A History of the Vikings
Chapter 1
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be asked whether the Bronze Age Boat Grave is the direct ancestor of the famous 'Ship Burials' of the vikings. Certain it is that many of the Boat Graves, especially those on the mainland of Sweden, are of unknown date, and may well belong to
1. On the origin of Ship-Burials, see Knut Stjerna, Festskrift till Professor Schück på hans 50 års-dag, Stockholm, 1905; Haakon Shetelig, Saga Book of the Viking Club, IV, p. 326 ff., and Osebergfundet, I (Oslo, 1917), p. 243; Albany F. Major, Folklore, XXXV (1924), p. 113.
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The Bronze Age, however, may justly be described as a period wherein a Scandinavian culture was evolved of so great an import that it may be deemed the basis of the subsequent cultures of the north. It was a development of the Scandinavian peoples, albeit under strong foreign influences, that was sufficiently pronounced to stamp its descendants in the succeeding centuries as sprung from its stock. In a word, the Bronze Age is the time of the segregation of the northern peoples into the characterized cultural and ethnic group from which, over a thousand years later, came forth the viking peoples. It is a period not only distinguished for the ready acceptance of outside fashions, but also for a plain and unmistakable resistance to the domination of these fashions, a brilliant period concluding in the final triumph of a northern spirit that moulded according to its own will and to suit its own purpose the cultural influences of the outside world.
Denmark was the headquarters of this northern Bronze Age, and no one who has visited the National Museum at Copenhagen needs to be reminded of the huge collection of grand gold and bronze objects of this period that attest by their richness and variety the splendour of the Danish Bronze Age. Less remarkable was the Bronze Age in Sweden, though the Kalmar province and Oland, and also Bohuslän and the neighbourhood, have yielded a respectable wealth of finds of the period. It is important, however, to note that at this time begins the cultural prominence of the Mälar region, for not only are the finds from Central Sweden concentrated in Uppland, but it is possible to recognize a special Mälar type of bronze axe. Moreover, the great Uppland barrow, King Björn's Mound at Haaga near Uppsala, is the finest memorial of its kind in the late Bronze Age of Scandinavia, while the rich grave-goods accompanying the king laid to rest beneath it, and the bones of slaves and animals sacrificed at the funeral, speak plainly for the wealth and importance of the Mälar chiefs. Further, the Mälar type of axe has been found in Finland and Russia; indeed, it has been found in sufficient numbers in the Kasan district to suggest a direct colonization of this particular area from central Sweden.
The Early Iron Age (c. 600 B.C.-A.D. 500) in Scandinavia is commonly divided into two periods, the division taking place in this rough and easy chronological scheme at the year A.D. 1. In the first the north stands isolated from the rest of Europe, while in the second it shares, although at second hand, in the dramatic cultural revolution imposed on the outlying territories
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of western and northern Europe by the conquering armies of Rome. It is customary, therefore, to speak of a pre-Roman and a Roman Iron Age, and seldom has archaeological nomenclature better mirrored the exact and vital significance of the inevitable sub-divisions of an age. Towards the end of the Bronze Age a few small trifles made of iron appear among the grave-goods in Scandinavia, and it is certain that the use of the new metal was introduced only gradually into the north. No conquering invasion of an iron-using folk demonstrated its advantages to the peoples of Scandinavia, and they were left undisturbed to exploit the novel metallurgy. The first period of the Iron Age was therefore a direct continuation of the Bronze Age, and it is to be expected that the robust civilization of the period that was ended would now advance to even greater wealth and power. On the contrary, it collapsed suddenly to an enfeebled and backward culture, poverty-stricken and isolated.
Various are the attempts that have been made to explain this downfall. One theory, though it is demonstrably inadequate as an explanation, lays the blame upon the ruin of the Scandinavian amber-trade occasioned by the transference of the monopoly of the market to the East Baltic and Prussian territories; another is the much-discussed suggestion of Dr. R. Sernander that the climate at the beginning of the Iron Age deteriorated and thus was the cause of considerable emigration (1) and of a much-degraded culture. This notion of climatic variation, (2) warranted as it is by sound geological evidence, may reasonably be counted as one of the causes, of the decline of the north, but the decisive factor must assuredly be sought in the political conditions of contemporary Europe. For at this time the people of the north were shut off from their longstanding intercourse with southern Europe by the growth of the great Celtic confederacy that was now established across, and controlled, the accustomed trade-routes. It is perhaps an exaggeration to suppose that the Celtic peoples in Central Europe,
1. The emigrations that depleted the miserable population of Scandinavia and Denmark during the pre-Roman Iron Age are of considerable importance in the story of the early Germanic world, but beyond a statement of the fact that there was an outpouring of the peoples of the north in this period they require little notice here. The principal emigrants are named in the next chapter (pp. 64 -5).
