Cousin-hunting in Scandinavia

by Mary Wilhelmine Williams

But it is neither Nyerup, Worsaae, nor Thomsen to whom belongs the final credit for Denmark’s pre-eminence in things archæological. That must go to the Danish people, whose unusual interest has been indispensable in making the national archæological exhibit the most complete possessed by any nation, except Norway and Sweden. But there is no mystery connected with the Scandinavian zeal for things prehistoric; it has a sound historical basis, which is akin to family pride. No other peoples of Europe have so long held the soil now occupied by them as have the Scandinavians. In fact, the ancestors of the modern Scandinavians reached the northwest of Europe even before they were Scandinavians; it was only during the long centuries following their arrival that they acquired the physical and mental characteristics which distinguish them from other peoples of Teutonic stock. When my pre-Scandinavian forefathers and foremothers came into the present Scandinavian lands, a thousand years or so before the birth of Christ, they were in the New Stone Age of culture. And while nations rose and fell in other parts of Europe—while Celt fell before Roman, and Roman before Teuton, and Teuton before Saracen and Slav—the people who were becoming Scandinavians remained isolated in their northern land, frequently quarreling among themselves, it is true, but unjostled and uninvaded by alien blood. Consequently, to the modern Scandinavians practically all archæological remains found in the land seem almost ancestral relics, and, naturally, they take a tremendous interest in them.

The exhibits are arranged in the museum in chronological order, beginning with the Old Stone Age, and visitors are expected to follow Denmark’s cultural development progressively. I know, because I unwittingly entered first one of the rooms containing exhibits from the late Middle Ages, and the vigilant guard courteously but firmly showed me to the door on the opposite side of the vestibule. I was not to be permitted to get an inverted idea of Denmark’s past, even if I wished to do so.

The earliest part of the Old Stone Age in Denmark is represented in the museum by a section of a kitchen midden, or shell mound. The primeval settlers of Scandinavia did not live in the days of patent garbage cans and incinerators; hence, after a feast of raw or baked clams or oysters on the half shell, they dumped the shells upon the community refuse heap—and thus were saved dish-washing. When they feasted on mammals and birds, the bones were thrown upon the same garbage pile; but the middens are mostly made up of shells, for shell fish—especially oysters—were wonderfully abundant in the Baltic in the Old Stone days, and could be had for the digging.

I was particularly interested in this bona fide, primitive Danish garbage heap because a few years ago I saw a midden of the same general character, left by the ancestors of the American Indians, when they were at the same stage of culture as the makers of the Danish shell mounds. Perhaps I have told you before of the midden which I saw in California. It was near Point Richmond, on the shores of San Francisco Bay; but as the land on which it stood has long been sinking, it had been partially carried away by the waves. On the other hand, since the coast of Denmark is rising, many of the Danish middens are now far inland. But the two kinds of prehistoric garbage heaps bore a striking resemblance to each other; both were made up largely of shells, interspersed here and there with bones.

Until the middle of the last century, the world believed that the many heaps of shells, mixed with bones, found here and there on the coasts of Denmark, were merely due to the in-wash of the sea waves. Professor Worsaae it was who discovered their true origin. In 1850 he proved them to be of human formation. Though this seems a very simple discovery, it was a very important one in archæology, for it explained similar mounds in other parts of the world, and it led to a most careful investigation of the Danish middens, resulting in the disclosure of fragments of weapons and utensils which threw light upon a people whose one-time existence the Danish archæologists had hitherto not even suspected.

But though we are introduced familiarly to their garbage heaps and to a few of their personal belongings, much uncertainty exists regarding the midden-builders of Denmark’s Old Stone Age. We know, to be sure, that they probably lived in huts of boughs and skins, or in caves; that their food was fish and game, with perhaps roots and berries; that they could manufacture a very rough sort of pottery; that their weapons and implements were of the most crudely-worked stone. But of how these ancients themselves appeared, whence they came, and whither they went, we know nothing. It seems pretty certain that they were a different people from the ancestors of the modern Scandinavians. Indeed, some scientists have suggested that the midden people were members of the yellow race, probably related to the Eskimo, or to the Lapp. And in the absence of proof this theory will do as well as any other.

The people from whom the Scandinavians evolved came later, as I said before—in Denmark’s New Stone Age. It would be more accurate, I presume, to say that they brought the New Stone Age with them; for when they reached the Scandinavian cradle-land they already knew how to chip stone into accurately shaped implements and weapons, and how to put on a finishing polish when the proper shape had been obtained. However, these early immigrants learned much in their new home about working in stone, and in Scandinavia the New Stone period attained unusual perfection. This was because the isolation of the region delayed the introduction of a knowledge of work in metals. With all due respect to the Neolithic Danes, I feel bound to remark that, given a sufficiently long period of apprenticeship and a reduction of the number of distracting and discouraging elements, most people would be able to reach a high standard.

Nevertheless, when one wanders through the archæological collection one becomes quickly convinced that these primitive Scandinavians were master workmen. On the shelves behind the glass doors are extensive exhibits of stone hammers and axes and other objects, in a great variety of graceful and beautiful patterns—wonderfully symmetrical where symmetry was aimed for, and with a smoothness of finish that has resisted the vicissitudes of thousands of years. In those early handicraft days such work was an art as well as a science; and surely the craftsmen loved their labor, else they could not have exercised the patience necessary to the attainment of such excellence. When I remember how simple must have been the tools with which they wrought, I swell with pride over the skill of my Stone Age ancestors.

As the use of bronze in Denmark supplanted the use of stone, as a material for the manufacture of implements and weapons, so the exhibit from the Bronze Age, in the National Museum, comes next after that from the New Stone Age. In one of the rooms in which the early Bronze Age finds are displayed are the life-sized dummy figures of a man and woman, dressed in the costumes of the time—in garments of sheep’s wool, mixed with deer’s hair. I was tremendously impressed to find that my great-grandparents of three thousand years ago actually wore woven garments—of simple pattern, it is true, but woven garments, nevertheless. Before visiting the Early Bronze room, I must have had a vague impression that at this period my forbears clad themselves in the skins of wild beasts—like Adam and Eve and Robinson Crusoe.

Lest you skeptically conclude, Cynthia, that the accouterments of the lady and gentlemen in the Early Bronze room were merely highly glorified reproductions of imaginary primitive costumes, I beg to assure you that the garments are faithful copies, both as regards style and material, of clothing found in graves belonging to this ancient time. Isn’t it astonishing that such things should have been preserved through the stretch of centuries? But it was due to no miracle. The coffins were made of roughly hewn and hollowed-out trunks of oak trees, and the tannic acid in the bark preserved not only the coffins but the clothing and other articles buried with the dead.