Many of these designs may perhaps represent the deeds of great heroes told in ancient songs, such for example as the scene upon the gold bracteate found under the altar in the ancient wooden church of Gudsdal Troen parish in Gudbrandsdal, Norway, on which an armour-clad warrior on horseback fights a dragon. The purity of their gold is as remarkable as the skill of their workmanship.
Fig. 1289.—Bracteate. Real size.—Blekinge, Sweden.
Fig. 1290.—Bracteate. Real size.—Vestergötland, Sweden.
Fig. 1291.—Bracteate with runic alphabet.—Vadstena, Sweden. Real size.
The most important bracteate found is one of the two discovered near the little town of Vadstena on the Wettern, in Sweden. It has around its border an inscription in earlier runes, which evidently must be read from right to left. It has been ascertained by the scholars who have made a study of runes that, with the exception of the first division of eight, they represent the runic alphabet in its earliest form, the letter D being, for want of space, the only one missing.
Fig. 1292.—Bracteate, Lyngby, Jutland, representing a man with a two-horned animal, surrounded by the svastika, the triskele, and four dots forming a cross, a circle of men’s heads, and a circle of animals. Real size.