For us it seems that the mounds in Hystadmarka are very inaccessible, hidden as they are in the forest and overgrown by heath and brushwood. But at the time they were built as memorials to the dead, the sea level was around 2 meters higher than it is today. The boggy area between Valevågen and Mjelkevika was then a sound with islets outside. The mounds were situated on both sides of the sound, quite visible for seafarers going past in a boat.
Some of the mounds have been damaged by robberies or other disturbance. The finds are rather few, for in the wet west Norwegian weather little is preserved of burial goods in such porous mounds.
Some of the mounds in Hystadmarka have been used for burial several times over. In one of them as many as five stone sarcophagi from the Bronze Age have been found (see drawing). Two thousand years later Hystadmarka was again a burial place, as a graveyard for cholera victims.