Northvegr - The Swastika

... In Iron Age Britain two brothers struggle for supremacy. The Archdruid prophesies kingship for one, banishment for the other. But it is the exiled brother who will lead the Celts across the Alps into deadly collision with Rome...

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The Swastika

Dispersion of the Swastika

Page 73

east end of Fains Island. It was 10 feet in height and about 100 feet in circumference at the base. In the bed of clay 4 feet beneath the surface were found the remains of 32 human skeletons; of these, only 17 skulls could be preserved. There had been no regularity in placing the bodies.

The peculiar form of this Swastika is duplicated by a Runic Swastika in Sweden, cited by Ludwig Müller and by Count d'Alviella. (1)
The following objects were found in the mound on Fains Island associated with the Swastika shell (fig. 237) and described, and many of them figured: (2) A gorget of the same Fulgur shell with an engraved spider (figure 278); a pottery vase with a figure of a frog; three rude axes from four to seven inches in length, or diorite and quartzite; a pierced tablet of slate; a disk of translucent quartz 1 3/4 inches in diameter and three-quarters of an inch in thickness; a mass of pottery,much of it in fragments, and a number of bone implements, including needles and paddle-shaped objects. The shell objects (in addition to the disks and fig. 238

gorgets mentioned) were pins made from the columellæ of Fulgur (Busycon percersum?) of the usual form and about four inches in length. There were also found shell beads, cylindrical in form, an inch in length and upward of an inch in diameter, with other beads of various sizes and shapes made from marine shells, and natural specimens of Io spinosa, Unio probatus.
The specimen represented in fig. 238 is a small shell from the Big Toco mound, Monroe County, Tenn., found by Mr. Emmert with skeleton No. 49 and is fig. 262, Twelfth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology, 1890-91, page 383, although it is not described. This is a circular disk of Fulgur

ENDNOTES:

1. Proc. royal Danis Acad. Sci., 5th ser., III, p. 94, fig. a; "La Migration des Symboles," p. 50, fig. 16 [Back]

2. Third Ann. Rep. Bureau of Ethnology, 1881-82, p. 464 et seq., figs. 139-141. Back

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