Here also, as in the graves where the bodies were burnt, we find objects intentionally damaged. This bending, twisting, and hacking of weapons seems to have been a religious custom. The spear-handles, scabbards, bows, arrow-shafts, and shields are often broken into fragments, or rolled together in inextricable knots. Ringed coats of mail and garments are torn to pieces, which afterwards were wrapped carefully together; and the skulls and skeletons of horses are cleft in many places.
Fig. 341.—Fragments of silver shield boss, with gilt ornaments.—Thorsbjerg find.
Fig. 342.—Silver helmet.—Thorsbjerg find.
Fig. 343.—Bronze serpent: probably ornament to helmet.—Thorsbjerg find.
These masses of objects seem to imply that they were either the spoils and remains of great fights between different chieftains, or offers to the gods thrown into sacred springs. In this latter case the finds must be the produce of a long series of years, and have been given to the gods at different times, the destruction, instead of taking place on the pyre, having taken place on the water.
This destruction was not apparently peculiar to the inhabitants of the North, for Cæsar relates of the Gauls, that when they went into battle they made a vow to consecrate the booty to the god of war. After the victory the captured animals were sacrificed, and the rest of the booty was brought together into one spot.
