Battle of Visby
BattleWikipedia
8
MENTIONS
3
EPISODES
2
PODCASTS
Search complete. 8 mentions across 3 episodes found for "Battle of Visby".
Oct 6, 2026
Tim SutherlandGUEST
My, my instinct would tell me that you do not move large stone crosses like that for, unless there's a very good reason, in which case it might've fallen over, in which case somebody might've just put it back up again.
Tim SutherlandGUEST
But there's a very good chance that the, uh, the area around that stone cross con- contains the graves of the people that died in the Battle of Masterby in 1361, just before the Battle of Visby.
Tim SutherlandGUEST
So there is almost a once in a lifetime opportunity of finding a parallel to something like Visby, which would be phenomenal.
Tim SutherlandGUEST
We've potentially got evidence for another mass grave or another series of mass graves down the road at Masterby.
Tim SutherlandGUEST
Now, either everybody's been taken out of the landscape and there are no mass graves, or somewhere in this landscape there will be mass graves.
Tim SutherlandGUEST
Therefore, you look for points of reference, and there's no [laughs] no better point of reference than this huge, big slab of limestone.
Tim SutherlandGUEST
And if we want to look for a parallel for something like this cross here, there is no better example than a few miles up the road at Visby, where we know there is a very, very similar cross of the same sort of size and dimensions, and that does mark the medieval mass graves from the Battle of Visby.
Tim SutherlandGUEST
We're hoping that in this landscape, within this very field itself, right close to the cross, are the mass graves from the people that died at the Battle of Masteby.
Tim SutherlandGUEST
It's, in fact, it's virtually unique.
Tim SutherlandGUEST
When I first came across this assemblage and I first heard about the Battle of Visby, I thought that obviously it's just another battlefield mass grave.
Tim SutherlandGUEST
And so when I first saw the information that was compiled in the early 20th century and there were plates of armor on the skeleton itself, and you think, "This is unbelievable." It's so unusual, and the mind races to try to work out so many questions.
Tim SutherlandGUEST
Why were they buried like this? What sort of armor was it? How effective was it? Uh, what were the people like? But, but as, as an assemblage, it's so important, and it really makes your mind race, and it, it builds up a picture of what presumably happened on that day.
Helen GoodchildGUEST
Hopefully, we'll see evidence of at least one or two of these graves.
Helen GoodchildGUEST
But that's the challenge here.
Helen GoodchildGUEST
Can we see any evidence of the archeological remains that are, that exist here from the Battle of Visby?
Tony RobinsonNARRATOR
Back in 1928, Swedish archeologist Bengt Touraman began his own survey by looking for the area that had been excavated in 1905.
MarcoHOST
This is the
ChuckHOST
Battle of Visby, fought on July 27, 1361.
ChuckHOST
And to understand why a Danish king brought an army to this island in the Baltic Sea, we first need to understand why Gotland mattered.
ChuckHOST
Gotland sits in the Baltic Sea off
15 MINS LATER
ChuckHOST
A sword swing, an axe blow, a man falling, a formation breaking, people running toward the walls, and
MarcoHOST
then silence.
MarcoHOST
The Battle of Visby is sometimes described as knights slaughtering peasants, and there's truth buried inside that description.
MarcoHOST
But the real story is more complicated.