A mystic stone castle hidden under the ground for hundreds of years, has been found in the Larvik municipality in southern Norway.
The castle has been a mystery for many years, baffling Norwegian historians. It was built by Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve, a Danish officer and governor-general of Norway between 1664 and 1699. He was the illegitimate son of King Frederik III, and very powerful in his own right. After a detailed account of “Gyldenløve's stone castle” was found almost 20 years ago in the state archives, a search began in earnest, national broadcaster NRK reported.
According to the archives, the castle's construction began in the 1690s and was completed by 1704, the same year that Ulrik Frederik Gyldenløve died. He himself never got a chance to use it. The castle was demolished in about 1760, when the ground gave way and cracks started to appear.
A new master's thesis by the historian Undis Furuberg paved the way for the excavation carried out by the Department of Landscape Architecture, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and local archeologists.
Furuberg discovered the remains of the historic manor garden and calculated where the building could be located.
Archeologists actually uncovered parts of the castle wall on the very day excavations began. Bit by bit, the foundations that have been hidden underground for several hundred years have been revealed.
“It is such an exciting find it is like all our Christmases have come at once,” Aina Aske, project manager at the Vestfold Museums, told NRK, voicing surprise over how much of the walls have been preserved.
Her excitement was shared by her colleagues.
“This is an adventure. It is a wall that lies between one and almost two meters below the ground, and which has not been exposed to the light for a very long time”, archeologist Trude Aga Brun said.
According to Aske, the ambition is for the castle to become a tourist attraction.
Gyldenløve was one of the leading general of the Scanian war which involved Denmark-Norway, Sweden and Brandenburg from 1675 to 1679, in which an offensive from Norway forced Sweden to defend itself against a two-pronged attack. In Norway, where he was governor-general, he founded the city of Laurvig (modern-day Larvik) and was made its Count. In Larvik, he is remembered for the construction of several buildings, including the local church.