Bronze Age. 1800. BC The Bronze Age is in many areas a rich period in Danish history. The climate is getting warmer and the contact with the rest of the world is getting more intense. The flint that was known from the Stone Age as raw materials for the manufacture of tools and weapons is replaced by the bronze.

The bronze comes from Central Europe, and there must have been a great deal of trade between the individual areas in Europe. It was transported by boats up through Europe's rivers and exchanged with other local products.

Many magnificent things are made of bronze, e.g. the lures, jewelry, kitchen utensils, combs, razors, axes. It is from this period that archaeologists have found entire well-preserved tombs often in oak coffins, where through the deceased it has been possible to study dress, nutrition, physiology, jewelry.

Bronze Age people also left behind works of art by means of petroglyphs, which often show people in ritual events or are depicted both with primitive sails.

Iron Age. 500 BC to 700 AD. The Iron Age in Denmark is divided into 3 major periods, the first period is called the Celtic Iron Age and lasts from approx. 500 BC and to year 0.

Iron is the new raw material used with inspiration in the Middle East to make tools and weapons. Iron is more durable, more bronze and it could be extracted in Denmark in the form of ant ore from the bogs. There are numerous archeological finds of primitive blast furnaces showing that iron was widespread to many in the community, not just a privilege for a skilled merchant.

The climate changed a lot during the period, but it got colder and rainier so the population moved to fortified villages, indicating that there were internal wars and conflicts. During this period a people broke up from the east, possibly from Hungary, the Czech Republic and started a migration of people. They were called the Celts and they were superior to other peoples because they used weapons of iron.

In the first place against the well-established and civilized Rome and from here one has the first written accounts of the ravages of the Celts. Later, the Celts spread across Europe and reached as far as Britain.

Their cultural influence on other peoples was great, and there are many finds from the Celtic Iron Age in Denmark. So there was certainly a great deal of trade with the Celts, but much of the dynamic art and pottery of the Bronze Age disappeared. 

The next period in the Danish Iron Age is called the Roman Iron Age, from about the year 0 to 400 AD. Rome had gradually become a great power, and it had an impact on the whole of Europe, culturally, economically and politically.

Rome subjugated large parts of Asia and the Middle East, and not least Europe. Rome played a central role in trade between the countries and Roman merchants traveled to the north to sell their goods. New and unknown goods appeared in the local markets, and coins from the civilized south were used in the north. Roman burial customs gained traction among local chiefs. Not everyone was enthusiastic about the Roman influence, and there were often wars between Germanic tribes and the Roman legionaries.

The border with the Roman Empire was on the Rhine, and here large urban communities emerged with well-established social structures, which must have been a great source of inspiration for the small backward Denmark.

The last period in the Danish Iron Age is called the Germanic Iron Age, and is from approx. 400 AD to 700 AD.

In around 400 AD, there are uprisings all over Europe, the background is not known, but there are large groups of people wandering from place to place in Europe. Often new population groups settle in an area and this creates conflict with the area's former residents. Many on the move seek south, and large groups of Germanic tribes were on the offensive, attacking Rome itself.

Rome gradually lost its significance and the well-established trade routes were destroyed. It is a turbulent period, again marked by change. The weather was cold most of the time with lots of rain. The cultural superiority of the great power Rome disappeared in conflicts and through Germanic tribes conquests.

There are numerous archeological finds from the period in Denmark, often finds related to conflicts and wars, especially the large weapons sacrifices have aroused interest, but also the first large frame-built boats have given a great insight into the creativity of the time.

Read more about this period. Links to articles will be available later :

The girl from the bog. Egtvedpigen 

Rock carvings  

What the bog hid  

Ole Jørgen Nørgaard

Burials of the Stone  Age people.
From the end of the Peasant Stone Age, large stone graves are found for the head of the extended family-based society of the Stone Age. They were built for one man and later used by others, probably still higher-ranking extended family members, until they died.

The burials of the Yamnayas.
After the great migration and immigration, it was graves in long lines from the immigrant people, the Yamnayars, also called the battle ax people or the single grave people, that filled up Jutland. They were fairly unassuming low single graves, gathered in rows, where the deceased was just buried with a few grave goods and covered with a small mound.

Funerals of the Nobilities.
In the oldest and earliest part of the Bronze Age, the large burial mounds with oak coffins appear. They were built within 130 years and in limited numbers, so many of those buried in the mounds must have known each other.
(Funerals of completely ordinary people are mentioned at the end here)

Despite their rather simple appearance, the mounds are a masterpiece. The mounds are built around an oak chest, a piece of oak trunk about 2 m from a thousand-year-old trunk. It is split, so that you get a narrow lid and a larger part underneath, which is again hollowed out to form a chest. The coffin can hold a deceased person with grave goods. At the foot of the coffin there is a drainage hole at the bottom, so water and other liquids could run out of the coffin.

The coffin has been stabilized with some stones around it. Around and above the coffin, a burial mound of several meters of turf from the moor has been piled according to a template. The heather side was down. Only the outermost part was laid with the heather side up.

When the mound is finished, it has been watered thoroughly and left with the certainty that the contents will be able to remain unchanged for the foreseeable future, at least for a century. In fact, the high showers in the mound had created the same oxygen-poor preservation conditions that the bog later got in the peat bogs.

The mound was a perpetual motion machine!
The peat is weakly iron-rich. The iron will dissolve in the rainwater and very slowly seep downward until, at a certain distance from the surface, it condenses so much that it precipitates as a shell of rust, which could eventually enclose the coffin like a can or at least a bowl and preserve its contents.

The people who built the mounds and those who were buried in the mounds knew that. They were well aware that they would be preserved for eternity unless someone opened the mound.

