07.10.08
The Manx Museum in Douglas and a Viking Burial Ground
After our visit to Cregneash, Brian and I headed out to Douglas, the capital and largest town on the Isle of Man. We weren’t sure what we wanted to see there, but we figured we could at least go in to town and see what was there. It was basically just city, so I didn’t feel too compelled to take many pictures while there. Especially since I was already enamored by the countryside, I was not so impressed to find busy city again. But we did find the Manx Museum there, so we found a parking structure that was just across the street. The first thing that struck us was that there was no ticket booth or person collecting parking fees. So we weren’t sure if we could just park anywhere. We noticed that on the top level there were lots of empty slots, but all of them were labeled “reserved.” Hmmm. Then we saw little boxes and finally a sign that explain how much it cost to park for how many hours. I actually found the sign a bit confusing, but it was pretty clear that parking was not free. There was no one around to ask for clarification. After a bit of snooping around we found that they had an interesting little parking meter that you put money into, which then dispensed a ticket with the time on it and how long you intended to park. Depending upon how long one intended to park determined how much money should be put in. The ticket is then placed on the dashboard where it could be seen by anyone who came by to check that parking tickets were purchased. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, the ticket boxes were placed in two or three locations on each floor. We tried about 3 boxes, none of which seemed to do anything. So we were confused and didn’t know what we were doing wrong. Then a woman go out of her car and “casually” I followed to observed her. . . in short, the ticket boxes weren’t working, ah ha! It took hunting down all the ticket boxes in the garage to finally find one that worked. Whew, okay, so now that we finally got our parking ticket, we headed across the street to the Manx Museum.
After our ordeal in the parking lot, we were delighted to find that the Manx Museum was free of charge. We didn’t take a lot of pictures while inside because we were too busy reading and looking at all the displays. Later, we realized that we could take pics inside the museums so we got more pics in other museums. But in the Manx Museum we only got a few shots in. With my interest in knitting, naturally I had to take a picture of one of their traditional ganseys.
Apparently, the Manx ganseys are known to be rather plain, however, I was not aware that they used more than one color in their ganseys. Lots of the gansey pics I’ve seen have all been one color.
One of the interesting archaeological finds on the Isle of Man are the roundhouses. Roundhouses were built partially underground. Here’s a model of one of them.
The model shows what the top looked like with the grass covering, while the front portion gives an inside view of the roundhouse underground. Several of these were found on the island and it’s not entirely sure of who and how these roundhouses were occupied and for what purpose if only during certain times of the year or full-time. We encountered more info on the roundhouse at the House of Mannanin Museum, so took more pics there which I will show later. For now, a little more info can be read about the roundhouses here.
The Vikings were known to be one of the oldest settlers on the Isle of Man, and as such, Viking burials have been excavated there. Two of the burials revealed that the bodies were buried in their boats along with much of their belongs. Our friends on the island later took us to one of the burial sites called Chapel Hill Ladoole. It was a treat to not only read about it at the Manx Museum, but to also be taken to the actual burial site. Here’s a pic of the sign leading to the burial ground. Thank God for our friends because Brian and I would never have found it on our own. The roads are narrow and winding, and the signs are quite small and easy to pass up. This sign was behind a gate and embedded in foliage.
As the sign states, about 100 yards away is the Viking burial site. The marker reads thus:
And here are the stones marking the outline of the boat.
There is also a small Keeill very close by (a few yards away) which is believed to have pre-existed before the Vikings. The current remains are believed to have been built later in the 10th or 11th century. A Keeill is a church. There are a few other burial spots nearby as well. The view from this spot is lovely. The sea can be easily seen off in the distance.
Many stone slabs carved into crosses served as burial markers. I believe they’ve discovered about 204 of these grave markers. Again, I had but to mention an interest in these crosses and our friends whisked us out to see a collection of them in Maughold. There are a large variety of them. Some better preserved than others, and others more intricate in detail than others. Here’s an example of what they look like.
And from the Manx Museum, these are some of the names found on the crosses.
Hmmm. The only names that look somewhat familiar are Juan, Olaf, and “maybe” Thorstein and Thorwald.
Okay, it’s late again, so must hit the hay and continue this another time. Gee, I know I’m skipping a lot of what was at the museum. I was pretty captivated with the maps, especially how they changed over time. The Manx Museum also has a natural history gallery. It’s quite small, but a virtual view of it can be viewed here. I’ll try to share more of Manx history when I post on the House of Mannanin. We took more pictures in there.
Marlakins
