Gotlands Fornsal Museum, at Strandgatan 12 in Visby, shows the past of Visby and Gotland in Sweden. Housed in an 18th-century distillery and a medieval warehouse, it displays 8,000 years of history on five floors.
Impressive stages include the Hall of Picture Stones, a collection of decorated stones from the 5th to 11th centuries, and the exhibition of the Spillings Hoard, the richest of the 700 Gotland hoards. The treasure, found in 1999, weighs 85 kilograms and contains coins from the Arab world, England and Germany. The Hall of Prehistoric Graves displays skeletons from 6,000 years ago in display cases. Other rooms show Visby's medieval history, including a stall where traders exchanged honey, lime, furs, tar and wax from northern Europe. The more recent history begins with the deposed King Eric of Pomerania, who retreated to Gotland from 1439 to 1448, and continues through the years of Danish rule from 1361 to 1645, with the peak of trade in the 16th century.