This is known because the ancients did not refrain from looting other people's burial mounds and therefore must have found well-preserved corpses many years after the owner was buried.

A burial mound cost a farm, quite literally. The many peats that had been used for the mound were peeled off the moor, leaving a large, bare surface completely devoid of vegetation. Sooner or later, the high-rise construction would threaten the cattle operation.

Profession of the noble people.
Now it is also not certain that the highlanders lived from cattle breeding alone. Professor Kristian Kristiansen from Gothenburg University has drawn up the following calculation:

There have been approx. 300,000 people in the country here, spread over 40,000 farms. Each farm has had two bronze axes of approx. ½ kg each. This gives a total of 80,000 axes of 40,000 kg. Approx. 5 percent is lost by remelting, wear and grinding per year. Approx. 2000 kg must therefore be imported annually just to maintain the stock. So there must have been an organized international trade in bronze from the south.

The other way went amber and perhaps slaves. Amber was then considered to be fragments of the Sun God himself when it collided with something on the horizon, e.g. in the sea. Therefore, it was highly sought after.

Wealth, power, trade.
Maintaining trade across Europe required both goods to travel with, capital and military strength to secure the routes, i.e. merchants, travelers and a warrior aristocracy. In recent years, it has become clear that woolen clothing has also been sold on a large scale from the south and north. Northern Europe could not process wool. More on that later. Salt probably also came from the south. The nobles may very well be involved in this trade as organizers, traders, transporters and or guards – or rather: they almost must have been. Where else did their wealth come from?

Women of the noble people.
Several of the women found in the mounds were wearing drawstring skirts. Corded skirts similar to those of the Juds have been found in the Yamnaya areas all the way to the east on the border with China, so The drawstring skirt is Yamnaya – the women's clothing of the elite. It is impractical. It gets stuck in everything possible. If there are small bronze tubes on the threads of the skirt, it makes a real noise when the woman moves, so you must have known where she was all along. Then there was a check on her. Work clothes are not!

Who were the exclusive few who were buried in the mounds? One is allowed to guess that it was an absolute elite? So let's take a look at them or rather what they have left behind.
Of the many that have been found, we choose a few of the best studied

The most famous of them is undoubtedly Egtvedpigen.

February 24, 1921, farm owner Peter Platz from Egtved wrote to the National Museum in Copenhagen that while moving (still) a burial mound in his field he came across "a hollowed-out tree trunk with a lid - - - I suppose it is an old burial - - - -and have stopped the work until I hear more from you - - -”.

At the National Museum, the farm owner's letter caused no trace of excitement!: on the contrary! No one would go to the darkened Jutland in winter. One did not want to, one was not well, one could not travel, etc.In the end, the elderly Thomas Thomsen left.

In Egtved, the coffin was now set free and the split lid was lifted off and the contents of the coffin were seen. The owner of the farm was lying ill, but still got up to see the contents. However, the contents were completely covered with animal hair (which later turned out to be a cowhide.)

A birch bucket at the foot of the coffin was picked up and wrapped.The contents of the coffin were covered with tissue paper and long straw and the lid was put back on. The oak coffin was boxed for transport and sent by rail to the National Museum in Copenhagen.

The coffin is opened at the National Museum.
Here they opened the coffin again and removed long straw and tissue paper. The animal hair covering the contents turned out to be an inside-out cow hide, but the skin of the hide was gone! The hair was neatly gathered, but loose!

The skilled conservators created an artificial skin with which they covered the hairs and after a certain waiting time they tried to pull the artificial skin with the hairs aside. Managed! Under the cowhide lay a flower of a yarrow.

The body was covered with a thin cloth of sheep's wool, over which another cloth could be placed and the two cloths rolled together in a roll.
Now you could see the deceased.

A thin skin was left covering the girl's face. All the bones were gone, dissolved by the acidic water in the mound. Only some connective tissue was preserved. It was all just waiting to fall together.

The girl's teeth were still under the skin, but not held in place by the jaws, which were gone. They later fell to the bottom of the coffin. So did the nails.When her hair was lifted, the brain was exposed. The skull was gone, dissolved by the acidic water in the mound.

A small, oval box made of linen bark lay by the girl's head. It contained an awl with a handle and a string of sheep's wool and horsetail hair, perhaps parts of a hairnet. There was an earring under the head. 

She was wearing a half-sleeved shirt and a drawstring skirt. On her stomach she had a round brass plate in a belt buckle. In the belt was a comb and a needle. On her left wrist she had a solid bracelet, on her right a thinner one. On the feet rags.

A cord of sheep and goat hair also lay in the upper half of the coffin. The cord later turned out to be the only local material in the coffin.In the coffin was a fabric bag with the burnt bones of a child, approx. 8 years old. Since the age of the girl, judging from the teeth, was estimated at 16-18 years. Has it hardly been her child. 

A burial mound cost a farm, quite literally. The many peats that had been used for the mound were peeled off the moor, leaving a large, bare surface completely devoid of vegetation. Sooner or later, the high-rise construction would threaten the cattle operation.

The girl  from the bog .
Then there was the birch bin with sediment. It turned out to be the dregs of a drink of honey and wheat, spiced with a myriad of wild plants. I have not been able to find a C14 dating of the Egtvedpigen. Presumably, it was not found necessary, as the oak coffin could be dendrochronologically dated by the oak tree's years-rings to the year 1370 B.C.. This year the tree for the coffin was felled.Now that could have been interesting if the two ages didn't match. What if the oak tree had been felled several years before the girl died?

