Last week I spent a few days in the Salzkammergut, specifically in Traunkirchen on Lake Traunsee. It wasn't a destination I would have consciously chosen, but I went there anyway. As soon as I arrived and saw the town, it was clear to me that there was history to discover there.
The village of Traunkirchen is located on a peninsula that juts out into Lake Traunsee. There's a monastery there, and right next to it stands a rock with a chapel. These are three clues that tell me in advance that there's pre-Christian history there.
On the first day, I had time to hike along the shore and climb the rock. I was right. The rock, called Odinstein or Johannesberg, densely covered with yew trees, was proven to be a pagan cult site. The monastery covers the ground that was already a settlement in the Bronze Age 2,800 years ago.
The photographs shown here were taken at a site where these people's burial mounds were located, and where many Bronze Age bodies probably still lie buried, whether cremated or not.
Whenever I find myself in such places, I automatically start imagining what it might have been like back then. As a modern person with a camera in hand, I obviously have no idea. But what I do know, like all of us, are emotions, fears, joys... 2,800 years ago, a person lived here. They were born, grew up, ate, worked, and slept together with other family members. They had hopes, felt love, and worried about their children... All things that haven't changed to this day, and that can't change, because they are things that define our existence.
So I stood in this spot, gazing out over the lake, as a person did 2,800 years ago, and in this way I am connected to pre-Christian history without knowing the details. A person from 2,800 years ago and I share a moment, looking in the same direction, standing there waiting for the sun to rise.
