THE OLD-NORTHERN OF SCANDINAVIA AND ENGLAND, NOW FIRST COLLECTED AND DECIPHERED BY GEORGE STEPHENS, ESQ., F. S. A., Knight of the Northern Star, Hon, Mem. of the Finnish Lit Soc., Helsingfors, of the Boy. Ac. of Lit and Ant Gotenlmrg, anti of the Norwegian National Monument Assoc., Christiania; Fellow of the Bog. Soc. of Sciences, Upsala, of the Roy. Ac. of Hist, and Ant, Stockholm, and of the Roy. Soc. of Northern Antiquaries, Clieapitighaven; etc.; Prof, of Old-English, and of the English Language and Literature, in the University of Cheapinghuven, Denmark, WITH MANY HUNDREDS OF FACSIMILES AND ILLUSTRATIONS, PARTLY IN GOLD, SILVER, BRONZE AND COLORS: RUNIC ALPHABETS; INTRODUCTIONS; APPENDICES; WORDLISTS, ETC. VOL. II. LONDON. KOBENIIAVN. JOHN RUSSELL SMITH. MICHAELSEN AND TILLGE. PRINTED BY H. fi. TH I RLE. 1867—68. r-u a . 7 7 103993 T JL he Weapons, Jewels and articles of Dress shown in the plate “Old-Northern Warrior in the Early Iron Age” are all of them from originals found in Denmark, and all date from the 3rd century after Christ, thus within a few year- hundreds of the first incoming ihto Scandinavia of the Iron- and Rune-wielding clans. They are selected from the many interesting things — so illustrative of the times both for war and peace — which have been dug from two among the numerous and famous Danish “Antiquarian Peat-bogs”, namely, from the South-Outlandish Thorsbjerg Moss . in whose then running waters they were hidden about A. D. 200-250, and the Nydarn Moss, also in South-Jutland, whose yore-looms seem to be from about 250-300. These objects were chosen by Mr. J. M. Petersen, and harmoniously arranged by him on figures in a landscape, that we might see a couple of our Northern Iron-armed forefathers, here a Chieftain and his Horse-keeper, as they stood ready for field or foray, and thus gain some idea of those living men whom we otherwise know only in the dead monuments brought together in these pages. My accomplisht artist’s steel-engraving, reduced by himself from his large water-color drawing, cannot show the hues and materials or enlighten us as to the details. As some help and as a welcome guarantee, I therefore here append Mr. ^Petersen’s list of the pieces here made use of, at the same time referring to Mr. C. Engelhardt’s well-known “Denmark in the Early Iron Age, illustrated by recent discoveries in the Peat Mosses of Slesvig, 4to, London 1866”, where the principal laves exhumed at Thorsbjerg and Nydarn had been already copied by Mr. Petersen with great care and delicacy on 33 copper plates. The silver cap and mask, richly decorated with gold, here borne by the young kemp , will be found on the Thorsbjerg Plate No. 5, Fig. 3, 4, text p. 45. breast decorations of gold and silver ; Thorsbjerg PI. 6. Iron ring-brinie or Mail-shirt, with clasps of gold and silver; Thorsbjerg PI. 6. Silver clasp; Nydarn PI. 5. waist-belt of silver. Silver mountings for shoblder-belt. Thorsbjerg PI. 11. Bronze fittings of sword -hanger; Thorsbjerg PI. 11. sword-hilt, silver; Nydarn PI. 6. sword-sheath of wood, with silver mountings; Nydarn PI. 8. Golden arm-ring; Thorsbjerg PI. 16 and p. 42. qdiver, of bronze; Nydarn PI. 13. bow and arrow, of wood; Nydarn PI. 12, Thorsbjerg PI. 12. kirtle, of red woollen cloth, with woven pattern in the sleeves; Thorsbjerg PI. 1. Tawney-colored trowsers, of woollen cloth. cloak, of woollen cloth woven in a twill-pattern, green with yellow- striped fringe. Thorsbjerg PI. 2. shoes, leather with silver nails; Thorsbjerg PI. 3. Wooden shield, with silver rand and fitting of bronze; Thorsbjerg PI. 8. shield-boss, silver with embost golden ornaments and onlaid figures of golden plate; Thorsbjerg PI. 8, Fig. 18. Leather head-stall and bridle, fittings of bronze and silver; Thorsbjerg PI. 13. lances; Nydarn PI. 10 and 11. Clinker-built oaken boat, 77 feet long by 10 feet 10 inches in the middle; Nydarn PI. 1 and 2. IN MINNE OF THE BRAOTEATISTS AND COIN-KENNERS OF SCANDINAVIA; WITH MANY GREETINGS ARCHIVARY C. F. HERBST, OF C 'HE APING HAVEN. 