seriously. Here therefore, just as we might expect, we find large numbers of the oldest antiquities and graves of the Bronze-Age. In the more eastern parts of Denmark they are scarcer. They also present a striking agreement with the forms of the corresponding antiquities and graves in the adjacent north of Germany; from which again we may follow the points of resemblance further south. The oldest bronze swords in western Denmark are thus of the self-same kind as the bronze swords found in western Germany right down to the Alps. Moreover the original sepulchres in the base of the "warrior-howes" in Jutland are usually either large cists of stones set up on end and covered with slabs, or heavy oak trunks split and hollowed out; and in these the unburnt bodies of men women and children were deposited fully clothed-some of them in woollen garments skilfully woven-and with a rich supply of weapons utensils and ornaments.4 These coffins of hollowed oaks in particular, each containing a single skeleton, extend north-west from Germany to England. In still more considerable numbers they are spread due north across Jutland,-contemporaneous evidence that mighty trees or forests of oak were once indigenous to the country. They are also occasionally recognised in the east of Denmark and in the more southern parts of the North. The oldest skeleton-graves from the Bronze-Age, which generally form a regular substratum for graves containing burnt bodies, consist mostly of circles or cists built of stones, which vary in size and are sometimes covered with planks. In a few cases the corpse appears to have been laid in a cist of planks. Immediately over the cists 4 See fig. 1, p. 73; and cf. figs. 2 and 3, pp. 89, 91. there is usually a heap of stones surmounted by a huge pile of earth, or in stony districts, e.g. in Bornholm and the Scandinavian peninsula, with a cairn of stones called a Steenrös or Steenrör (= stone-heap). Various finds in Denmark may possibly indicate that during the Earlier Bronze-Age the custom of cremation was to some extent soon adopted, and perhaps not very long after the introduction of interment. But this was chiefly in the east. So far it is clear that the most the largest and the best provided gravesevidently the resting-places of the most powerful families from the very first generally contained unburnt bodies. They are spread over wide tracts throughout the whole of southern Scandinavia, to the same extent in fact as the graves of the previous StoneAge. Like these they are found on the Scandinavian peninsula as far north as latitude 59°. Further north in Sweden and throughout Norway the Early BronzeAge has left no sure traces in the form of graves or other large monuments, excepting here and there on the west coast of Norway, particularly on the plain of Jaederen,5 whither some few emigrants from Jutland appear to have made their way, but not till about the close of the Early Bronze-Age in Denmark. On the other hand the advance of the Bronze-Age to the great lakes of Sweden, in connection with the contemporaneous increase of population, must have. driven the first wandering inhabitants, whose only implements were of stone, to retreat further northwards, spreading thinly over the long rocky sea-boards of 5 Jaederen, the only large coast plain of Norway, about 18 English miles south of Stavanger. From Jutland to the nearest point of Norway is about 70 English miles, to Ekersund about 125. Sweden and Norway. There they finally settled in the neighbourhood of the tribes of Lapps or Finns who had immigrated from the east across Finland to the northern parts of Scandinavia. These latter seem at that time to have been scattered fairly far down over the coasts of Sweden and Norway southwards. They are now driven back to the extreme north. More than a thousand years must thus have passed, ere the Scandinavian North was girdled, so to say, by a continuous chain of population. But many centuries of hardships and struggles were yet needed, to enable the settlements in Sweden and Norway to become as extensive and important, as those of the more southern regions long had been in the richer lowlands on the Cattegat and Baltic. Yet the Bronze-culture must have spread itself in the far North more rapidly, in comparison, than any previous current. Intercourse was considerably aided not merely by extensive settlements and fresh tradecommunications: the highly developed people of the Stone-Age, who had as yet formed the dominant race, had, so far as circumstances allowed, reached a high degree of development. The richer and less prejudiced, attracted by the better and handsomer utensils weapons and ornaments of bronze and gold, must soon have sought to share in other unmistakable benefits of the new culture. For such natural transitions the ground. had already been prepared by the influences which the Bronze-culture previous to its last sweeping advance had brought to bear on the higher development of the Northern Age of Stone. And as the practice of burying corpses unburnt remained long and extensively a custom common to both periods, there was in this respect nothing to hinder the people of the Stone-Age from finally and fully adopting the Bronze-culture and accommodating themselves to the other changes inevitable in the old order of things. But though the people of the Stone-Age may presumably have adopted the foreign culture in this manner, we have also weighty proofs that in the North, as in the neighbouring lands south and west, a strong fusion of peoples must have been going on coincidently with the extension of the Bronze-culture. The differences for instance between the surviving monuments of the Stone and Early Bronze Ages could not in general have stood out so sudden and sharp, as is actually the case, had only a gradual transition pure and simple taken place. True, the Bronze-culture, long ere it reached the North, had undoubtedly adopted the old Stone-Age custom of interring the dead unburnt. But in the North, as in the adjacent countries, this custom makes its appearance from the very beginning of the Bronze-Age in connexion with wholly new forms of burial. Marvellous must have been the rapidity with which the building of round and oblong mounds and giantchambers must have come to a stand-still, wherever the Bronze-culture succeeded in establishing its empire. Traces of a continued employment of the old large stone chambers ready to hand are far from being so numerous as one might reasonably have expected. A remarkable change was also effected in the manner of burial itself: in consequence of the now general use of cists, the custom prevalent at the close of the StoneAge of burying several and even many bodies in the same chamber may now be said to have ceased entirely. Hereafter it was quite the exception to lay several corpses in a single cist. As a rule each corpse had its own grave or its own cist. But many single graves of this kind were frequently constructed in the same barrow. In general however we must remember that here, as in all other periods of antiquity, the vast majority of those sepulchres which have been preserved to our days belonged to the more prosperous classes: the simpler graves of the lower orders have mostly disappeared. Similar prominent differences appear both in the contents of the graves and other antiquities dating from the Later Stone-Age and following Age of Bronze. Finds distinctly indicating a fusion or transition are on the whole remarkably rare. The comparatively few implements of stone which are brought to light in the larger burial-places of the Bronze-Age are confined to certain articles intended for special use. They betray a declining skill-or care perhaps-in stone work, the more metal work became diffused. Add to this the fact that neither in the southern parts of the North nor in north Germany during the Early Bronze-Age did men content themselves with the foreign goods imported from the South, or with simply continuing slavishly to imitate them. On the model of the foreign types whole series of new tasteful and richly ornamented forms were gradually developed. Many castfinds, some of them large, prove that these articles were usually manufactured within the boundaries of the North itself. Contemporaneously with the decline and expulsion of the Bronze-Age in the South, in Greece and Italy, which still lay outside the pale of all direct connection with the countries of the North, a peculiar later group of bronze objects arose on the Baltic, |