Similar antiquities in the North and in Southern Russia—Roman coins—The trade of Gotland in earlier times—Ornaments and other objects of bronze.
Among the archæological wealth of the North still belonging to the earlier, but not earliest, iron age, we find a class of graves and antiquities which are of special importance, for they help us to fix very closely a date for the period to which they belong, and for this light we are indebted to Roman coins and other objects, both Roman and Greek, which these graves contain.
Many of the finds of this period are most interesting, as showing the taste of the people in the North, and a wealth and civilisation of which we were not aware. They are the more valuable because we see from them the wide extent of the maritime expeditions and overland trading journeys of the people towards the beginning of the Christian era. They show, as has already been pointed out, the intercourse which the people of the North had with those of the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, and also with the newly-acquired north-western provinces of the Roman empire (Gaul, Britain, and Frisia). But, what is still more important, they help to prove the general truthfulness of the earlier Edda and Sagas, for they show that the Asar, or whoever the emigrants were, who came north, and who were said to have brought their civilisation with them and to have given it to the people there, were either related to or on intimate relations with the people who inhabited the shores of the Black Sea; for many of the antiquities which were claimed to be of a peculiar northern origin are identical with those found there; while similar ornaments of unmistakable Greek origin are found in both regions. To complete the chain of proof, many of the antiquities, both in the Museums of Kief and Smolensk, are similar to those of the North.
Many of the forms of the antiquities, such as neck-rings and gold snake-shaped bracelets, fibulæ, &c., which were thought to belong exclusively to the North, are found in great number in the graves of Kertch, in Southern Russia, where they lie almost side by side with the exquisite Grecian antiquities—the pride of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg—mementoes of the colonies established by Greece on the shores of the Black Sea. They show that at that period there were two distinct civilisations and peoples living near each other—one Greek, the other native. The natives were probably of the same stock as a great number of the people of the North.
Western and Eastern, Roman and Byzantine, coins have been found; the gold solidi were for the most part used by the people in the North as ornaments, for loops have been attached to or holes made through them. The two largest discoveries hitherto made of Roman coins are those of Hagestaborg, in Scania, southern Sweden (550 denarii), found in 1871, and of Sindarfe (Hemse parish), Gotland, at which latter spot about 1,500 Roman coins were found, in 1870, in a clay urn.[[169]] Few coins dating before the Christian era have been found.
The people had to learn that these coins had an intrinsic value, and that with them they could buy goods. In every country where barter takes place it has taken a certain, sometimes a great, number of years for the people to learn this value.[[170]] The fact that the earlier coins are rare does not conclusively prove that intercourse between the North and the Western parts of Europe had not taken place before that time.
Judging from the extensive hoards of coins discovered, it is not improbable that they were kept for some opportune time when their need would be required, such as for purchases when travelling back to the Western or Eastern Roman provinces. That the people were well acquainted with the value of these coins is beyond dispute, for otherwise they would not have kept them.
We must remember that human nature is and always has been the same; there were misers in those early days as there are now. The Sagas give us some examples of the practice of hoarding, and the probability is that some of the hoards found may have been collected during the lifetime of one or more persons. But the numbers found, in hoards or otherwise, even without those which remain undiscovered, show the existence of commercial intercourse.
One of the countries of whose earlier history we know nothing, except that it is mentioned here and there in the Sagas, is the island of Gotland; but from the finds, which are especially rich in coins, we are led to the conclusion that it was a great emporium of trade at least from the beginning of the Christian era to the twelfth century. Roman, Byzantine, Arabic, and earlier English coins are found in far greater numbers than in all the Scandinavian lands together. Of the latter, those of Ethelred are even more numerous than in England itself. Situated in a sea whose shores at that period seem to have been inhabited by a dense population, Gotland appears to have occupied the position of commercial supremacy which England holds in Europe to-day.
We have historical evidence of its being a great emporium of trade as late as the fourteenth century, until Wisby, its chief town, was destroyed by the Danes. Its magnificent towers, walls, and ruined churches still bear witness to its past greatness.[[171]]