505 BRACTEATES. Of these rich and remarkable rune-bearing golden pieces we know nothing. We cannot say when they were struck, or where. Various theories have been advanced concerning them. They have been regarded as Asiatic, as Slavonic, as Barbarous, &c. , and have been commonly lookt upon as Money. In several essays, particularly in the Christiania Videnskabs-Selskabs Forhandlinger for 1858, p. 186 and following, Prof. C. A. Holmboe has endeavored to show the origin of several of the Brac- teate types in Indian Coins. He has especially pointed out the great similarity between the pattern with a Human Head over a Quadruped and the representation of the god Shiva or his spouse Durga standing beside or treading on an Ox, as given on many Indian Coins struck in the centuries next be¬ fore and after the time of Christ. This hint is undoubtedly deserving of some consideration. Certain it is that few of the earlier Bracteate-stamps can be directly connected with “classical” prototypes. We must therefore also look elsewhere. By induction, Thomsen1 has made some ingenious guesses, and has come nearer to the truth than his predecessors. Comparing them with the Greek and Roman Coins and Medals which they occasionally in some degree copy and reflect, as to style and ornamenta¬ tion, he has divided them into 1. Pieces made abroad, say between the years 350-700. About half a dozen only. 2. Pieces made in Scandinavia, about A. D. 450-800. Nearly 50 in number. 3. Pieces made abroad between 1000 and 1100. Only a couple. With the exception of Thomsen’s 3rd class, which are evidently modern, wherever made, I think that the great majority of these “hollow roundels” is far older than the date he assigns to them. It strikes me that they mostly belong to the Early and the beginning of the later Iron Age, and must date from about the 3rd and 4th or at least the 4th and 5th century, downwards, which is also the conclusion to which Archivary Herbst has come. As far as can be gathered from what we know, they had gone greatly out of fashion by about the year 600. Hence they are rare in England. The North¬ men gradually occupied Britain in the 4th to the 6th age, but especially the 6th. Had the fashion of manufacturing Bracteates been then in its full strength, they would have been more plentiful in England. But they are found chiefly in Scandinavia. Those discovered in other countries than the Northern, and they are very few, have evidently been carried from place to place, like Cufic and Classical pieces, and other jewels and movables. The language also is very archaic, and points back to great antiquity. Scarce in England, and unknown in the later Scandian settlements in Iceland, Greenland, the Western lies, &c„ we must apparently date them, not later, generally, than the great Northern settlements in Britain. Thus they will almost always be earlier than the 7th century. Exceptions of course there are, for they did not stop suddenly; but I speak of the mass, the earliest and the best. We have here to deal with the Rune-bearers. Great numbers are found, more or less identical in type, ivithout any letters. A strong inductive proof of the antiquity of Bracteate-like Pendent Ornaments generally is, that we meet with such — generally altogether similar in look and make to the Northern Bracteates In “Atlas for Nordisk Oldkyndighed”, and “Om Guldbracteateme”. See the exact titles in runic literature. 506 BR ACTE AXES. but without letter's, aud with strikingly different markings - — very often in the South and sometimes in the North of Europe in finds consisting chiefly of Roman or Romanized, occasionally Byzantine, re¬ mains, dating from the 2nd1, the 3rd, the 4th and the 5th centuries. These Romanized pendants, to use a convenient term, have been discovered on skeletons in graves, in such situations as to show that they were decorations on frontlets on necklaces on belts and other fillets, either with or without beads of amber, glass, mosaic, &c., and were worn by women and children as well as by men. Often they have turned up in clumps of golden pieces no longer lookt upon as money or as ornaments but only as treasure, bullion, a descent which must have taken time, at least a century. These Romanized Pen¬ dants are usually round, but also square, oblong, triangular, &c., even shaped like a halfmoon, of pure gold, with the eye or loop for suspension, often with a workt or twisted band or setting round them; in some cases they have even been used together with Roman or Byzantine coins, chiefly of gold, thro which a hole has been drilled for the suspensory thread. Many such golden coins have been found in Scandinavia, set and used exactly as the Braeteates. But Romanized Pendants have one peculiarity: either they are quite blank, or else they have the simplest pattern — circles, lines, winds — types altogether different from those which distinguish the Braeteates. These latter are nearly all found in the Northern lands, the former nearly all in the Southern lands. Thus they are distinctive groups, separate both in locality and in pattern. And the Romanized Pendants have never the rich and peculiar “barbarously”-elegant frames or settings into which the Braeteates have so often been fitted. Now should we say that the Braeteates