boats only and smaller vessels to cross the lakes and rivers, cannot on their first arrival have brought with them any special skill in ship-building. But so soon as they were settled on the sea-coasts and deep fjords of the North, necessity must have taught them to build larger and stronger ships, with which to venture out on the open stormy seas. On stone blocks and rocksurfaces as well as on various articles of bronze many pictures of ships are to be seen, broad abaft and sharp in the stern. Masts sails and crew are at times distinctly indicated. Often they are numerous and arranged in rows, in such a way as to give us the impression that ships were not used exclusively for the pursuits of peace, for the steadily growing commerce with lands near and far, but were also frequently engaged in regular sea-fights, commemorated by some of the larger rock-sculptures. But this skill in ship-building and warlike spirit of seamanship, destined in after times to give the sons of the North so distinct a character, were not founded only during the Bronze-Age and within the actual boundaries of the North. From the very first the Bronze-Age folk brought in with them the sturdy germs of this warlike spirit which,-to judge from many rock pictures of fights afoot and even on horseback, as well as from other evidence,-found a kindly soil in the North. Only a warlike people can have continued throughout the whole Bronze-Age in the remote North to manufacture and set a high value on the handsome and costly swords daggers spear-heads axes helmetornaments shields horns &c. which, in richest variety and astonishing quantities, frequently in connexion 4 with flints or "strike-lights" (Ildtöi) are being constantly exhumed from graves fields lakes and bogs. It would seem that men then as a rule fought on foot, and only exceptionally on horse, a privilege reserved perhaps for the superior chieftains. Remains of horses and riding-harness are seldom or never found in the graves of the Bronze-Age warriors, but mostly in bogs, and those too from a late period of the Bronze-Age. In keeping with the splendid and bright gilded accoutrements of men and women too, as it seemstheir garments were woven of wool and adorned with fringes and belts, at times in various colours. Many such garments in perfect preservation have been taken from graves containing cists of hollowed oak on the peninsula of Jutland. They show that here at least the men wore jackets caps and artistically woven bonnets, sometimes of a peculiar kind of thick felt, very like the bonnets still worn by the poor in Hungary. Strangely enough they appear even then not to have worn trousers, the legs being perhaps swathed round with narrow strips of stuff. The sword, so important a weapon for the warlike people of this period, was sheathed in wood and leather or laths and carried in a leathern strap over the shoulder. In a stone cist at Hvidegaarden 5 in Seeland, where the burnt bones. of a warrior wrapt in a cloak of woven wool were laid on an ox-hide, a small leathern case seems to have hung from his shoulder-strap. It contained some small implements of stone and bone sewed in leather, a 4 Cf. J. Anderson's Scotland in Pagan Times," p. 375. piece of amber a snake's tail a hawk's claw a Mediterranean shell (Conus Mediterraneus Hwass.) &c. These were presumably worn as charms against sorcery or as remedies for sickness, in fact as protecting amulets. The women were sometimes armed with daggers, and wore artistic hair-nets jackets and long skirts with a waist-belt. Fragments of similar woollen garments are frequently brought to light in many other Northern graves containing both burnt and unburnt bodies laid in stone and wooden cists under cairns. In Halland for instance pieces have been found with burnt bones in a small cist made of a tree-trunk hollowed out. Traces also of finely woven linen have been met with. The bodies buried in the coffins were generally in full dress and usually wrapt in skins (v. Fig. 1, p. 73). On the other hand the graves present no distinct remains of real skin-garments. Some of the skin-clad bodies discovered in bogs may possibly belong to the Bronze-Age. It is scarcely credible that the poorer classes in the cold North should so soon have taken to clothes of wool instead of skins. Indeed the latter have been worn by the poor throughout the North down to the latest times. The passion for display prevalent throughout the whole Bronze-Age, marking, as it does, a high degree of prosperity, was not confined merely to weapons and military accoutrements. Vast numbers of trinkets are found, both gold and bronze. Many of them are plated with gold and richly adorned with elegant spiral ring wave and line chasings and inlaid with amber and 6 O. Montelius ("Die Kultur Schwedens," Germ. Tr., p. 83) sees in this the grave probably of a doctor ("medicine-man"?) or magician, or perhaps both in one. |