Sehested mentions (1) a bronze sword broken in four pieces, total length about 2 feet 8 inches with point missing; (2) fragments of a bronze sword with hollow handle broken at the top of the handle: (3) handle of sword with fragments of broken blade; (4) fragments of a spear-head broken near its socket. These objects had been intentionally rendered useless.
[122]. I can give an example that has lately come to my knowledge to prove this assertion. Professor Lorange found runes on parts of burnt bones found in a grave which he with Professor Stephens places, judging from the antiquities which belonged to it, as belonging to the sixth century.
“RUNE-INSCRIBED BURNT BONE.
“In a letter dated Feb. 27th, 1886, I received from my friend the gifted Norwegian old-lorist A. Lorange, Keeper of the Bergen Forn-hall, a facsimile drawing of a piece of burnt bone, shortly before found in a grave-urn from the early iron age at Jæderen. Afterwards he kindly sent the original to the Danish Museum, that I might give a faultless engraving. While there, the frail treasure was scientifically treated by Hr. Steffensen, the Conservator, and it is now quite hard and in excellent order. But even when it was taken from the urn, the runes were sharp and quite readable. These Old-Northern letters were elegantly cut, most of them in decorative writing, that is, with two or three strokes instead of one, very much in the style of the (? 7th century) Old-Danish Bone Amulet found at Lindholm in Scane, Sweden (‘Old Northern Run. Mon.,’ vol. i., p. 219; iii., p. 33; 4to Handbook, p. 24); and of the ashen Lance-shaft from the Danish Kragehul Moss, not later than the year 400 (‘O. N. Run. Mon.,’ vol. iii, p. 133; 4to Handbook, p. 90).
“This burnt bone is nearly 4 inches long; average width, ½ inch. It bears over forty rune-staves, cut in two lines, in the Boustrophedon order.
“From the rune-types and language I judged this piece to date from the 6th century. But as Hr. Lorange was familiar with the build and grave-gear of the tumuli of a similar class, I begged him to say whether—exclusively from his standpoint as archæologist—he agreed with me. He replied, that he did.
“If I have read the runes aright, this object also has been a heathen amulet. It is the first burnt bone yet found risted with runes. Other such we may have lost, for want of lynx-eyed examination.
“George Stephens,
Cheapinghaven, Denmark.
November 6, 1886.”