onwards, and the Treasure Chamber, whose centrepiece is the Spillings hoard, the largest Viking-age silver hoard ever found. Other galleries cover medieval Gotland and its church art, the Danish invasion and battle of 1361, and Gotlandium, which presents the island's limestone bedrock and fossils. The museum also runs several outlying sites, among them the farm museums at Petes and Kattlunds.
Highlights
- The Spillings hoard, the world's largest Viking-age silver find
- Picture Stone Hall with carved stones from the fifth century onwards
- Finds from the 1361 battle outside the walls of Visby
- Gotlandium, on the island's limestone bedrock and fossils
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