Forgotten Viking Hogbacks at Logie Old Churchyard, Stirling
I went to Logie Kirk to visit family, but a short walk up the brae takes you to something much older.
Auld Logie Kirk sits above the later church, a place used for burial for centuries. Among the gravestones, low in the grass, are two stones that are easy to miss until you know what you are looking for.
These are hogbacks.
They date to the 10th or 11th century and link this place directly to the Viking Age. People carved them to resemble long, curved houses, with ridged roofs picked out along the sides. They are rare, and their presence here shows that this site was already important over a thousand years ago.
They mark some of the earliest burials at Logie, long before the later kirk was rebuilt.