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## The Grave Today
The island of Björkö is today a quiet place. The trading town of Birka does not exist; it has not existed for more than a thousand years. What remains is the archaeological landscape: the grave mounds that cover the hillsides, the earthwork of the hill fort, the foundations of the town’s structures beneath the grass.
Tourists visit. Birka’s UNESCO World Heritage status and the fame of Hjalmar Stolpe’s excavations make it a site of interest for visitors interested in Viking Age history. The grave mounds are preserved. They are not accessible for casual excavation; the archaeological site is protected.
The bones from grave Bj 581 are held in the museum collections where Stolpe’s excavations deposited them, with the documentation that he created and that later researchers have added to. They have now been sampled twice for DNA analysis — the 2017 study — and examined multiple times osteologically. Additional sampling would require further justification, given the destructive nature of ancient DNA extraction and the ethical considerations around repeated sampling of ancient human remains.
The assemblage — the weapons, the horses’ bones, the gaming pieces, the silk fragments, the dirham — is similarly preserved in collections, documented and available for study.
The grave itself, on the elevated terrace near the garrison of a town that no longer exists, is a slightly raised area of ground. A boulder that once marked it may still be visible. The wooden chamber decayed long ago. The bones were removed in 1878. What remains is the landscape and its record.