Fairies -- Great Britain; Folklore -- Great Britain; Great Britain -- Antiquities; Picts; Scotland -- Antiquities
"Immediately after this excavation of 17-19 September, 1868, C.P.
Hansen writes as follows:--
"'There are in the island of Sylt hillocks of ancient origin, for
the most part pagan burying-places, but some of which may have
served as the dwelling-places of a primitive people. One such
hillock has just been opened at Wenningstedt. The interior was
found to be a chamber, 17 feet long, 10 feet in breadth, and from 5
to 6 feet in height, with a covered passage about 22 feet long,
trending southward. The walls of this underground room were
composed of twelve large granite blocks, regularly arranged; the
roof consisted of three still larger slabs of the same kind of
rock; the stones which formed the passage were smaller. At one
corner of the floor of the cellar there was a well-defined
fireplace, and near it were urns and flint implements; in the
opposite corner there were many bones lying, apparently unburned,
probably those of the last dweller in the cavern.'"
Mr. Christian Jensen gives an account of "Der Denghoog bei Wenningstedt"
in the "Beilage zu Nr. 146 der Flensburger Nachrichten" of 25th June
1893, in which he says:
"... On the floor of the chamber, three separate divisions were
distinctly visible, of which one, situated on the east side, showed
traces of having been a fireplace. Professor Wibel found several
fragments of human bones, which evidently belonged only to _one_
individual, as no portion was duplicated; also a few animals'
bones. There was an extraordinary number of fragments of pottery,
belonging to about 24 different urns, of which 11 could be put
together. Their form and ornamentation were both fine and varied,
an interesting witness to the ceramics of the grey past.... Among
the stone implements found were a great many flint-knives; two
stone hatchets, two chisels, and a gouge, all of flint, and a disc
of porphyry were also obtained. Several mineral substances,
quartzite, rubble-stones, gravel, ochre, a sinter-heap--these are
less interesting than the seven amber beads which, with some
charcoal, completes the list of objects found. Referring to former
investigations of galleried mounds [_gangbauten_], which seem to
have been used in some cases as burying-places, in others as
dwellings, Dr. Wibel observes, in answer to the question resulting
from his discovery, as to whether the Denghoog ought to be regarded
as a sepulchre or as a dwelling, that, as Nilsson has already said,
all gallery-mounds were originally dwellings, and occasionally
became utilised as tombs. In the case of the Denghoog, this fact is
demonstrated by the fireplace, the scattered potsherds, the amber
beads, &c."
[Footnote 93: _Heligoland_, Edin. and Lond., 1888, pp. 84-85.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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