Historians believe they have found the dwellings of the ruler of a medieval Scandinavian village, mysteriously lost around the time of the Renaissance.

Digging around the eastern countryside of Denmark’s island of Zealand, archaeologists have unearthed three stone courtyards near the town of Tollerup earlier this month, the ScienceNordic website reported. The discovery is rare, not only because it was built more durably than many houses from the same period but also because its existence is well detailed in written sources, but the reason for its demise is not clear.

“The interesting thing about this find is that we have some very old written sources that [give us] an entirely new understanding from what we can interpret from the excavation alone,” Gunvor Christiansen, archaeologist at Roskilde Museum said.