Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and UsesFergusson, James
History
Rude Stone Monuments in All Countries: Their Age and Uses
Fergusson, James
Megalithic monuments
consequently belong to any age between Arthur and Charlemagne.
* * * * *
The remaining battle-fields of which representations are given in
Sjöborg are scarcely so interesting as that at Braavalla, which with
the tomb of the king slain there are landmarks in our enquiry. If those
circles on Braavalla Heath do mark the battle-field, and that tomb at
Lethra is the one in which the blind old king was laid--neither of
which facts I see any reason for doubting--all difficulties based on
the assumed improbability of the monuments being so modern as I am
inclined to make them are removed, and each case must stand or fall
according to the evidence that can be adduced for or against its age.
To return, however, to the battle-fields given by Sjöborg. Figures 43
and 44 represent two groups of circles and Bauta stones near Hwitaby,
in Malmö. These are said to mark two battle-fields, in which Ragnar
Lothbrok gained victories over his rebellious subjects in Scania:
Sjöborg says in 750 and 762, as he adopts a chronology fifty years
earlier than Suhm. But be this as it may, there does not seem any
reason for doubting but that these stones do mark fields where battles
were fought in the eighth century, and that Ragnar Lothbrok took part
in them. These groups are much less extensive than those at Braavalla,
but are so similar that they cannot be distant from them in age.
At Stiklastad, in Norway, in the province of Drontheim, a battle was
fought, in 1030, between Knut the Great and Olof the Holy; and close
to this is a group of forty-four circles of stones, which Sjöborg
seems, but somewhat doubtfully, to connect with this battle. But about
the next one (fig. 49) there seems no doubt. The Danish prince Magnus
Henricksson killed Erik the Holy, and was slain by Carl Sverkersson,
in the year 1161, at Uppland, in Denmark; and the place is marked
by twenty stone circles and ovals, most of them enclosing mounds
and two square enclosures, 30 to 40 feet in diameter. They are not,
consequently, in themselves very important, but are interesting, if
the adscription is correct, as showing how this heathenish custom
lasted even after Christianity must have been fairly established in the
country. Another group (fig. 51) is said to mark the spot where, in
1150, a Swedish heroine, Blenda, overcame the Danish king Swen Grate,
and the spot is marked by circles and Bauta stones; one, in front of a
tumulus, bears a Runic inscription, though it merely says that Dedrik
and Tunne raised the stone to Rumar the Good.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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