The Girl is slightly Dressed.
As a curiosity, it should be mentioned that the girl was then presented in several professional journals with a long skirt on the outside or inside the string skirt. So thigh-short a skirt was not acceptable - back then. The placement of the bronze plate on the abdomen was also subject to heated debate right up to the 1930s: above or below the round of the stomach? The moralists in the new, German-inspired movements absolutely wanted the plate above the round of the stomach, even though all experience from abroad and trials said: wonder!The girl was accepted as the most Danish of all finds from the past and thigh-short skirts later became a fashion.Then something happened!

The girl and Karin Margurita Frei.
A woman took an interest in Egtvedpigen .The woman was Karin Margarita Frei. Now Professor of Archaeometry. She had started as a geologist and from there had knowledge of strontium isotopes. She developed new methods for assessing Strontium isotopes. especially for determining the ratio between 87Strontium and 86Strontium. She changed jobs and became an archaeologist and wanted to do research on the place of origin of woolen textiles in particular.She has, as the first in the world, developed and refined methods to measure the ratio between these two isotopes in individual hairs. It could be used by the archaeologists for the study of ancient textiles.

The ratio between the two isotopes could show with relative certainty where a thread came from and definitely where it did not come from. No isotope map of Denmark had previously been made, so she did it herself together with the man who had remained a geologist.

The later results clearly showed that all woolen clothing from the Bronze Age in Denmark was not produced locally, but came from the south, from Mesopotamia, the Middle East, present-day Italy, France and England and the Netherlands.Said in the words of the professional. All (and here we really mean ALL) Bronze Age woolen clothing in Denmark was non-local. It was not until the Iron Age that wool began to be processed in this country.

The meeting with the Egtvedpigen probably began with Frei learning that the Egtvedpigen's teeth were now in a small box somewhere at the National Museum.Previous dental examination of the teeth had estimated the girl's age at 16-18 years.

Strontium isotope testing can also show where in the world teeth are formed and especially where they are not. Now you just had to find a small box and get permission to take some tooth tissue for analysis. Not only was the box with the teeth found in the museum's enormous collections, but also the girl's fingernails in the box.

Frei had previously made isotopic determinations on threads in textiles, so when you were now at work, you could also try an examination of the threads in the girl's hair. The hair was with the rest of the girl in the museum's exhibition. The permits were obtained, Egtvedpigen brought to the laboratory and Frei secured a hair of approx. 22 cm. Hair obtains isotopes from the environment in which it grows, so had she been in different places, different places in the hair would also have different isotope contents. Turns out they had!

The first measurements on samples of the teeth were so surprising that the results were kept secret and the rest of the tests were done before anything came out. The examinations of hair, nails and teeth showed, with 100% certainty, that the girl was not born and raised in Jutland, but could be from Southern Germany. She then went to Egtved and stayed there for a few years, then went back to Germany and some time later back to Egtved, where she died shortly after she arrived. t was quite an eye opener!

Other isotope studies (carbon and nitrogen) later showed that the Egtved girl had had periods of starvation and that her hair in the last weeks-months of her life grew more slowly than usual or not at all. Hair grows slowly when you are sick, e.g. have a low metabolism. Chronic diseases can also be the cause. It was hardly the pneumonic plague that triggered the migration. It only lasts a day.

Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis is a possibility. It is known in the Bronze Age from medical writings in Mesopotamia and Greece. It usually has a long course. The main variants are pulmonary and intestinal tuberculosis, but all imaginable forms exist. In Tuberculosis, the disease-causing bacteria are surrounded by a solid capsule of wax, and in any case the wax capsules can still be found in the ground in tuberculous medieval burials.

In the Viking Age, which now as far as communication is concerned, must be seen as a parallel to the Bronze Age, the international activities of the time spread tuberculosis violently. As far as is known, Egtvedpigen's grave has not been examined for TB. The photographer who filmed the sampling of the hair was also a descendant of farm owner Peter Platz, who in his time had found the Egtvedpigens coffin.

The Skydstrup girl
Egtvedpigen had a colleague, Skrydstruppigen, who was also found in an oak chest approx. 14 years later. She was probably in her early 20s, had high updo hair and a long skirt. The grave was somewhat richer than Egtvedpigens. The trooper had gold earrings (earrings went around the ear at that time)

She was probably born and raised in almost the same place as Egtvedpigen, but came to Skrydstrup approx. four years before she died there. She too died in the summer. The bottom of the coffin was lined with summer flowers.

Who were the girls?
While Skrydstruppigen was categorized as a wife who had presumably lived in one of the large Bronze Age houses whose foundations were later found nearby, Egtvedpigens position was more uncertain. The married girl did not thrive in the last months of her life. Her hair stopped growing!
She had not come to be a wife. What was she supposed to do?

The bride had already made three long journeys back and forth as a teenager. She was a little worse off socially - more lonely?. She was categorized as a priestess in the sun cult. Her task was probably to perform a ritual dance, when important strangers came to visit. The dance and what else happened was supposed to make vows religiously binding.

A more modern interpretation says that she was supposed to facilitate the realization of important trade contracts or perhaps even be part of the deal. Before her travels were known, it was believed that the burnt child in the coffin was a human sacrifice for the girl.
Sacrificed people have been found as burial gifts in graves later in the Bronze Age.
It is now believed that the child died on her journey to Egtved and was cremated on the way, as you could not travel with a body. Both girls died in the summer. Around Solstice?

The human sacrifices in the Iron age.
In the cold period of the Iron Age, it seems that traveled persons were sacrificed to the gods in the bogs with fondness, so that these - the gods - through the knowledge of the victims, could keep informed about the wider world.

Did they also do it in the Bronze Age?
The former head of the National Museum, Jørgen Jensen, called the Bronze Age fork the "People of the Sun".
Probably because most of the Bronze Age fell in a sunny warm period. In archaeology, the cold and warm periods of the last 5000 years have replaced each other with 500-700 year intervals. Nobody knows why.

