The home of my little ponies and really big bunnies

Isn't that just the cutest little horse
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The Hunebedden are a series of Neolithic gravesites that are in the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany. There are hundreds of them around but most of them are in fairly poor condition as there are just scattered around on farms and in villages. The ones around Borger in the Netherlands are in the best condition and include the largest of the Hunebedden (D27). This is out the back of the Hunebeddencentrum which is a museum about the people who built these gravesites.

Country lane in Borger
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The trip from Groningen to Borger is easy as there are four buses an hour passing through Borger on the way to Emmen. The 305 is the better route as it goes direct to Borger along the highway without stopping at any of the villages in between and therefore only takes 40 minutes. It does unfortunately drop you off at the side of the highway and from there it is a good 20-25 minutes walk to the museum. It is also a little lacking in signposts for the first section. Once you get off the bus you need to head towards Borger (big sign on the roundabout). This takes you into the town a bit further and when you get to the church on the left hand side you need to turn left and take this road to the museum. There are some signs on this road but basically you just keep going straight ahead until you get to the museum (on the left hand side). The people at the museum are happy to mind your backpack behind the desk while you have a look in the museum (at least they are in the winter when there aren’t many people around).

The largest and best preserved hunebed in the Netherlands
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The museum is actually more interesting than I thought it would be and gives the history of the Funnel Beaker culture (they were named after the shape of the pots that they made). They lived in the area around 3700 BC and were the first farmers in the region. They built small houses and farms on the edges of the forest near to the rivers. They had basic wooden huts and grew grain as well as having some animals. They built the hunebedden and used them for centuries as places to bury some of their dead.

The rocks came from the glaciers that used to extend from Norway down into the north of the Netherlands and were left behind when the glaciers melted. The people would choose the right type of stones and then drag them or use rollers to move them to the clearing where the hunebed was being built. The flat sides of the rocks faced into the chamber and then they would hoist stones onto the top to create a roof. Some of the stones in the larger hunebedden weigh thousands of kilos so would have been hard to move without any equipment. The entire structure was then covered with earth leaving just a small doorway open. The floor of the inside was lined with smaller stones and the entrance closed with a large stone. The inside would then be used to store bodies (often that had been burned first) as well as various ceremonial objects. They aren’t sure exactly who in the village hierarchy got to be buried in the hunebedden as they have also found other flat graves in the area. The same hunebed was used for many centuries by the same village.

Eventually the culture moved and for a long time the area didn’t have many people living there. In the last few hundred years the area has become more populated and many of the hunebeds were pulled apart and the stone reused for buildings. In the last couple of centuries the graves were properly excavated and they found hundreds of bits of pottery in the bottom of them.

There are lots of hunebedden in and around Borger. There are three more within an easy walk of the museum and this is where I headed after the exhibition. It’s a bit of a hike when you are carrying all your stuff but it is a pleasant walk in the countryside. It seems to be the region with the largest number of very small horses (but all very cute) and very large bunnies (I thought it was a small dog at first). You walk all the way to the next village and through it and then you get to a small forest with three more hunebedden. You can buy a map of the route from the museum but unfortunately all the instructions on it are in Dutch and they aren’t very keen on street signs in the village. I found the forest okay but managed to end up going a totally different route back to Borger. The hunebedden in the forest are really lovely and I sat in the clearing and ate my lunch. They aren’t in as good condition as the one behind the museum and are much smaller but the surroundings are more pleasant.

Unfortunately, there came a time when I couldn’t keep sitting in the sun any longer and had to walk back to Borger and then onto the bus stop. It’s worth walking out to the highway stop again because the 305 doesn’t make as many stops on the way to Emmen. There are some local buses that also go to Emmen but they take longer. In Emmen, I switched to the train. They are working on the station at the moment so it took me a while to work out where to get a ticket ( I wasn’t handily carrying 23 euros in coins). The tickets are being sold by the people in the bus station at the moment which isn’t immediately obvious. I had to switch trains at Zwolle but the connection is good and it was then only another hour through to Utrecht train station.

I wouldn’t rush to the Hunebedden if the weather was bad but it’s an easy enough diversion if you are heading between Utrecht and Groningen and is a nice day out in the country.