The Primeval Antiquities of Denmark - Translated, and Applied to the Illustration of Similar Remains in England (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1849 Excerpt: ...whole of Norway. With regard to the objects from the iron-period the circumstances are wholly reversed. The swords and other weapons characteristic of that period, the oval clasps for the breast, the mosaic beads, &c., are so common in Sweden and Norway, that traces of them are discovered in nearly every barrow which has been examined there; on the contrary, in Denmark (with the exception of Bornholm, which in an antiquarian point of view is connected with Sweden) they occur but very rarely indeed, when compared with the objects of stone and bronze. In places of historical note for instance, as Leire and Jellinge, which we must consider as having been tolerably well peopled in the pagan times, swords and trinkets belonging almost exclusively to the bronze-period alone have been exhumed; but none from the iron-period, although numerous graves in the neighbourhood have been opened. This can scarcely be a matter of accident, since the Royal Museum of Northern Antiquities in Copenhagen, which during a series of years has received accessions from different parts of the country, and from many hundred barrows, possesses only a very few weapons of iron, which are known to have been found in heathen graves; while, on the other hand, it exhibits several hundred swords and daggers of the bronze-period. If it should be objected that the soil of Denmark may destroy objects of iron sooner than that of Norway and Sweden, it must be observed that Wendish weapons of iron are frequently discovered in heathen graves in Mecklenburg, the soil of which country is similarly constituted to that of Denmark. It must also be remarked that not only the iron weapons but also the other antiquities of the iron-period, such as brass brooches, beads, and ornaments of stone and glass, a...