The boss added: "There was a cruel ferocity about them that we would rather not know about." What was the locally produced string in Egtvedpigens coffin supposed to be used for? Was disease prevention at that time more radical than today? Did she choke on the cord?

Did she suffer badly in her last months because she knew she would soon have to meet the gods/the Sun God?.

Bronze Age collapsed.
Egtvedpigen and Skrydstruppigen are both from the height of the Bronze Age.

Another 100, at most 200 years passed, then the trade in copper began to take off. There had been a shortage of copper – or perhaps rather: there was no longer enough copper for the many people who now existed.

Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin (in a ratio of 9/1). There had always been problems in obtaining tin and it was unfortunate, because if you melted a piece of bronze, approx. 1/10 of its tin during the process and correspondingly new had to be added.

In the latter part of the Bronze Age, the burial mounds became smaller. The burial gifts became smaller. The offerings of large quantities of bronze, which were formerly supposed to show the enormous power and wealth of the warrior clans, became smaller and eventually disappeared. They began to burn the dead and give them even smaller burial gifts. Even the houses got smaller – a lot. The wealth had disappeared with the golden metal.

  The international jet-set of the Bronze Age was long gone. They were replaced first by chaos, then by petty warlords with a local outlook.

Ordinary Bronze Age people's burials.
One can now ask: How were the common people of the Bronze Age buried? Not much is known about that. A few years ago, a hitherto unknown and plowed burial mound from the Late Bronze Age was excavated at the town Kerteminde. The mound has now been dug for at least 2 seasons. A central burial was found with the burnt remains of a woman with a belt plate at the top and a also burnt man with a sword just below.

Most interesting right now, however, were the burials that were found on the periphery of the mound and outside it. They were well-preserved skeletons without grave goods. They are supposed to have been the common people of the Bronze Age. The finding is still being prepared.

The burials here are therefore very similar to the graves of the single-grave people in Jutland. The difference is probably that in Jutland it is the first arrived young men with their axes who are buried. Now the chaos of immigration over the centuries has been replaced by quiet everyday life with ordinary people.

The Iron age arrived.
But people became more skilled at handling the new metal, iron. It was discovered that iron could be made from slag from the bogs and the hard brown layer in it the ground under the heather - and make weapons from it. International trade was no longer necessary.

The hot period of the Bronze age is replaced by a cold period in the Iron age.
As if that wasn't enough, the climate also started to get colder. There were dark, heavy clouds all the time and it rained a lot, way too much.The sun is seen less often. A raw rain from dark clouds lashed over the peoples and a cold spell was slowly enveloping the People of the Sun A new, poor and raw world order was coming:
THE IRON AGE!

Ole Jørgen Nørgaard

In her book about Egtvedpigens Rejser, Professor Karin Margarita Frei tells about studies with strontium isotopes. There are 4 isotopes of Strontium. Of them, only two are of interest here. It is 87Stronstum and 86Strontium. They are found everywhere in nature, but in different relationships.

This ratio varies from place to place. Measuring this ratio can be used to determine the origin of various items, e.g. red wine and food. If you have an isotope ratio, you can determine with complete certainty where the item does not come from and with some certainty where it does come from.

The latter in particular requires a map of the mutual occurrence of the strontium isotopes. Such a map did not exist for Denmark, so the professor started by making one!.

The next step was to make textiles available for strontium isotope analysis. It requires an absolutely incredible cleaning of the relevant parts of the textiles. They started with wool from local sheep, which was carefully cleaned of impurities and used to standardize examinations of individual wool threads. It was again later used to examine ancient woolen clothing. They wanted to know if the clothes were grown locally or imported.The married girl probably came into the picture because Professor Frei had learned that the girl's teeth were found in a small box in the National Museum's large collections. Based on the teeth, the girl's age had previously been estimated to be 16-18 years 

The teeth, and with them the girl's fingernails, were found and examined.The result was so surprising that they were given permission to also examine the girl's hair. A hair of 22 cm was taken out and cut into 4 pieces, which were examined separately.

The isotopes showed that the girl was certainly not brought up in Denmark, but could be from Southern Germany. She had gone from there to Egtved and had lived there for some time, then she had gone to Germany again and finally back to Egtved, where she died shortly afterwards and was buried.

In addition to Egtvedpigen's travels, Frei also mentions i.a. one, Australian forensic biologist, Silvana Tridico's,(2) examination of the girl's hair. The investigation here showed that the girl has lived on the edge of starvation for some time and that the last time she lived her hair grew slowly or not at all. Surely she hadn't had Tuberculosis?Tuberculosis can simulate periods of starvation by eating away at the body's reserves. It used to be called "corrosion".

When people die of tuberculosis these days, it's usually older men who die.It wasn't like that just seventy years ago. Think here of Thomas Mann's accounts from 1924 of a stay in a tuberculosis sanatorium with young people waiting to die.

My textbooks from when I was a student: (yes! Last millennium!) Both Microbiology (3) from 1966 and Pathology (1) from 1964 agree that in societies without prevention and treatment of TB, women continue to die from tuberculosis and that women die the most at the age of 15-25 years respectively in microbiology (English) and 20-25 years in pathology (American).

The old books also agree that men did not begin to die of tuberculosis until they reached the age of 40.So!: Women died young of tuberculosis, men died -and die- old.Based on the tooth remains (enamels) left behind, the Egtved girl is estimated to have been 16-18 years old when she died.Her colleague and resident and almost contemporary, the girl from Skrydstrup, was approx. 20 years when she died. Nor had she grown up in Denmark.  Now it would be tempting to also take the woman in Borum Eshøj here, but she is unsure. Those who witnessed the opening of her coffin and saw her face described her as "- quite young".(5)

The person who examined her bones in 1855 estimates her to be 55-60 years old. It can hardly fit. Modern archaeologists also now refer to her as "young".The traveling activity of our Viking Age accelerated the spread of pulmonary tuberculosis so much that it became the single most common cause of premature death in the early Middle Ages in this country.

