"About forty years ago," says J. J. A. Worsaae, the eminent Danish antiquary, writing in 1846, "the general character of scientific pursuits was in our country (Denmark) much the same as in most other parts of Europe. Great pains were spent in collecting all sorts of objects illustrating the changes of the globe upon which we live, and the distribution and habits of animals and plants—in short, all the departments of Natural History; whilst, strange to say, people for the most part neglected traces of men, the remains not only of their own ancestors, but also of all the different races who have been spread over the world. The antiquities, with the exception of those of Roman and Greek origin, were regarded as mere curiosities, without any scientific value."[18] Notwithstanding all the zeal of British archæologists of late years, so much of this spirit still remains among us, that it would be easier, perhaps, even now, to secure the purchase by the Trustees of the British Museum, of a Roman statue or an Egyptian tablet, than of valuable relics of British antiquity.
One man has within the last thirty years accomplished, not for Denmark only, but for Europe, what the whole united labours of earlier archæologists failed to do. About the year 1815, the present Danish Councillor of State, C. J. Thomsen, the son of a merchant of Copenhagen, was appointed Secretary of a Royal Commission for the preservation and collection of national antiquities. It had then been in existence some seven or eight years, and the whole result of its labours was a few miscellaneous articles, unclassified and uncared for, lying in a small room of the University Library. His enthusiasm in the study of the antiquities of his country surmounted all obstacles. He had to contend alike with the theories of the scholar and the prejudices of the unlearned. But he had succeeded to a position of the utmost value to a man of energy and enthusiasm. From the first he had grants (though exceedingly small ones) of public money at his disposal. He soon enlisted the more important element of public sympathy, and nationality of feeling, in his pursuits. His little room became too small for accumulating purchases and donations. A suite of apartments was yielded, at his intercession, in the Royal Palace of Christiansborg; and as the varied collection increased in his hands, he found himself possessed at once of the space and the elements for systematic classification.
The Royal Museum of Northern Antiquities of Copenhagen now numbers between three and four thousand specimens of stone weapons and implements, some hundreds of bronze swords, celts, spear-heads, armillæ, torcs, &c., and a collection of native gold and silver relics unequalled in all the museums of Europe. To it we owe the valuable suggestion of the system of classification now universally adopted in the nomenclature of archæological science—the Stone, Bronze, and Iron periods, which, simple as it may appear, was first suggested by Mr. Thomsen, and is justly esteemed the foundation of Archæology as a science. By means of it the whole materials of antiquarian study at once arrange themselves according to an intelligible chronology of universal acceptance, and adapted in an especial degree to Northern antiquities. This, therefore, is the system on which the following data are arranged, subject only to such modifications as seem naturally to arise from national or local peculiarities.
It is not necessary here to enter on the question, of curious interest and value, as to whether the primeval state of man was essentially one of barbarism, from whence he progressed by slow degrees to social union, arts, civilisation, and political organisation into communities and nations. The investigations of chronologists the further they are pursued, seem only the more certainly to confer on primitive civilisation a more remote antiquity. At the same time, they confirm the idea, that the long accepted chronology of Archbishop Usher, still attached to our English Bibles, cheats the world, at the lowest computation, of fully 1400 years of its existence—a trifle perhaps in the age of worlds, but no unimportant element in the history of human civilisation, when we remember that between the era of the Mosaic deluge and the accession of the Egyptian Menes, we must account for the peopling of Egypt, the establishment of its social and political constitution, and the founding of a civilisation, the monuments of which are still among the most wonderful that human intellect and labour have produced. Not the least important branch of this inquiry relates to the primeval inhabitants of our own quarter of the globe; of whom as yet we know only with any degree of certainty of the Celtæ, occupying a transitional place in the history of the human family—at once the earliest known intruders and the latest nomades of Europe. It seems probable, from all the traces we can recover of the original condition of this race, that it was more their deficiency than their excess in the energy which we expect to find in the colonists of new regions, that drove them onward in their north-western pilgrimage, until their course was arrested by the Atlantic barriers. They seem to have fled ever forward, like night before the dawn, carrying with them knowledge sufficient to cope with the savage occupants of the wilds they invaded, yet bearing into these few arts but such as still pertain to the primitive races of mankind. In older literary notices of this people, whose language, manners, and arts are still traceable in our own land, we have only a secondary interest, believing that some records of them are recoverable, noted for us long before they had excited foreign interest. But, still more, we doubt not that similar records also preserve the history of older British tribes, in comparison with which the ancient Celtæ must be regarded as of recent origin. "The antiquities of the earlier periods," says a distinguished English antiquary, "including all remains which bear no evident stamp of Roman origin or influence, claim our most careful investigation. Exceedingly limited in variety of types, these vestiges of the ancient inhabitants of Great Britain are not more interesting to the antiquarian collector on account of their rarity, than valuable to the historian. They supply the only positive evidence in those obscure ages, regarding customs, warfare, foreign invasions, or the influence of commerce, and the advance of civilisation amongst the earliest races by which these islands were peopled."[19] Perhaps when we have bestowed on these primitive remains the degree of careful investigation which they merit, we shall find the variety of types less limited than is now conceived to be the case. The archæologists of Denmark justly value the absence of all relics of Roman art and civilisation, from the confidence it has given to their researches into the true eras to which their own primeval antiquities belong. Such gratulations, however, can only be of temporary avail. The influence of Roman arts and arms furnishes an element in the civilisation of modern Europe too important not to be worthy of the most careful study. When the distinctive characteristics of Roman and primitive art have been so satisfactorily established as to admit of their separate classification without risk of error or confusion, the British collections, with their ample store of Anglo-Roman relics, will furnish a far more comprehensive demonstration of national history than those northern galleries, which must remain destitute of any native examples of an influence no less abundantly visible in their literature and arts, than in that of nations which received it directly from the source. In this respect the Scottish antiquary is peculiarly fortunate in the field of observation he occupies. While he possesses the legionary inscriptions, the sepulchral tablets, the sculptures, pottery, and other native products of Roman colonists or invaders, he has also an extensive and strictly defined field for the study of primitive antiquities, almost as perfectly free from the disturbing elements of foreign art as the most secluded regions of ancient Scandinavia.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Carlyle's Miscellanies, second edition, vol. v. p. 301.
[2] Archæol. Scot., vol. ii. p. 506; vol. iv. p. 119.
[3] Trans. Camb. Camden Soc., vol. i. pp. 76, 91, 176.
[4] Archæol. Scot, vol. iii. p. 103.