Zvaginiai Mound
Also called Zadeikiai Mound and Zvaginkalnis
Zvaginiai village, Endriejavas eldership, Klaipeda district
Zvaginiai Castle Hill, that is situated near Endriejavas, represents extraordinary beautiful estate of the old Curonians. It is believed that a sanctuary was here in the distant past. The hill is the place of worship of Samogitians. Every worshiper had to bring some soil and pour it on the hill. The contemporary people believed that the higher the sacred mountain will be, the easier their prayers will reach God. A holy fire of old Lithuanians had been stoked on the hill, and a sacred Pagan altar was there. Some priest with a beautiful voice chanted and played during the night.
Formerly almost half of Samogitia was ruled by the Curonians. Therefore, it is not surprising that the tallest hill of Klaipeda surroundings one day had become a castle hill. It is also called Zadeikiai Mound because there is a village of the same name situated nearby. However, the old people prefer to call the hill Zvaginkalnis.
It is known that the Curonian fortress Ablinga stood on the hill in the 13th century. An old settlement was probably also situated nearby. The local people worked farm works here and cared both for their own matters and for the matters of the great rulers of the castle. It can be presumed that the glory of Ablinga Castle was later destroyed by the fire: the specimens of pottery made with help of a rotating pottery loom and the layers of a charred log were hidden for centuries under a turf of the hill…
Today the castle hill is overgrown with a beautiful grass and deciduous trees, a wooden chapel stands in the site of the mound. There are the graves of the people of Ablinga and Zvaginiai villages, who were executed by the troops of Nazi Germany, on one slope of the mound, and sculptures in the memory of the victims stem to the sky in the foothill of the mound. It is regrettable that the hill is little reminiscent of a sanctuary and tells very little about the old Curonians. However, history cannot be reversed or changed. After all, the land upon which we walk today in the site of the mound is the same land upon which the rulers of Ablinga Castle walked once!