We now perceive the traveling activity of the Bronze Age as a parallel to the activity in the Viking Age - and both the Egtved and Skrydstruppigen were extremely well-travelled!

As previously mentioned, tuberculosis can simulate periods of starvation by consuming the body's reserves.The fact that Egtvedpigen's hair did not grow for a period before her death can almost only be due to severe illness. According to the above, a realistic suggestion would be pulmonary tuberculosis.

Poor nutrition makes people more susceptible to TB. The girls/women here were upper class and had the string skirts of the immigrants, the Yamnayas, with them in the coffin, so you can almost guess that they also ate the food of the Yamnayas, i.e. meat and dairy products and therefore had good resistance to TB. Another factor is the air you breathe. Air pollution in the form of perpetual indoor smoke probably existed in both the Bronze Age and the Viking Age. This has made people's lungs more susceptible to TB.

In our Viking age, it should have been possible to make a Blood Eagle on people you didn't care about, i.e. to chop a person's ribs free from the spine on both sides and flip the lungs out onto the back. It would certainly not be possible to do (on non-smoking) contemporary Danes. The experiment has not been done, but the lung surgeons see it in their work. If you open the chest of Nu-Danes, the elasticity of the lungs will pull them together to form fist-sized balls inside the chest cavity.

You can take it as a hint that the indoor climate of the past has been quite stressful. Virtually all adults had stiff lungs!

For approx. 50,000 years ago, tuberculosis accompanied the first people out of Africa and it has followed us ever since. Even around the year 1900, every third death between the ages of 15 and 60 in this country was due to tuberculosis! The more people who lived close together, the less food they had, and the more people who traveled and met strangers, the more tuberculous people there were!

In ancient times it was mostly pulmonary tuberculosis that spread. Intestinal tuberculosis probably came with cattle herding. Many other exotic forms existed (e.g. caries in the spine) and still exist. Especially in Southern Africa. Here, TB has really broken loose in the AIDS-plagued provinces. Tuberculosis that no longer adheres to its species designation: You can find human (c. belonging to humans) tuberculosis in wild elephants and lions. All species of TB belonging to animals are found in HIV-infected people, etc.

This has made the treatment of TB difficult and even in our time an effective treatment can last years.The tuberculosis bacteria live inside a thick capsule of wax that is acid-resistant, almost indestructible and impervious to staining and antibiotics! The bacteria, or at least their capsules, have been found in the soil during excavations of tuberculous medieval graves here on Funen. (e.g. Hågerup) As far as is known, no Bronze Age graves have been examined for TB.

Museum director, etc. Jørgen Jensen called the Bronze Age people the People of the Sun. The idea that the People of the Sun should have had TB has been too far away - until now. I have not been able to find a 14C dating of Egtvedpigen. Presumably because there is a reliable dendrochronological dating of when the oak tree in her coffin was felled, namely in 1370 BC. So she probably died 1370 BC.

Incidentally, there seemed to be a small accumulation of coffin Dendro dating in the 1370s BC.(4)Was there a TB epidemic around this time.

LITERATURE

1 Boyd,William A Textbook of PATHOLOGY.Seventh Edition LEA & FEBIGER Philadelphia, Reprinted 1964.Libary of Congress Cat nr: 61-9368   p 281 

2 Frei, Karin Margarita.EGTVEDPIGENS REJSE.Lindhardt og RinghofKbh  2018 ?  p164 

3 Jawetz, Ernest et al. : review of MEDICAL MICROBIOLOGY Edition 7 Blackwell Scientific Publications OXFORD 1966  P 200. 

4 Jensen,Jørgen: Danmarks Oldtid Bronzealder 2.000 – 500f.kr. p 186  2002 by Jørgen Jensen og Gyldendals Boghandel -1. udgave, 1.oplag ISBN 87-02-00331-7 p189 5

Jensen, Jørgen: Manden i kisten. Hvad bronzealderens gravhøje gemte. Gyldendalske Boghandel 1998 .Nordisk forlag A/S København  ISBN 87-00-34714-0 side 86

The Nordic Bronze Age was a kind of Viking age!

Ole Jørgen Nørgaard

And this Viking age lasted 1000 years, (1700-600 BC) so the last Viking age of 300 years (year 800 to o. year 1100) was only a faint reflection of the first.

Rock carvings in general:
Rock carvings are messages scratched into stone. The petroglyphs have traditionally been divided into

1. Hunting cave carvings and

2. Agricultural carvings.

3. Maritime Rock carvings, a definition which is introduced here to delimit this third group

Hunting and farming petroglyphs.
They are found virtually all over the part of the world that has been inhabited by humans.Here in Scandinavia there are petroglyphs that are 6000 years old or more.They are found from the Arctic Circle to southernmost Denmark.In Norway, Sweden and Finland there are hunting engravings of moose and reindeer in particular on rocks - in life size!

Bronze Age maritime petroglyphs
The rock carvings here are close to the sea or did so when they were made.
In the past, it was assumed that it was the local population who made the Bronze Age petroglyphs here in the Nordics.

However, the Scandinavian Bronze Age petroglyphs seem to have such a uniform design and layout, as it is called in modern Danish, that they must have been created in a specific culture and emanated from a specific power center and with a specific purpose.

When the petroglyphs in the far north can lie quite far from the current coastline, this may be due to the land uplift - of 11 m or more - that has taken place there since the Bronze Age. The continental plate tilts slowly upwards to the north, where the ice has been highest during the Ice Age.

