Vendel

For the commune in France, see Vendel, Ille-et-Vilaine.

Vendel is a parish in the Swedish province of Uppland. It is the site of an ancient royal estate (part of a network of royal estates that have been the property of the Swedish kings since the Iron Age, called Uppsala öd).

The site has many graves from the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries. It also shows a large mound which local tradition calls Ottarshögen (the mound of Ohthere of the epic Beowulf). An excavation in 1917 revealed the remains of a powerful man who was buried in the beginning of the 6th century, the time of Ohthere.

Vendel has given its name to a period in the Scandinavian Iron Age, and it has often been suggested that the Germanic Vandals, or at least their kings, were connected to the site. A grave of Sutton Hoo (King Raedwald of East Anglia (?)) revealed that the man it contained wore virtually the same armour as what was found in the close burial site of Valsgärde.

The location has lent its name to a period in Swedish archaeology: the Vendel Age.