The archæology and prehistoric annals of Scotland

by Sir Daniel Wilson

The source from whence Europe derived this great gift of iron has yet to be ascertained. It certainly was not from Rome. The Norici, it has already been observed, furnished the chief supplies of iron to Rome, and taught her metallurgists the art of converting it into steel. It is not impossible, however, that it was from the remote North that this source of civilisation was sent to the Mediterranean coasts. British antiquaries have obtained as yet only a partial view of Scandinavian archæology, notwithstanding the valuable publications of Mr. Worsaae. The ancient land of the Scandinavian races includes Denmark,—a country of peculiar geological formation, having abundant stores of silex in its chalk strata, but no minerals to tempt the skill of its aboriginal occupants,—and Sweden, including Norway, a country abounding in minerals, and still furnishing Europe with the finest iron from its native ores. It is remarkable that this latter country appears, from its primitive relics, to have had its primeval stone period and birth-time of the mechanical arts, but, with the exception of the small district of Sweden adjacent to Denmark, so far as yet appears, this was immediately succeeded by the Iron Period. No bronze archaic era is indicated in its archæological annals. We cannot assume from this, as some are inclined to do, that therefore Norway must have remained an unpeopled waste, while Denmark was advancing into the period of well developed mechanical and ornamental arts. With our present imperfect materials for judging, we are better perhaps to assume nothing, but wait for some able Norwegian archæologist doing that for his native antiquities which Thomsen and Worsaae have done for those of Denmark. Yet good evidence has been furnished in part, especially in one important department, by Professor Nillson's Skandinaviska Nordens Urinvänare, or Primitive Inhabitants of Northern Scandinavia, though in this he assigns to the true Swea race, and the first workers of the native iron, no earlier a date as the colonists of Sweden than the sixth century. The Samlingar för Nordens fornälskare, already referred to, is also of considerable avail, especially from its copious illustrations. From these we learn that the primitive tumuli-builders of Denmark and Norway are of the same race, and that Norway had her monolithic era, of which no less remarkable traces remain than that of Denmark. Hence we are led to ask the question,—May not her Archaic Period have been an iron instead of a bronze one, and her forges the source from whence the Norici and other Teutonic and Celtic races of Europe learned that the iron-stone was also an ore, and could be smelted and wrought like the more ductile bronze? Northern mythological traditions throw some imperfect and uncertain light on this subject. They refer, for example, to their Gnomes and Dwarfs, their Alfes, and other supernatural metallurgists, as inhabiting mountain regions lying beyond and around them. This is peculiarly noticeable in all the oldest mythic fables, mixed up with the wild inventions of dragons, serpents, and the like fanciful machinery, which tell of their far birthland in the older continent of Asia. But it is worthy of notice, that the topography of these mythological legends in no way corresponds with the natural features of the Scandinavian peninsulas, lying as they do between two seas. May we not infer, therefore, that they had their origin while yet the Scandinavian nomades were wandering towards their final destination between the Baltic and the German Ocean, and that these distant mountains, with their metallurgic Gnomes and Alfes, were none other than the mountain ranges of Norway, the mineral treasures of which now furnish so valuable a source of national wealth to their descendants? The Germanic tradition has already been noticed which places the forge of the mythic Weland in the Caucasus, a fading memorial, perhaps, of the wanderings of their Teutonic fathers towards their western home. Such wild traditions must necessarily be used with much doubt and caution; yet they are not meaningless, nor the mere baseless offspring of fancy. Other and more direct evidence may possibly be within reach of the Norwegian archæologist, to induce the belief that the Alfes of his ancestral myths may have been a hardy race of Finnish, Celtic, or other primitive metallurgists, who, like the Norici, supplied the weapons by which themselves were subjugated. All this, however, is advanced with the greatest hesitation, not as a theory which it is proposed to maintain, but only as guessings at truth which lies at present beyond our grasp. By far the most important iron ore wrought in Norway and Sweden is Magnetite, which appears to pertain nearly as exclusively to the North as tin does to the British Isles. The largest known masses occur in Scandinavia, Lapland, Siberia, and in North America. In Norway, Arendal is the most important locality; and in Sweden, Dannemora, Utoe, Norberg, and Taberg. The fine quality of the Magnetite ores is ascribed to their being mixed with calc-spar, thallite, hornblende, and other natural adjuncts advantageous for their reduction, so that the granular ores often require no other flux. Such a condition of the iron ore was manifestly peculiarly calculated to facilitate the processes of smelting and fusing, and thereby to adapt it for working by the primitive metallurgist. Magnetite is not unknown in several of the remoter parts of Scotland, but the distance from fuel has hitherto prevented its application to economic purposes, at least in modern times. Bog iron ore, an hydrated oxide of iron still more readily fused, is also common in Sweden, and abundant in the northern and western islands of Scotland; but though well adapted for castings, it is inapplicable for other purposes. Hæmatite, or specular iron, is another of the most abundant iron ores specially worthy of notice here, because it is found in a state more nearly resembling the metal than any other ore of iron, and occurs in the most ancient metallurgic districts of England, where the previous native industrial arts were so well calculated to suggest its economic use when observed in such a form. It appears at Lostwithiel, in Cornwall, in the form of fine red crystals of pure iron peroxide, and is also found at Tincroft and St. Just in the same district, and in Devonshire, Wales, Cumberland, and Perthshire. Such are some of the lights by which mineralogy enables us to trace out the probable origin of the working of iron in Europe; but after all, it is to Asia we are forced to return for the true source of nearly all our primitive arts, nor will the canons of Archæology be established on a safe foundation till the antiquities of that older continent have been explored and classified. The advocate of Druidical theories may find his so-called "Druidical temple" in the steppes of Asia as well as on Salisbury Plain; and probably very many other supposed national relics, exclusively appropriated by the local antiquary, will yet be discovered to have their types and counterparts in the evidences of primitive Asiatic art.

