If, before leaving this branch of the subject, we turn back for a few minutes to the Irish monuments, we are now in a position to judge more correctly of the probabilities of the case than we were. Assuming the three-chambered tumulus at New Grange to have been erected between the years 200 and 400, and Maes-Howe and Jellinge between 800 and 1000 A.D., we have a period of from five to six, it may possibly be seven, centuries between these monuments. Is this more than is sufficient to account for the difference between them, or is it too little? It is not easy to give a categorical answer to such a question, but judging from the experience gained from other styles, in different parts of the world, the conclusion generally would be that the time is in excess of what is required. That there was progress, considerable progress indeed, made in the interval between the Irish and Scandinavian monuments, cannot be denied, but that it should have required five centuries to achieve this advance is hardly what would be expected, and it would be difficult to quote another example of a progress so slow. Yet it is hardly possible to bring down New Grange to the age of St. Patrick (A.D. 436), and as difficult to carry back Maes-Howe beyond Ragnar Lothbrok (794 at the extreme), and between these dates there are only 358 years; but we must certainly add something at either one end or the other; and if we do this, we obtain an amount of progress so slow that it would be almost unaccountable, but upon the assumption that they are the works of two different peoples. At the time the sepulchre on the Boyne was erected, Ireland was energetically and rapidly progressive, and her arts were more flourishing than might have been expected from her then state of civilization. When Maes-Howe was erected, the native population was poor and perishing, and as the lordly Vikings would hardly condescend to act as masons themselves, they did the best they could with the means at their disposal. Explain it, however, as we may, it seems impossible to allow a longer time between the mounds at Jellinge and Stennis and those on the Boyne than has been accorded above; and as it seems equally difficult to bring them nearer to one another, the probability seems to be in favour of the dates already assigned to them.
To return, however, from this digression; besides those just mentioned, Denmark possesses a nearly complete series of royal tombs such as are not to be found in any other country of Europe. Even Worsaae acknowledges the existence of that of Frode Frodegode, who lived about the Christian era, of Amlech, near Wexio—Shakespeare's Hamlet, of Humble, and Hjarne,[352] besides those of Hildetand, and Gorm and Thyra, already mentioned. If the Danes would only undertake a systematic examination of these royal sepulchres, it might settle many of the disputed points of mediæval archæology. To explore tombs to which no tradition attaches may add to the treasures of their museums, but can only by accident elucidate either the history of the country or the progress of its arts. If ten or twelve tombs with known names attached to them were opened, one of two things must happen: either they will show a succession and a progress relative to the age of their reputed occupants, or no such sequence will be traceable. In the first case the gain to history and archæology would be enormous, and it is an opportunity of settling disputed questions such as no other country affords. If, on the other hand, no such connection can be traced, there is an end of much of the foundations on which the reasoning of the previous pages is based, but in either case such an enquiry could not fail to throw a flood of light on the subject which we were trying to elucidate. The fear is that all have been rifled. The Northmen certainly spared none of the tombs in the countries they conquered, and our experience of Maes-Howe and Thyra's tomb would lead us to fear that after their conversion to Christianity they were as little inclined to spare those of their own ancestors. All they however cared for were the objects composed of precious metals; so enough may still be left for the less avaricious wants of the antiquary.
Dolmens.
So far as is at present known, there are not any tumuli of importance or any battle-fields marked with great stones in the north of Germany; but the dolmens there are both numerous and interesting, and belong to all the classes found in Scandinavia, and, so far as can be ascertained, are nearly identical in form. Nothing, however, would surprise me less than if it should turn out that both barrows and Bauta stones were common there, especially in the island of Rügen and along the shores of the Baltic as far east as Livonia. The Germans have not yet turned their attention to this class of their antiquities. They have been too busy sublimating their national heroes into gods to think of stones that tell no tales. Whenever they do set to work upon them, they will, no doubt, do it with that thoroughness which is characteristic of all they attempt. But as the investigation will probably have to pass through the solar myth stage of philosophy, it may yet be a long time before their history reaches the regions of practical common sense.
