Culture

Greenish lighting, the name Erin - you might not immediately think of Ireland, but you would be right. At the end of the 19th century Irish mining entrepreneur Mulvany merged several claims in the Castrop area and named the new large claim after the goddess Erin, whose name is a form of the Gaelic Eire: Ireland.

The mines have a long history. Initially used to mine hard coal, the owners changed several times over the course of the following year until it was shut down in 1982 after almost 120 years of mining activity.

The disused coal mine Zeche Zollern in Dortmund is one of the most architecturally remarkable pits in the Ruhr area. The park-like facility with its impressive Art Nouveau buildings still shows today that it was built as a model colliery around 1900 and was intended to show both economic strength and progress.

We visited the facility with our friends from Herne, the photographers Renate and Jürgen Saibic, whom we met many years ago on Easter Island in Chile.

In the Hjemmeluft area on the southern shore of the Altafjord in northern Norway, just west of the town of Alta, Neolithic and Bronze Age petroglyphs were found in the autumn of 1972, ranging in age from 2000 to 6500 years.
Petroglyphs (from Greek πέτρος petros "stone" and γλύφειν glýphein "to carve") are representations worked into stone, which often show hunting and religious scenes from prehistoric times. Unlike rock art, a petroglyph is engraved, scraped, or pecked, and sunk into the ground.
 

Via the European Route 6 (E6) we drive along the border river between Finland and Norway, the Kárášjohka, to the main settlement areas of the Sami people in Norway. Ice floes are still drifting on the raging river and mountains of ice and snow are piling up meters high on its banks.

We stay overnight in the town of Karasjok, the seat of the Sami Parliament Sameting. Here the Kárášjohka flows leisurely through the small town before it becomes the sometimes raging border river in the narrower passages between Norway and Finland.

One of the highest concentrations of archaeological sites in the Nordic countries is at Ceavccageađge (Mortensnes in Norwegian) in Varanger. Ten thousand years as a meeting place for hunters, fishermen and traders have left traces of settlements in the landscape, some monumental but many often small and easily overlooked. A cairn is not always just a cairn.

A tour of Leuven offers many surprises - small as well as big. Of course, the town hall on the Great Market is impressive and is one of the most beautiful late Gothic buildings in Europe. It is decorated with hundreds of figures depicting biblical scenes as well as scholars and important figures in Louvain's history. It was built from 1439 to 1468 and stands directly opposite the St. Peter's Church.

Our good friend Max died on March 20th, 2022 in his adopted country of Macedonia. We received the news completely surprisingly and unexpectedly. Max and I had been in contact almost weekly for the last 20 years and when I asked how he was doing via telegram, his granddaughter Maria answered me with the sad news of his death.

The Lagatjar Stone Rows are located on the Crozon Peninsula in the Finistère department of Brittany in France near Camaret-sur-Mer. It is believed that 400 menhirs - large and small - should have stood here, which made up the main building with a total length of 600 meters.

And these rows of stones are also of great importance for galactic hitchhikers, as the longest row consists of 42 menhirs with a length of about 200 meters.

In Carnac there are rows of stones (French/Alignments) of menhirs (Celtic/large stone), which consist mainly of granite rock from the Breton coast and numbered around 3000 in the years of construction. The largest menhirs are about 4 meters high and are always at the western end of the corresponding row. To the east, the menhirs become smaller and smaller in their approximately 3 km long rows until they are only half a meter high. Originally, the rows were probably even 8 kilometers long.

If you travel to the large and long graves of the road of megalithic culture between Osnabrück and Oldenburg, there is a very special Early Stone Age construction near Hüven in Emsland: the Volbers Hünensteine (also called Hüven-Nord with the Sprockhoff no. 842). In June 1956, Lisa and Rudi, Karin's parents, who lived in Lahn at the time, were photographed here. We have recreated the photos and the comparison also shows the changes in the dolmens over the past 65 years.

From Oldenburg to Osnabrück, the route of megalithic culture in Emsland runs around 330 kilometers to 33 well-preserved Neolithic burial sites that were built around 5000 years ago. And detours from this route lead to other "dole graves" or at least to places where special rock formations serve as an indication of buildings from the Early Stone Age.

This article shows photos of the following megalithic tombs:

Großsteingrab an den Hünensteinen bei Werlte

Anyone who deals with Stone Age buildings may first think of England's world-famous stone circle called Stonehenge. But also individually standing menhirs (Celtic/large stone), rows of stones (French/alignements), cromlechs (Welsh/curvature) and dolmens (Breton/stone table) are well-known designations for buildings whose age is estimated at 3000 to 5000 years. The different languages ​​already show that these are not regionally limited architectural or structural achievements.

The second atomic bomb dropped by the Americans over Japan was nicknamed Fat Man and when it was dropped on August 9, 1945 in Nagasaki, it killed 36,000 people immediately and countless later, who ultimately died as a result of the radioactivity.

Nagasaki was chosen by the Americans because, in addition to its economic importance, the location of the city and its surrounding mountain slopes promised the maximum destructive effect of the dropped atomic bomb.

Originally an insignificant fishing village, Nagasaki experienced a sustained boom with the arrival of the Portuguese in the mid-16th century. This is considered to be the first contact between Europeans and Japanese ever. The missionary F. Xavier founded the basis for the Jesuit missionary work there and soon Christian churches and nursing homes were established. This went hand-in-hand with the growing prosperity of the small town, which did not go unnoticed by the mighty of Japan, and thus not without consequences for the peaceful community of Nagasaki.