The first of these is the triple group at Upsala, now popularly known as the graves of Thor, Wodin, and Freya. It may illustrate the difficulty of obtaining correct information regarding these monuments to state that, even so late as 1869, Sir John Lubbock, who is generally so well informed, and had such means of obtaining information, did not know that they had been opened.[343] I was aware of a passage in Marryatt's travels in Sweden in which, writing on the spot, he asserts that one of them had been opened, and that "in its 'giant's chamber' were found the bones of a woman, and, among other things, a piece of a gold filagree bracelet, richly ornamented in spiral decoration, some dice, and a chessman, either the king or a knight."[344] Wishing, however, for further information, I obtained an introduction to Mr. Hans Hildebrand, who gave me the following information. Subsequently I received a letter from Professor Carl Säve, of Upsala, who kindly abstracted for me the only published accounts of the excavations as they appeared in a local paper at the time. These were forwarded to me by Professor Geo. Stephens, of Copenhagen, who also was so obliging as to translate them. They are so interesting that I have printed them, as they stand, as Appendix B. From these two documents the following account is compiled, and may be thoroughly depended upon. One of the mounds, known as that of Wodin, was opened, in 1846, under the superintendence of Herr Hildebrand, the royal antiquary of Sweden. It was soon found that the mounds were situated on a ridge of gravel, so that the tunnel had to take an upward, direction. At the junction of the natural with the artificial soil, a cairn was found of closely compacted stones, each about as large as a man could lift. In the centre of the cairn the burial urn was found in the grave-chamber, containing calcined bones, ashes, fragments of bronze ornaments destroyed by fire, and a fragment of a gold ornament delicately wrought. Within the cairn, but a little away from the urn, were found a heap of dogs' bones, equally calcined by fire, and fragments of two golden bracteates. "The workmanship of the gold ornaments," Herr Hildebrand adds, "closely resembles that of the gold bracteates of the fifth or sixth centuries, and, with the fragments of these peculiar ornaments themselves, settles a date before which these mounds could not have been raised." How much later they may be, it is not easy to conjecture, without at least seeing the bracteates, which do not seem to have been published. With a little local industry, I have very little doubt, not only that the date of these tombs could be ascertained, but the names of the royal personages who were therein buried, probably in the sixth or seventh century of our era.