A maritime language
Bronze Age petroglyphs are now perceived as a maritime language (Professor Kristian Kristiansen Gothenburg). They are found on land near the sea from the Arctic Circle in Northern Norway to a single one in Northern Italy.

From Kivik on the east coast of Scania, the petroglyphs gather inland in an arc that, still inland, follows the coast south of Sweden, up along the west coast of Sweden and further north, up along the coast of the Oslofjord and southern Norway, until they disappear far up north on the Norwegian Atlantic coast.

The concentration is greatest in Scania and on Bornholm. There are many petroglyphs far inland in Norway and Sweden, but they are mainly hunting petroglyphs. There are also many petroglyphs around the large lakes in southern Finland, but a description of them is lacking. Finland is also a bit atypical because flint is not found in the country, so other and softer stone species are used there and has made roasting more difficult. The distance to Finland also seemed somewhat smaller in prehistory than it has been in historical times.

The expression of the language
The Bronze Age carvings showing images of ships are found again and again. They show ships being paddled with long oars, single ships with sails, ships like in Greece and Egypt, ships with men. In the oldest engravings (approx. 1700 BC), ships with 50-70 men or twice as many are seen. Ships with solar symbols, women dancing, men with weapons, chariots, tanks are seen. They show sex between a man and a woman, sex with a man and an animal, etc.. Less conspicuous cup marks on small and large stones and rocks are also included here.

The Bronze Age Clock, The Sun's Wandering.
The well-known Bronze Age expert and inspector at the National Museum. Flemming Kaul, through a computer analysis of petroglyphs, has shown how the people of the Bronze Age perceived the sun traveling across the sky during the day and underground at night. The sun had helpers on the route. It is launched from the sea by a fish in the morning. After this, a horse takes the sun in a carriage/ship across the sky at the end of the day. Then a snake guides the sun down through the sea to a ship that carries the sun through a tunnel underground back to its starting point the next morning. The night ship is paddled, by chosen, deceased ancestors. Under the earth the sun was necessarily extinguished. Evil forces could try to stop the sun underground. If the sun came to a complete standstill down there, the world would plunge into eternal darkness.

 Clockwise movements (from the viewer's left to right) suggest the event is during the day. The other path suggests a nocturnal movement.  The Bronze Age people thus had a kind of sundial that could be used to arrange meetings etc.

Amber
When the sun went down quickly into the sea, it could break a little when it met the surface of the sea or things floating on it. Such pieces of the sun could later wash ashore. It was amber, which was therefore assumed to be parts of the divine sun itself and which was therefore in high demand.

The age and size of the ships.
The oldest ships from around 1700 BC are by far the largest with a crew of 50-70 men or probably twice that, perhaps even used for maritime migrations. After this, the ships gradually become smaller and more intended for trade down towards the Iron Age. Around the year 1000 BC this change seems to accelerate.

The ships keep getting smaller and smaller and with fewer men. The men, on the other hand, are now becoming more and more belligerent. There are two types of men in the carvings, namely men who are simply marked with a line, and larger men with arms and legs - and weapons. Around 600 BC, most ships become small, almost like boats.The rich, globally oriented jet set society of the Bronze Age was now on the verge of collapse.

Maritime Migrations.
Professor Kristian Kristiansen from Gothenburg, who is known for his DNA studies of migrations in the 3rd and 2nd millennium B.C. believes that the Nordic petroglyphs are a maritime language. He is inclined to assume that it is seafaring people (Klokkebägerfolk) from the Iberian Peninsula who made the petroglyphs as information for other seafaring compatriots, perhaps as a kind of message about the contact and agreements with the local communities.

The theory has the problem that the ships of the Bell Beaker people do not resemble those of the petroglyphs, which probably resembled the local Nordic ships.

Power center Kivik.
The Bronze Age came late to present-day Denmark – approx. 500 years later than in Germany. People are now inclined to believe that the Bronze Age did not spread from the south up into Jutland, but came from Sweden, especially from Scania and spread from there over the Danish islands to Jutland. From Sweden, bronze also spread to Norway.

Furthermore, the Bronze Age petroglyphs in Scandinavia are concentrated in southern Sweden, especially in Scania and on Bornholm.
Where did the carvings come from?

Interest is now gathering around the King's Tomb in the town of Kivik.

Kivik is located in Skåne in the eastern part of Sweden and out to the Baltic Sea. The king's grave was a mound, i.e. grave of a pile of little more than fist-sized stones. It has been calculated that it took 200,000 (yes: 200,000!) truckloads of stone to build it.

With 100 wagon loads per day, it would have taken 5-6 years to build the cairn! So a huge amount of work.The royal tomb is called so because the Swedish king, Gustav V, in the 1930s, (at his own expense!), had the cairn restored when it was about to disappear! - used for roads, stone dykes and walls.

The burial mound at Kivik contained a room with a conspicuous stone coffin of 8 upright stone slabs, on the inside decorated with petroglyphs of a chariot, men with weapons and lurking, a horse fight and probably a religious ceremony, double axes, a pointed hat, omega- shaped (horseshoe-shaped) figures and more.

The Bronze Age In Scandinavia they seemed to have had a very powerful center here in Kivik.There were other and smaller roes in Scania and out on the islands of the Swedish archipelago, in Finland and in Norway. The Røse-bygers did not cultivate agriculture – apart from barley for the bare essentials; namely beer!
The rulers of Kivik probably ruled all of southern Sweden, southern Norway and present-day Denmark.

They were seafarers.
So it was the Bell Beaker people who came and settled there? Dating of Kivik.Let's look at the year numbers.

The tomb at Kivik was built between 1300-1100 BC (previously believed to be 1700-1100)It is located in the most densely populated part of Scandinavia, which is now in the full Bronze Age in 1200 BC.

