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
Fig. 45.—Profile of mound of the bronze age, with large coffin and
unburnt body, and stone cist with cinerary urn containing burnt
bones, also three smaller stone cists filled with burnt bones.
Dömmerstorf, S. Halland.
]
[Illustration:
Fig. 46.—Mound and sepulchral cist. The stones in this grave were of
size of the fist, and formed a pavement of a diameter of about a
yard. The urn contained burnt bones, among which were found a bronze
awl, and fragments of a bronze saw.
]
[Illustration:
Fig. 47.—Mound at Elsehoved, Fyen. At the bottom, in the centre of the
mound, was found an irregular grave filled with earth, of about 4
feet 9 inches in length, 1 foot 9 inches in width, 1 foot 10 inches
in depth (measured inside). Outside, on the natural soil, was spread
a bed of earth, rich in charcoal, which contained remains of burnt
bones and pieces of a clay urn, &c.
]
Burnt and unburnt bodies are sometimes found in the same mound; the
latter generally at the bottom of the graves, the former at the top,
this shows that the graves with unburnt bodies are considerably the
older of the two. A mound with several graves may possibly have been the
burial place of one family. The graves of the later bronze age are more
numerous on the shores of the Baltic than in other parts of Europe.
Sometimes the burnt remains have been found wrapped in clothing, and
placed in an ordinary sized coffin, but more generally these burnt bones
are preserved in urns of clay enclosed in a small stone cist.
[Illustration:
Fig. 48.—Cairn covered with earth, bronze age, Kongstrup, Zealand.
Diameter nearly 40 feet; height, 10 feet; covered with about 3 feet
of clay, containing over thirty urns, one of which was fastened with
a resin-like substance; with burnt bones and cinders, protected by
little sepulchral cists made of slabs.
]
[Illustration:
Fig. 49.—Mound of the bronze age, covering a double ring of stones;
diameter of outside ring 86 feet; containing several burial-places,
with urns and burnt bones.—Near Kallundborg, Zealand.
]
These stone cists of about the length of an average man are interesting
as indicating the transition to the small ones containing burnt bones;
some of these of a size large enough for an unburnt body have contained
only a small heap of burnt bones, and evidently belonged to the period
when the cremation of the dead began to prevail. Many of these little
cists are only large enough to enclose a clay pot, in which the bones
were collected; sometimes no coffins were found, but only clay pots
containing ashes, a small bronze knife, a bit of bronze saw, or
something of that kind. In some cases the bones were put simply into a
hole in the mound and the whole covered with a stone slab.
[Illustration:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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