English: Some hundred years before the monastery Varnhem was created by the Cistercians in 1150, the same place had probably one of the oldest Christian churches in Sweden. During year 2005 the Museum of Västergötland started an excavation of the ruins of this old church in stone (from around 1020-1040) and the ruins of the wood chapel which stood there before the stone church. More than 1000 skeletons were found, from the oldest church the women and children were buried on the north side and the men on the south, but later all graves were on the south side, with the richest people buried closest the church. Around this old church ruin there are also Iron Age grave hills and traces of some kind of village, and silver treasures have been found in the same area. Pictures are from the excavation in the summer of 2007.