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Adelsö is an island in the middle of the lake Mälaren in Sweden near southern and northern Björkfjärden. The administrative center of the important Viking settlement Birka (on the neighbouring island Björkö) was situated at Hovgården on Adelsö. Birka and Adelsö form a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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Geography
The Adelsö landscape consists of pine-clad rocky hills and moraine ridges varied with fields and beautiful leaf trees, mostly oaks. The highest spot on Adelsö is Kunsta mountain with its 53.2 m above the sea level. The top of Kunsta mountain has a beautiful outlook tower which offers a great view of the middle of lake Mälaren.
Demographics
The permanent residents is around 700 people, a number that has been quite stable through out the centuries. Most of the working force today commute to Stockholm but there are also a lot of farmers and a couple of active fishermen. During the summer months, a lot of summer guests comes to the island, making its atmosphere more lively.
Transportation
Transportation to Adelsö is very good. Buses (line 311 and 312) start out from the bus terminal Brommaplan in the middle of Bromma and goes to the ferry berth Sjöängen on Munsö. Buss number 312 takes the car ferry and goes around the whole island. The ferry goes every half hour during the days and every hour during the evenings and nights. The night ferries goes more seldom during the summer months.
History
The history of Adelsö starts with the stone age. Adelsö was in that time only some smaller islands which rose from the sea since the end of the ice age. Lake Mälaren with its freshwater did not yet exist so the skerries that were to become Adelsö lay in a bay of the Baltic Sea.
Fishing, bird and seal hunting created the foundation for the life of the people living there. Graves from the older and younger stone ages exist, but most of the gravefields come from the Iron Age, mostly the Viking Age. There are also two ancient hillforts (fornborgar) on Adelsö; one of them, situated on Skansberget near Stenby, is unusually well preserved.
Adelsö, earlier called Alsnö or Alsnu and the great royal mounds (Kungshögarna) at Hovgården shows the importance of Adlesö during the Viking Age. The king lived in the King's House (Kungsgården) next to Hovgården on Adelsö and ruled from there over the greatest Viking city of the time, Birka. During the latter part of the 12th century a christian church was built next to Hovgården and Birger Jarl's sons built Alsnö hus, a splendid castle where king Magnus I of Sweden in 1279 called for the Meeting of Alsnö. At that meeting the Alsnö stadga was estblished, introducing the privileges of the Swedish nobility.
During the middle ages, Alsnö hus was used as a summer palace for kings and governors but it fell later into ruin. What is left of the castle and several graves near Hovgården were dug up during extensive archeological investigations conducted between 1916 and 1926. At the same time as the Birka excavations during the 1990s several excavations was conducted on the area of Hovgården. Birka and Hovgården became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993.