The Stone Bride and Groom

A legend tells of a young woman who was once forced by her parents to marry a man she did not love. On her wedding day, she rode to church in the bridal carriage, followed by neighbors and relatives.

On the way, she was so desperate that she wished she could turn to stone rather than marry the groom she did not love. At once, it happened: the bride and all the guests turned to stone.

This is said to have happened near the town of Visbek, which is now in the district of Vechta in Lower Saxony. You can still see several boulders there, arranged like a wedding procession. These stones are known as the “Visbek Bride”.

About 4 kilometres from the "Visbek Bride" lies the "Visbek Bridegroom". Here, around 130 large boulders lie together in a rectangle. According to an old legend, this is said to be the man whom the Visbek Bride did not want to marry, and who was also turned to stone. Near this stone monument you come across the "Bridal Wagon". It looks as though the wheels have sunk into the ground. Four large stones lie above them, in which, with a little imagination, you can make out parts of a wedding carriage. People in the past liked to invent stories like these when they encountered something in nature that they could not explain. But this story is not true at all. In reality, there is a very different story behind the large stones of Visbek.

This collection of stones has nothing to do with a wedding. The explanation is simple: these are burial sites. These graves were built from large stones, which is why we call them megalithic tombs. In the Neolithic period, people were buried in these graves. The Neolithic period is the period that began about 5,500 years ago and ended 4,800 years ago.

It is not known exactly who was buried in a site like this. Perhaps members of several families found their final resting place in a shared grave. These burial sites may also have been intended for important people, their families and their followers. The graves were used over a long period.

A megalithic tomb like this was made up of upright supporting stones set into the ground. Large capstones were laid on top of them, creating a low space that formed the burial chamber itself.

The burial chamber of the “Visbecker Bräutigam” consists of upright stones, almost completely buried in the ground, and 5 capstones. The chamber is about 10 m long and is surrounded by 130 boundary stones. They form a rectangle 104 m long and 9 m wide.

You can see the construction of a burial chamber even more clearly near the “Visbecker Bräutigam” at the “Heidenopfertisch.” Three capstones once rested on the supporting stones of this tomb, but only one remains. It is about 5 m long and weighs approximately 40 tonnes.

The gaps between the supporting stones and capstones of a burial chamber were once filled with smaller stones, wood and turf. The grave was then covered with earth. There was an entrance at one point that could be opened when another person died.

In 1837, a pastor drew the megalithic tomb of Weseby in the municipality of Hünten in Schleswig-Holstein. The burial chamber consisted of two capstones and an unknown number of supporting stones. The site at Weseby no longer exists. Unfortunately, only a few megalithic tombs have survived.

The physician Johann Picardt lived in the 17th century. He believed that only giants could have moved the huge stones. He thought these giants had come from the land of Canaan. He made a drawing showing tiny people alongside giants building a tomb like this. At the time, these large burial structures were called “Hünengräber.” “Hüne” is another word for “giant.” But giants never existed. Today we know that the great stone tombs were built 5,000 years ago by ordinary people, who were probably even much shorter than people today. They did the work using very simple but ingenious methods.

The work was carried out mainly in winter. Teams of oxen dragged the heavy stones over frozen ground and snow-covered or icy surfaces. The supporting stones were set in a row in shallow trenches and raised upright (1). The space between them was then filled in (2). Next, ramps were built up along the sides using earth or packed snow (3). The oxen could then drag the capstones into position. They were probably moved on rollers (4). Finally, the burial chamber was covered with earth (5). The inside of the chamber was cleared again (6). Sometimes a row of kerbstones was also placed around the structure (7). Depending on its size and the number of workers, a megalithic tomb could sometimes be built in just a few months.

These large stone tombs were built mainly in northern Germany and Europe. There were plenty of heavy stones here to build them.

They were deposited here during the ice ages. There were four glacial periods in the last million years, when northern Europe was covered by a thick sheet of ice that piled up to more than 3,000 metres in places.

The ice was pushed farther and farther south by its own weight. As it moved, it carried sand, gravel, and huge boulders with it. When the ice melted, these “glacial erratics” sank to the ground and were left behind. People later used these stones to build large megalithic tombs.