In the burial chamber, burnt human bones have been found there, are C14 - dated to be spread over 235 +/- 50 years, probably from four teenagers, gender unknown. (C14 dates from year 1085 to 850 +/- 50 years B.C.). There was probably a prince's burial in the central stone coffin in the mound, but traces of this person are missing.

Was the cairn later used for burials or human sacrifices?

The bell goblet people.
The activity of the Bell Beaker people culminated 2400 BC-1800 BC. It was initially a Neolithic people with large, almost urban settlements on the Iberian Peninsula. The Neolithic societies in mega-settlements collapsed, possibly under indirect pressure from the Yamnaya migration to the west somewhat earlier. The Bell Beaker people of the Iberian Peninsula had the technique to build large ships and they did. They quickly developed into a regular seafaring people who could sail, also across the open sea, and also with many people. It sailed everywhere, along the coasts, up the rivers, in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Baltic. They established trade routes. They sailed colonists to England.

The Bell Beaker people also came to Kivik and settled there.The seafaring people from the Iberian Peninsula brought the bronze and were still sailing after 1800 B.C. but most had settled in many other places and worked from there (isotope analysis). Kivik was one of the places.

The Sea People and Ramses III.
In the years 1200-1150 BC, the Egyptian pharaoh, Ramses III had problems with a people from the sea who tried 3 or 4 times to invade Egypt. It is known that the very large invasion of the Sea People took place from the sea into the Nile Delta, synchronously with units that had already landed in the desert west of Egypt and had advanced inland along the coast. This huge, last battle in the Nile Delta took place in the year 1175 BC.

The Egyptians won, but they did not know where the sea people came from or who they were. In our time, there have been conjectures about. that they were mercenaries who had become unemployed because they had switched more and more to fighting with tanks instead of infantry. However, so many unemployed soldiers could hardly have been assembled for an attack of this size on the Egyptian superpower - and then 3 or 4 times.The events are roughly contemporaneous with the construction and use of the grave in Kivik. The world was globalized, especially because of the Bell Beaker people.

The Bell Beaker people came to Kivik
Would it be completely wrong to guess that the Sea People were identical to Professor KK's sailing Bell Beaker People from the Iberian Peninsula?

It is most tempting right now to assume that the Bronze Age petroglyphs in Scandinavia were staged from Kivik. The Kivik people have had contact with Mycenae in Greece. The Kivik people had influences from the Hittites and the Egyptians, which could be traced both in Kivik and another mega-large but almost completely destroyed burial mound, Sagaholm, in the burial field near Kivik.

Bell-beaker people and the petroglyphs came from Kivik Professor KK first assumed that the current petroglyphs were made by sailors who sailed from the Iberian Peninsula to Scandinavia. A Nordic petroglyph had just been found in northern Italy. But one petroglyph down there and tens of thousands here?Did it not rather suggest that it was the other way around?

Nordic Vikings 3000 years ago
Was it not sailors from Scandinavia, (the Kivik culture) who dominated the Baltic Sea area, who had visited the Mediterranean? Some of them were probably still located there.
It is now eagerly discussed!

There are now researchers who believe, among other things, that the seafaring people really came from Scandinavia. Lene Melheim from Oslo University and probably also Professor KK himself. The people in the center of power in Kivik were so powerful that they sailed on Viking raids to England, Western Europe and the Mediterranean countries.

Where did the Nordic prosperity come from?
Denmark became – with the center in Kivik? - after 1500 BC the most prosperous country in Europe, richer than even the rich Greeks.After the year 1500, the population of present-day Poland begins to dwindle.
Are the two things connected?

Denmark became rich by selling amber, which was in great demand everywhere, as amber was then considered to be parts of the sun, i.e. part of the deity itself.But could amber alone do it?
Weren't the Viking raids beyond Europe also profitable?

Didn't we wreak havoc in Poland too?
Did we also plunder the not-yet-Slavic population of present-day Poland?Maybe we sold them outright?

In this connection, it is perhaps wrong to mention that strontium isotope studies so far indicate that upper-class women in present-day Germany (and Denmark?) were predominantly non-local, i.e. not raised locally.

First state formation in Denmark?
The first attempt at state formation in present-day Denmark therefore came from somewhere in present-day Sweden! There must have been a center of power a little earlier in connection with the large Bronze Age mounds in Jutland as well, (Egtvedpigen from there died 1370 BC, dendrochronologically dated), but not of the same strength as Kivik.

Women of the Bronze Age
Southern Europe could make clothes from wool in the Bronze Age, the North could not, so Danish upper-class women of the Bronze Age bought all their clothes from abroad. Local clothes simply did not exist!

And many of the women were also "non local".But they - the women - may have moved from one distant place to another within the same cultural and linguistic area.

Some researchers see these "non-local" women as the system of the time for a constant exchange of new and valuable knowledge and know-how. In that case, the women have also been a link in a very wide-ranging society.

They have also, more prosaically, been able to make trading over long distances easier.Right at the end: The egg-shaped, round bronze disk in a belt on the stomach was only used by the women in the Nordic area, i.e. Denmark and Scania, perhaps Norway. It later evolved into a belt box.

Solfolket's farewell letter to us.
But the Bronze Age people, whom the former head of the National Museum, Jørgen Jensen, has called "People of the Sun" left us an overview of their cultural life, an overview that we still have, almost indestructible. It is - quite literally - chiseled in stone.

The same chief also said about the People of the Sun, "There was also a cruel savagery about them, which we would rather not know about!" But we still have an opportunity to try to know them better!Skilled people with new tools are working on it!