are merely and only imitations of imitations of the Romanized Pendants, we shall be entangled in an inextricable dilemma. For their date would then be from the 6th to the 9th age. But this is impossible. The Old-Northern Runes, stampt on so many of the Braeteates of all types, were beginning to give way in the 7th century, and had become scarce in Scandinavia in the 8th. Besides this , the style and work are generally and undoubtedly far older than the 7th and 8th century. It must also be remembered that they are all heathen , bear no Christian symbol? show no sign of Christian art or influence. It is evident therefore — altho both may possibly have sprung from a common source, the use of golden or other coins, Classical or otherwise, as Hanging Ornaments — that these two streams of suspensory jewels were contemporaneous, executed by different artists with different schools of decora¬ tion, the Braeteates in the North of Europe and the Romanized Pendants in the South and West. It is very note-worthy that in the Vi Moss, Fyn, Denmark, whose date is about 300-350 or earlier, a button or rivet of bronze with silver edging was found, in the great diggings of 1865, de¬ corated with a small stamp or carving exactly like a Golden Bracteate. One of the commonest Bracteate types is the Dragon or Writhing Worm. Hence it has been said that these pieces are of a comparatively later date. But the newest finds in Scandinavia, partic¬ ularly in the Danish Mosses, have proved that the Worm-ornament is far earlier than we had sup¬ posed; consequently this argument is now no longer tenable. In a word, when we put together all their characteristics and come at last to a final judg¬ ment, we cannot but conclude that the Golden Braeteates belong to the antique class of Northern remains , and chiefly date from the Early Iron Age. Many Golden Braeteates without Runes have been found from time to time in England 2, but never, as far as I am aware, under circumstances exactly fixing the date. The largest hoard turned up at once was by J. Brent, the Younger, Esq. F. S. A., in 1863, in his antiquarian diggings at Sarr in the Hand of Thanet, Kent. In grave No. 4, that of a Lady, which contained many other valuables together with 2 Roman coins (of Aurelius and, as is supposed, of Tetricus), he discovered 6 of these pieces, 3 of them being struck from one die. In auother grave (No. 90, also that of a female) he found 1 such piece. The 6 are figured by him, and show us that they all belong to the most “bar¬ barous” sort known to us, exhibiting only broken twists and slightly winding lines. Mr. Brent’s text on these is as follows : 1 Several pieces of this kind found in Italy are apparently as old as the first century . some perhaps one or two hundred years still earlier. 2 In describing the discovery of such pieces, some late English writers have adopted the affected word Bullce. But they are not Bullm. however nearly they may be allied to that Roman child-ornament, and a name so calculated to mislead should not be employed. BRACTEATES. 507 “The Gold .Pendants' (Plate 1, Figs. 1-6). — These are thin circular plates of gold, stamped in patterns, and supplied with loops, also of gold, for suspension. They are of 3 sizes. The diameter of the largest is about li inch, and its weight 3 dwts. 3 grs.; of the smallest 1* inch, and 1 dwt. 21 grs.; the remaining four are alike in size, intermediate between these two, and weigh 2 dwts. 17 grs. They are of pure gold, and stamped on one side only, the central ornament in them all being curious patterns of scrolled and interlaced figures1, some of which are like attempts at emblematical designs, — rude hints, perhaps, afterwards improved by other Northern and German nations, and ingrafted into those architectural designs which gave a new style to Europe. The largest example has a beaded edge, and a second circular line a quarter of an inch within it; the space between the two being filled with a double-lined zigzag- ornament: this pendant, too, has a small twist of gold overlaid at the junction of the loop. The others have only their edges beaded, and in smaller beading, except two, which have a circle of rather scanty dots just within this, and one of which has four little knobs overlaid where the loop joins. “Mr. C. Roach Smith, in. his ‘Collectanea Antiqua’, enumerating the Saxon [Old-English] or¬ naments from Ozingell, gives an example very like these pendants, though less in size than the smallest; and another, embossed not dissimilarly, is in Plate xi of the ‘Inventorium Sepulchrale’. A single example was afterwards found in another grave at Sarr, with beads of amber