(bog) on the Danish island of Als unearthed the remains of a beautifullycrafted timber boat measuring well over 60 feet long and between eight and nine feet wide. The so-called Hjortspring Boat was ‘clinker-built’ – meaning the long limewood planks had been fitted together so their edges overlapped. In later periods the planks would have been fixed with wooden dowels or metal rivets, but in the case of the Hjortspring Boat the builders used twisted fibres made from tree roots to ‘sew’ the timbers together. It is the oldest clinker-built vessel found so far in the whole of Scandinavia.
At least as fascinating as the boat itself is the huge hoard of Iron Age weaponry and other equipment it contained. Piled inside the vessel were scores of iron swords, iron spearheads, lance heads of iron and bone, and more than 60 wooden shields. There were also perhaps a dozen coats of iron chain mail as well as many small bronze objects and wooden equipment including axe-handles, clubs, the crafted nozzle for a pair of blacksmith’s bellows, round plates, spoons and cups. Careful excavation revealed the boat and its contents had been dragged overland to a small lake, and there deliberately sunk. Radiocarbon dates indicated the whole lot was deposited sometime between 350 and 300 BC .
There in the Hjortspring bog, then, is a snapshot of a single, bloody day in Danish prehistory. Given the amount of weapons it seems likely a war party, an army even, set out to attack the island of Als. Perhaps the chain mail was worn by the squad leaders, marking them out as men of rank and status. Under their command, in four or five similarly sized boats, were a further 60–80 fighting men. Despite being armed to the teeth, despite the potential for a surprise attack afforded by their sleek and speedy craft, it seems the day went badly for the raiders. It looks as though the defenders of Als were able to stop the attackers in their tracks. Presumably the raiders were either cut down or fled the field. The victors then gathered up the weaponsof their foes and heaped them into one of the boats. This they dragged to the shore of a little lake, comfortably inside their tribal territory and already important to them as the home of a deity. Knowing full well their victory had been gifted to them by their benevolent god, the people of Als were careful to repay the debt by making him a gift of all their booty.
The Hjortspring Boat makes plain that in the Early Iron Age the tradition of sea travel had continued and developed – but it is not quite a long ship. It reveals a stage in the development of those legendary ocean-going warships of the eighth century AD and later, but there was still a long way to go before the Scandinavian ship-builders would make vessels capable of crossing the North Sea, far less the North Atlantic Ocean. Neither is there enough in the way of archaeological evidence to suggest the existence in the Scandinavian territories, in those last centuries before the birth of Christ, of even fledgling states or kingdoms.
It would take the influence exerted by civilisations developing far to the south to create the conditions suitable for growing little kingdoms in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and little kings to rule them. From around 800 BC , people living around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea witnessed the emergence of societies that would change the world for ever. The Phoenicians rose in the east, on land occupied now by modern Lebanon and Syria. Around the Aegean were the tribes that would in time give birth to Greek civilisation. Northern Italy was then home to the Etruscans who, by 800 BC , were skilled blacksmiths. They were already in command of the written word as well, using an alphabet adapted from that of the Greeks. The origins of the Etruscan people are still debated today but some scholars suggest they may have arrived in the Italian peninsula from a homeland somewhere in Asia or the Middle East.
While the
At least as fascinating as the boat itself is the huge hoard of Iron Age weaponry and other equipment it contained. Piled inside the vessel were scores of iron swords, iron spearheads, lance heads of iron and bone, and more than 60 wooden shields. There were also perhaps a dozen coats of iron chain mail as well as many small bronze objects and wooden equipment including axe-handles, clubs, the crafted nozzle for a pair of blacksmith’s bellows, round plates, spoons and cups. Careful excavation revealed the boat and its contents had been dragged overland to a small lake, and there deliberately sunk. Radiocarbon dates indicated the whole lot was deposited sometime between 350 and 300 BC .
There in the Hjortspring bog, then, is a snapshot of a single, bloody day in Danish prehistory. Given the amount of weapons it seems likely a war party, an army even, set out to attack the island of Als. Perhaps the chain mail was worn by the squad leaders, marking them out as men of rank and status. Under their command, in four or five similarly sized boats, were a further 60–80 fighting men. Despite being armed to the teeth, despite the potential for a surprise attack afforded by their sleek and speedy craft, it seems the day went badly for the raiders. It looks as though the defenders of Als were able to stop the attackers in their tracks. Presumably the raiders were either cut down or fled the field. The victors then gathered up the weaponsof their foes and heaped them into one of the boats. This they dragged to the shore of a little lake, comfortably inside their tribal territory and already important to them as the home of a deity. Knowing full well their victory had been gifted to them by their benevolent god, the people of Als were careful to repay the debt by making him a gift of all their booty.
The Hjortspring Boat makes plain that in the Early Iron Age the tradition of sea travel had continued and developed – but it is not quite a long ship. It reveals a stage in the development of those legendary ocean-going warships of the eighth century AD and later, but there was still a long way to go before the Scandinavian ship-builders would make vessels capable of crossing the North Sea, far less the North Atlantic Ocean. Neither is there enough in the way of archaeological evidence to suggest the existence in the Scandinavian territories, in those last centuries before the birth of Christ, of even fledgling states or kingdoms.
It would take the influence exerted by civilisations developing far to the south to create the conditions suitable for growing little kingdoms in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, and little kings to rule them. From around 800 BC , people living around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea witnessed the emergence of societies that would change the world for ever. The Phoenicians rose in the east, on land occupied now by modern Lebanon and Syria. Around the Aegean were the tribes that would in time give birth to Greek civilisation. Northern Italy was then home to the Etruscans who, by 800 BC , were skilled blacksmiths. They were already in command of the written word as well, using an alphabet adapted from that of the Greeks. The origins of the Etruscan people are still debated today but some scholars suggest they may have arrived in the Italian peninsula from a homeland somewhere in Asia or the Middle East.
While the
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