the 1070s and describes it as a pagan cult centre with the enormous Temple at Uppsala containing wooden statues of Odin, Thor and Freyr. Sometime in the 1080s the Christian king Ingi was exiled for refusing to perform the sacrifices. Instead Blot-Sweyn was elected, but he was killed by Ingi who could then reclaim his throne. Its great importance in Swedish tradition led to the location of Sweden's first Archbishopric in Gamla Uppsala in 1164. In practice, however, it had lost its strategic importance when it gradually lost ready access to navigable waters as the land rose owing to the constant post-glacial rebound. Archaeology People have been buried in Gamla Uppsala for 2,000 years, since the area rose above water. Originally there were between 2,000 and 3,000 mounds in the area but most have become farmland, gardens and quarries. Today only 250 barrows remain. In the parish there are more than 1,000 preserved archaeological remains, but many more have been removed by agriculture. There are cairns of splintered stone that reveal that the area was settled during the Nordic Bronze Age, but most of the grave fields are from the Iron Age and the Viking Age. The great grave field south of the Royal Mounds is from the Roman Iron Age and the Germanic Iron Age. Near the vicarage, a few unburnt graves from the Viking Age have been excavated. Under the present church in Gamla Uppsala have been found the remains of one or several large wooden buildings. Some archaeologists believe that they are the remains of the Temple of Uppsala, while others hold that comes from an early Christian wooden church. Churches were often built on pre-Christian sacred sites, though. Adjacent to the present church there is a plateau of clay, the Plateau of the Royal Estate (Kungsgårdsplatån), on which archaeologists have found the remains of a large hall. The Royal Mounds The Royal Mounds (Swedish: Kungshögarna) is the name of the three large barrows located in Gamla Uppsala. According to folklore, the three gods Thor, Oden and Freyr would be at rest in Kungshögarna or Uppsala högar (from the Old Norse word Haugr meaning mound or barrow; cognate English Howe). In the 19th and 20th centuries, they were speculated to hold the remains of three kings of the semi-legendary House of Ynglings and were thus known as Aun's Mound, Adils's Mound and Egil's Mound. Today their geographical