Sandby borg

The castle's location directly adjacent to the sea makes Sandby Castle different from other ancient castles. The shape is oval, oriented in a northwest-southeast direction. The wall has been about four meters thick and several meters high

To the west of the castle is a kind of outer entrenchment, consisting of several parallel rows of large gray stone blocks. Today we do not know for sure what its function was. To the west of the castle there is also a large natural freshwater spring with a strong spring flow.

A lot of stone, especially limestone slabs, has been removed from the castle during the 18th and 20th centuries and today no walls of the 53 houses inside the castle are visible.

Today (2020), three houses, as well as smaller parts of houses and streets have been archaeologically investigated, which is just under 10% of the entire surface of the castle. Six jewelry caches have been found in the castle. The hiding places contained, among other things, gilded silver costume buckles, finger rings, silver spirals and glass beads.

The most remarkable finds in the castle are the human skeletons of 30 people. They have been killed and then left where they fell. The bodies can be seen lying partly on top of each other, some with stab wounds and others with crushing injuries to the head and upper part of the body. All age groups seem to have been killed, with the youngest victims of the massacre being babies and very young children, and the oldest in their 60s and 70s.

After the massacre, the perpetrators seem to have just left the scene. There are skeletons of several kinds of animals that seem to have been left to starve to death in the castle. Many valuables and animals were left behind, even killing the smallest children who could have been used for slave labor. This suggests that the motive was not to plunder but to gain power.

Today, we cannot say who attacked Sandby Castle, other than that it was some power-hungry group on Öland who spared no effort to gain more power on the island.