No detailed maps having been published, it is extremely difficult to feel sure of the distribution of these monuments in any part of the northern dolmen region; but the following, which is abstracted from Bonstetten's 'Essai sur les Dolmens,' may convey some general information on the subject, especially when combined with the map (p. 275), which is taken, with very slight modifications, from that which accompanied his work.
According to Bonstetten there are no dolmens in Poland, nor in Posen. They first appear on the Pregel, near Königsberg; but are very rare in Prussia, only two others being known, one at Marienwerder, the other at Konitz. In Silesia there is one at Klein-Raden, near Oppeln; another is found in the district of Liegnitz, and they are very numerous in the Uckermark, Altmark, in Anhalt, and Prussian Saxony, as well as in Pomerania and the island of Rügen. They are still more numerous in Mecklenburg, which is described as peculiarly rich in monuments of this class. Hanover possesses numerous dolmens, except in the south-eastern districts, such as Göttingen, Oberharz, and Hildesheim. To make up for this, however, in the northern districts, Lüneburg, Osnabrück, and Stade, at least two hundred are found. The grand-duchy of Oldenburg contains some of the largest dolmens in Germany; one of these, near Wildesheim, is 23 feet long; another, near Engelmanns-Becke, is surrounded by an enclosure of stones measuring 37 feet by 23, each stone being 10 feet in height, while the cap stone of a third is 20 feet by 10. In Brunswick there were several near Helmstädt, but they are now destroyed. In Saxony some rare examples are found as far south as the Erzgebirge, and two were recently destroyed in the environs of Dresden. Keeping along the northern line, we find them in the three northern provinces of Holland, Gröningen, Ober-Yssel, and especially in Drenthe, where they exist in great numbers, but none to the southward of these provinces, and nowhere do they seem to touch the Rhine or its bordering lands; but a few are found in the grand-duchy of Luxembourg as in a sort of oasis, halfway between the southern or French dolmen region and that of northern Germany.
From the North German districts they extend through Holstein and Schleswig into Jutland and the Danish isles, but are most numerous on the eastern or Baltic side of the Cimbrian peninsula, and they are also very frequent in the south of Sweden and the adjacent islands. Dolmens properly so called are not known in Norway, but, as above mentioned, cairns and monuments of that class, are not wanting there.
The value of this distribution will be more easily appreciated when we have ascertained the limits of the French field, but meanwhile it may be convenient to remark that, unless the dolmens can be traced very much further eastward, there is a tremendous gulf before we reach the nearest outlyers of the eastern dolmen field. There is a smaller, but very distinct, gap in the country occupied by the Belgæ, between it and the French field, and another, but practically very much smaller one, between it and the British isles. This is a gap because the intervening space is occupied by the sea; but as it is evident from the distribution of all the northern dolmens in the proximity to the shores and in the islands that the people who erected them were a sea-faring people, and as we know that they possessed vessels capable of navigating these seas, it is practically no gap at all. We know historically how many Jutes, Angles, Frisians, and people of similar origin, under the generic name of Saxons, flocked to our shores in the early centuries of the Christian era, and afterwards what an important part the Danes and Northmen played in our history, and what numbers of them landed and settled in Great Britain, either as colonists or conquerors, at different epochs, down to at least the eleventh century. If, therefore, we admit the dolmens to be historic, or, in other words, that the erection of megalithic monuments was practised during the first ten centuries after the Christian era, we have no difficulty in understanding where our examples came from, or to whom they are due. If, on the other hand, we assume that they are prehistoric, we are entirely at sea regarding them or their connection with those on the continent. The only continental people we know of who settled in Britain before the Roman times were the Belgæ, and they are the only people between the Pillars of Hercules and the Gulf of Riga who, having a sea-board, have also no dolmens or megalithic remains of any sort. All the others have them more or less, but the Northern nations did not, so far as we know, colonise this country before the Christian era.
As all the Northern antiquaries have made up their minds that these dolmens generally belong to the mythic period of the Stone age, and that only a few of them extend down to the semi-historic age of bronze, it is in vain to expect that they would gather any traditions or record any names that might connect them with persons known in history. We are, therefore, wholly without assistance from history or tradition to guide us either in classifying them or in any attempt to ascertain their age, while the indications which enable us to connect them with our own, or with one another, are few and far between.