Where the Portuguese look like Vikings

• Tomonde: The Menhirs of Time
• Galician myths: The miraculous relic of the Templars that ended in a town in Coruña
• Pazos de Borbén.The mysterious caged saint who appeared on top of a hill in Pontevedra

The Santa Tecla mountain is one of the most visited tourist destinations in southern Galicia . To the spectacular views offered by the mountain, located on the mouth of the Miño, and which allows to see a wide strip of Portugal on the other side of its waters, the fact that at the top is one of the largest Celtic castros and better preserved than the dozens that are scattered throughout Galicia. If you have not had the opportunity to upload, I recommend you do so. It is quite an experience to stroll through the ruins of what was once an imposing Celtic fortress and surely something of a more religious nature, given the abundance of aras and pulpits scattered on its slopes.

Precisely what the pulpits gave a lot of play for a season, a souvenir seller located at the foot of the mountain tells me with a sneer. Many distracted visitors were outraged when they reached the top of Mount Santa Tecla heated without having seen a trace of the "pulpit stalls", which they thought they would find after too hurried reading of the indicative signs. Sometimes, a simple accent can transform a tasty ration of polbo á feira into an ancient stone but undoubtedly unsavory.

Be that as it may, with or without an octopus ration, there are hundreds of travelers who fall every day on the top of the sacred mountain of the Celts ... but not many of them discover a hidden treasure that is directly related to the presence of Vikings in the area. You see, we went from Celtic warriors to Nordic looters in the blink of an eye.

A short distance from the castro, on top, there is a small Catholic chapel dedicated to Santa Tecla. If he has already been there and has not noticed much in it, I do not blame him. Architecturally it is not too attractive, it is small, shooting on a date and, in a place with such incredible views and an archaeological site by its side, it is normal to go unnoticed. But for many centuries, this chapel had a very special meaning for a group of inhabitants on the other side of the border. Every year, dozens of neighbors from a Portuguese town called Povoa de Varzim went to the top of Santa Tecla every year to fulfill a strange ritual.

Apparently, during the High Middle Ages, a large group of Vikings who were sailing down the Atlantic coast, doing their Viking things - namely: looting, kidnapping, burning and stabbing - reached the height of what is now Povoa de Varzim At that time, the town should not be more than a handful of fishing shacks, but for some reason not too clear, the Danes (or Norwegian or you know) decided that this was a perfect place to settle and start a new lifetime. Undoubtedly the weather was much better than that of his homeland and life much simpler, so suddenly, a troop of tall and blond guys swapped their drakkar for the simple boats of fishermen with an exaggeratedly high bow that abound in the area and reminiscent of the Nordic barcolongos in their naval architecture. The centuries went by and the Viking blood was mixed with that of the locals - although even today it is not difficult to see some povoeiro with intensely blue eyes and light hair - but the cultural heritage was still present. A sample of this inheritance is that each family had a series of its own symbols, created based on Nordic runes, which were transmitted from parents to children. And here comes the mystery: the inhabitants of Povoa, descendants of those Danish looters, came every year on a long journey of over a hundred kilometers to the top of the Santa Tecla mountain, without being very clear what the reason was. Some studies suggest that it was a simple religious procession and others argue that perhaps the mountain served as a navigation reference in a distant time and saved their lives. Who knows. The truth is that year after year, until relatively recently, the tradition continued.

The Portuguese visitors, when they arrived at the hermitage from the top of the mountain, to record that they had completed another year with their tradition, they engraved with knife the runes of their clan at the door of the church, which with the passage of the years was being covered with a gibberish of symbols that only a historian could understand. The door disappeared many years ago, food for the time, but not the runes. In a stone located next to the hermitage, all the marks that the Viking-Portuguese visitors are engraved (I don't know if this term exists, but I can't think of a better one) left for centuries.

So you know. If you are at the top of Mount Santa Tecla, take a moment to approach the chapel and to go around it until you stumble upon the Viking stone. It will connect with a little known piece of history. But in a hurry, because we are on our way to our next destination, where taxi drivers from Mexico City cross a small rural Galician village.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• culture
• history
• Religion
• Galicia

Magical Galicia The Menhirs of Time

Magical Galicia The mysterious caged saint who appeared on top of a hill in Pontevedra

HistoriaHMS Terror: the ship of polar explorers who ended up lost and devouring each other