The Viking Age. Volume 1 (of 2): The early history, manners, and customs of the ancestors of the English-speaking nationsDu Chaillu, Paul B. (Paul Belloni)
History
The Viking Age. Volume 1 (of 2): The early history, manners, and customs of the ancestors of the English-speaking nations
_The dead sit along the walls_, young and old, men and women, the chin
resting in both hands, with their legs drawn up. Thin slabs form the
cells round each skeleton, and are about 3 feet high, consequently
do not reach the roof. Arrow points, knives, etc., of flintstone,
are found with the men, pieces of amber with the women.
Numbers of similar graves are found in Sweden and Denmark, a single
grave sometimes containing nearly one hundred bodies.
]
[Illustration:
Fig. 7.—Plan of above grave.
]
Gallery or passage graves consisted of a chamber and a narrow gallery
leading into it, the whole being covered by a mound, the base of which
was generally surrounded by a circle of larger or smaller stones.
[Illustration:
Fig. 8.—Passage grave near Karleby—front view; length of the main
gallery, covered by nine large stones, 52 feet; width, 7 feet;
length of passage, 40 feet; height, 6 feet.
]
The chamber in a passage grave is either oblong, square, oval, or nearly
round; the walls are formed by large upright blocks, not quite smooth,
though even on the inside; the interstices are generally carefully
filled up with gravel or fragments of stone, and birch bark is sometimes
found between the blocks. The roof was formed by immense flat slabs or
blocks, smooth on the under side, but rough on the top, the interstices
being closed in the same manner as those in the walls. The floor is
sometimes covered with small flat stones, but usually with earth. On the
long side of the chamber there is an opening, from which a passage was
built in the same manner as the chamber, only longer and narrower. This
passage, or more precisely its inner part, was covered with blocks
resembling the roof blocks of the chamber, but smaller; near the inner
opening of the passage, and the outer end of its covered part a kind of
door setting has been often found, consisting of a stone threshold and
two narrow doorposts.
[Illustration:
Fig. 9.—Side view of passage grave near Karleby.
]
[Illustration:
Fig. 10.—Ground-plan of passage grave near Karleby.
The irregular lines show the position of the slabs covering the grave.
]
The passage graves vary much in size. The length of the chamber is
generally from 11½ to 23 feet, its width from 5 to 10 feet; height from
3½ to 4½ feet. The passage is often as long as the chamber, or even
longer, and its width is from 2 to 4 feet, and height from 3 to 5 feet.
But some are much larger, and are called giants’ graves. One of the
largest of these graves is that of Karleby, near Falköping,
Vestergötland, in Sweden, where a great number of the graves of the
stone age have been found.
[Illustration:
Fig. 11.—Stone coffin (hällkista) near Skattened, in Södra Ryrs
parish, Vestergötland, 21¼ feet in length. Graves of this type are
very numerous in Bohuslan also, and in Dal and south-western
Vermland.
]
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