Kivik period  stopped.
The formation of the state - or rather: the ruling of the chieftains in Kivik - lasted for about 600 years and probably started during the global collapse of Bronze Age societies. The collapse necessitated the use of iron as bronze disappeared. The Iron Age had a difficult beginning. It was exacerbated by a new climatic cold period!

The climate
The Bronze Age had been incredibly favored by the climate. At the beginning, the Bronze Age had a cold period, with a lot of rain and not much cold, so the grass grew abundantly for the Bronze People's herds of cattle and horses. When you switched to also arable farming and long caravan journeys with trade, there came a warm period with an ideal climate for this as well.

When the Bronze Age ended and the Iron Age began, the new cold period came.This time the cold period came with far too much rain and far too much cold. As a curse, the dark clouds threw their all-too-abundant content of even more water down on the flooded and already hard-pressed Iron Age people, who now also had to start all over again to build a new society.

Postscript
Rowing with oars, held in oar forks or tolls, as we know it today, did not become modern until around 700 BC. (although the author suspects that it happened somewhat earlier, based among other things on a petroglyph where one crew greets another by turning their oars vertically in the air. These oars actually look like rowing oars, not paddle oars

Ships with sails here in the Nordics first came when we could handle wool, i.e. spin and weave clothes from wool from sheep.

It was at the beginning of the Iron Age. And yet. A little substance made of the fibers from nettles is known, i.a. from the Bronze Age urn graves, where the ashes of the cremated person were wrapped. It has been very soft and too crazy for everyday use

A photographer, Jannik Vemmer, believes he has found the key to the language of the petroglyphs and thus being able to read the petroglyphs. His interpretation of the engravings often shows a calendar that indicates when something in agriculture must be done, when something has happened and recipes for various activities in agriculture, i.e. a farmer's almanac. Interpretations appear to be predominantly agricultural, not maritime.

Sources

Kaul, Flemming: ”Bronzealderens religion” Det Kongelige Nordiske Oldtidsselskab. København 2004 ISBN 8787438 66 1 og ISBN 0105-578x 

Internet:
WikipediA: Klokkebægerkultur
WikipediA: Religion i nordisk bronzealder
WikipediA: Kungsgraven i Kivik
https://videnskab.dk/kultur-samfund/var-der-en -vikingetid-i-skandinavien-2000 aar-foer-vikingerne
https:denstorenordiske.lex.dk/Finland_ - _ forhistorie
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228772679_Bredaror_on_Kivik_A_Monumental_Cairn-and_the_ History_of_its_interpretation

Lecture: af Professor Kristian Kristiansen, Göteborg, arrangeret af Jysk Arkæologisk Selskab, holdt på Moesgaard Museum i Århus 5. maj 2016

What the bog hid! An article about finds of bodies in bogs.

Ole Jørgen Nørgaard 

Bog bodies
A bog is defined in the following as deceased people found in a bog. It can be intact bodies, skeletons or parts of people. Mossy is often found buried together with animals, in this case often domestic animals such as horses, dogs, only rarely in connection with other domestic animals or wild animals. Moselig is, in addition to Denmark, found in the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, England, Ireland, Sweden and in Norway. Mossy has also been found in Florida, USA, but this last one is outside our area of interest.

Formation of bog bodies.
In order for a corpse to be preserved in a bog for posterity, the following conditions must apply:
1. The temperature of the bog water at the time of laying is below 5o C

2. The bog is a raised bog with sphagnum moss and that the water here has a low degree of acidity. (p3.6 to 4)

3. That the body is covered with water or bog soil shortly after burial.                                                                                                                                                              Western and Eastern Danish bogs: If not all of these criteria are present, the body can be dissolved by decay bacteria. If the bog water is calcareous and not too acidic, only the skeleton will be preserved. Jutland raised bogs can fulfill all three conditions in winter, so almost all preserved entire bogs have been found in Jutland bogs. On Funen and Zealand the bogs are different and here usually only the skeleton is preserved. Most preserved bogs are probably also buried in the bog in connection with peat digging. The Iron Age people burned peat for peat coal in the same way as you burn wood for charcoal in order to use the peat coal in the extraction of iron from ant ore etc.

Bogs skeletons.
If a body got into the bog when the water was above 50 C., then it is at best preserved as a skeleton or parts of a skeleton. The Iron Age came during a climatic cold period and therefore the winter lasted longer than now. One estimate is that the water in the bog in the Iron Age approx. 5 months of the year back then were below 5o C.

Danish bogs bodies
From Denmark, between 35 and 44 bogs are known (depending on the different estimates) laid down in the bog over almost 10,000 years. The oldest moor, found in 1941, is the Kolbjerg man, a moor skeleton from Nordfyn C14 dated to 8300 BC, i.e. from the Hunter Stone Age, more precisely the Magle Mose Age. The Koelbjerg man was assumed to be a woman until the skull was DNA tested in 2016. The skull has strong cheekbones and the men of the Maglemose people had it, but the women of the Maglemose people also got it, because the women softened skin for clothing by chewing it. (Pia Bennike, anthropologist v Denmark's National Museum). DNA examination, however, showed a Y-chromosome, so the Kolbjerg woman was therefore a man.

Northern European bogs bodies.
Bogs bodies are known from the last 10,000 years. Of approx. 350 bogs, approx. 100 within the period from the year 5000 to the year 900 BC, a corresponding number from 800 BC. to the year 400 AD Approx. half as many are found from AD 400. to 1500 (3) So most bogs have been found covering the 1200 years from 800 BC. to 400 AD i.e. in the Iron Age. The youngest bog in Northern Europe is from a man who disappeared in a bog on the Shetland Islands in the 18th century and was found again in 1951. The question then is whether soldiers from the 1st and 2nd World Wars found in the bogs should be included in the statistics.