The Battle of Visby

The account

When a Danish king stormed Gotland in 1361, the island's farmers, old men and boys among them, were cut down outside the walls of Visby and buried fast, in their mail. When archaeologists opened the graves in the 1920s, they found hauberks, coifs, gauntlets, and skulls still inside them: a medieval massacre frozen in iron, internationally unique.

Leads, where the trail points now

• The field is at Outside Visby, Gotland, Sweden, and arms, shot, and relics still come out of the ground there.
• Detecting or digging needs landowner or park permission, and any significant find should be recorded; many battlefields are protected.
• Work the documented account of The Battle of Visby to learn where the fighting, the camps, and the rout actually ran before you look.