2. R. Semander: Die schwedischen Torfmoore als Zeugen postglazialer Klimaschwankungen (Die Veränderungen des Klimas seit dem Maximum der letzten Eiszeit. Publ. of 11th Int. Geologenkongress, Stockholm, 1910, p. 197 ff.).
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south Germany, and Gaul, were actuated by some special hostility towards the men of the north, and as a result of a deliberate policy excluded them from contact with the rich lands of the south, (1) but there is little doubt that the Celts during the period of their maximum power and widest expansion (fifth-third century B.C.) usurped for themselves the greater part of the trade that had hitherto found its way to the north. As a result, the people of Scandinavia were cut off from the direct influence of the great civilizations of Greece and Italy that ruled the Mediterranean and Aegean world from the sixth century B.C. onwards. A fine bronze vessel, possibly of Italian origin and of fourth century date, having the Greek palmette as ornament, that was found in Möen Island off Zealand, is one of the few witnesses in this period to contact with the classical world.
It would be wrong, notwithstanding, to represent Scandinavia as being entirely unaffected by exterior influence in the pre-Roman Iron Age. Many of the Hallstatt fashions in personal ornaments enjoyed a vogue in the north, and the effect of Celtic (La Tène) art on later native craftsmanship can be seen in the ornament on the four-wheeled ceremonial car from Dejbjerg in Denmark, while the Celtic spirit of much of the detail of the famous silver cauldron from Gundestrup in the same country has long been recognized. Moreover, there are two cultural provinces within the Scandinavian area itself; thus in Denmark and on the western coast of Norway the old Bronze Age burial-fashion of simple cremation prevails, as also in northwest Germany; but in Ostfold in Norway and west of the Oslo Fjord, on the south Baltic coast of Scandinavia, and in Bornholm, there was a new burial-fashion introduced, namely the pell-mell interment of both the burnt bones and the ashes of the funeral pyre. This new custom seems to have been derived from the eastern side of the Baltic in the neighbourhood of the Oder and the Weichsel. But this is, after all, a small matter of local differentiation affecting only the northern peoples themselves, and it alters in no way the proper estimate of the Early Iron Age in Scandinavia as a period of cultural degradation and isolation. As witness to the poverty of the time, it is only necessary to contrast the many finds of costly gold articles of Bronze Age date with the one or two paltry gold objects that represent in the Scandinavian museums the wealth of the succeeding period.
1. S. Lindqvist, Fornvännen, 1920, p. 113 ff.
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The Roman Iron Age, as it is termed, that is to say the first four centuries of this era, was, on the other hand, a busy period of cultural advance towards the high standard of civilization achieved in the Empire itself. This was not, of course, the result of outright conquest by Roman armies, nor of formal alliance with the Caesars, but was merely a natural reflex of the continued movements of Roman forces and Roman merchants in the borderlands of the Empire, especially on the Rhine frontiers. It is, indeed, truly remarkable how Roman control led to an apparent, if not real, cultural unity in the barbarian provinces within the Empire, and it would be astonishing if the north, closely involved as it was in the fortunes of the southern and western German tribes, had not taken advantage of many Roman fashions. Even a relentless hostility between two folk is no bar against the inflow of ideas borrowed from the enemy, but here, between the Germans and the Romans, there was not always hostility; thus the powerful Marcomanni, who were established by the end of the first century in Bohemia, boasted themselves the friends of the Romans, while many were the gifts bestowed by Roman generals on German chieftains whose help, or temporary neutrality, they sought. It was in such a way, perhaps, rather than as plunder, that costly objects of Roman workmanship reached even to the north, and there is a rich find in the National Museum at Copenhagen that is a notable example of these Roman presents. This is the lovely pair of Augustan silver goblets that was found with other valuable treasures in a grave at Hoby in the island of Lolland in Denmark, and that was, it is just conceivable, a gift to some northern chief from Silius, the legate in Upper Germany from A.D. 14 to A.D. 21. (1)
Whatever the exact origin of the Hoby treasure may have been, it is at least certain that in the first two centuries of this era Roman material was being imported in considerable quantities into the northern lands, above all into Zealand, a district that must have been at this time the seat of a powerful and progressive folk. Glass beakers and bronze vessels of Roman manufacture seem to have been the favourite novelties that attracted the northern traders as an exchange for their furs and amber; but Roman influence can be detected in many other ways. Roman weapons were imported, and the northern smiths set themselves diligently to the copying of these new
1. For the Hoby find, see Nordiske Fortidsminder, II, 3rd hft. The two silver cups are inscribed on the foot with the name Silius; they have also the artist's signature on the side.
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