"Sepulchral tumuli are spread over all the northern and western parts of Europe, and over many extensive regions in northern Asia, as far eastward at least as the river Yenisei. They contain the remains of races either long ago extinct, or of such as have so far changed their abodes and manner of existence, that the ancestors can no longer be recognised in their descendants. They abound on the banks of the great rivers Irtisch and Yenisei, where the greatest numbers of the then existing people were collected, by the facilities afforded to human intercourse. In Northern Asia these tombs are ascribed to Tschudes, or barbarians, nations foreign and hostile to the Slavic race. The erectors of these sepulchral mounds were equally distinct and separate from the Tartar nations, who preceded Slaves; for the tombs of the Tartars, and all edifices raised by them, indicate the use of iron tools; and the art of working of iron mines has ever been a favourite attribute of the Tartar nations. But silver and golden ornaments of rude workmanship, though in abundant quantity, are found in the Siberian tombs. The art of fabricating ornaments of the precious metals seems to have preceded by many ages the use of iron in the northern regions of Asia."[406]

Keeping these important facts in view, which so entirely coincide with the ascertained truths of primitive European history, it is still worthy of note that there appears to be something altogether remarkable in the archæology of Sweden and Norway, destitute as these countries would appear to be of the traces of the primitive metallurgic arts discoverable elsewhere, equally in the Asiatic seats of earliest population, and in the other European countries colonized by the Arian nomades. If we accept the conclusions arrived at by Professor Nillson, that the Swea race did not settle in Scandinavia till the sixth century, we shall be the more certainly forced to the conclusion that they were then a people far advanced in the arts of civilisation; since it is the same race whose powerful fleets are found ravaging the northern coasts of Europe in the ninth century, establishing colonies on their shores, and soon after planting Scandinavian settlements in Iceland, Greenland, and in Vinland on the continent of North America. Leaving, however, the question of dates to further inquiry, the curious coincidence of these northern mythological fables with the topography of the country and the peculiar characteristics of its primitive antiquities, suggest the conclusion that the latest intruding race brought with it—probably from Asia—a knowledge of the art of working the metals; and found on settling in the northern Scandinavian countries that their predecessors were already familiar with the mineral treasures of the North, and knew how to smelt the dark iron-stone and convert it to economic purposes. The latter, according to the craniological investigations of Professor Nillson, were a race of Celtic origin, having skulls longer than the first and broader than the second of the two elder races of the Scandinavian barrows. There is therefore nothing in the ethnological character of the race inconsistent with such metallurgic skill, but, on the contrary, much to add to the probability of an early practice of the arts of the founder and the smith, the Celtæ having shewn, wherever circumstances favoured it, a remarkable aptitude for working in metals.

This digression pertains, perhaps, more to general Archæology than to the direct elucidation of Scottish antiquities. But independently of the legitimate interest attached to the inquiry into the origin of these metallurgic arts which brought civilisation in their train, the history of Scotland at the period we are now approaching is more intimately connected with Norway than with any other country, except Ireland. To the primitive Scandinavian literature we still look for some of the earliest traces of authentic national history; and whatever tends to illuminate the Iron Period of the North can hardly fail to throw some light upon our own. This must be the work of the archæologists of Scandinavia; nor are they insensible to its importance.

The traditional Vœlund-myth has already been attempted to be connected with a definite historic epoch, the reign of King Nidung, king of Nerika, in Sweden, in the sixth century. Such a mode of interpretation, however, shews a very imperfect appreciation of the true nature of this remarkable myth, which belongs in reality to no single country, but is as essential a link in the history of the human race as are to each of us the momentous years which form the stage between infancy and manhood. We cannot, indeed, too speedily abandon this misdirected aim, of seeking for precise dates of epochs in primitive history. With these the archæologist, in his earlier historical investigations, has generally little more to do than the geologist. Both must rest content with a relative chronology, which yet further investigation will doubtless render more definite and precise. Where dates are clearly ascertainable, the archæologist will gladly avail himself of them; and in this Iron Period much of the indefiniteness of primeval annals gives place to authentic history. But while rejecting the localization of the Vœlund-myth at the court of Nerika, it is of importance for our present purpose to note the general evidences of Scandinavian progress in the arts by which nations attain their majority. Not in the ninth century only, but perhaps in this era of King Nidung, in the sixth century, or in the fifth or fourth—we know not indeed how early—the Northmen may have begun to build ships, and learned boldly to quit their fiords for the open sea. Our annals prior to the ninth century are so meagre that we must lie open to the recovery of many traces of important events unnoted by them, in the interval between that ascertained epoch and the older one when the Roman legions were compelled to abandon the vallum of Antoninus, and repair the barrier beyond the Tyne. We cannot too speedily disabuse ourselves of the idea, that because no Celtic or Scandinavian Herodotus has left us records of our old fatherland, therefore the North had no history prior to its Christian era. We owe to the Romans the history of centuries which otherwise must have remained unwritten, yet not the less amply filled with the deeds of Cassivelaunus, Boadicea, Galgacus, and many another hero and heroine, all unsung; though they wanted but their British Homer, or Northern Hermes with his graphic runes, to render the sieges of the White Caterthun as world-famous as that of Troy.

FOOTNOTES:

[402] Sinclair's Statist. Acc. vol. xiii. p. 272.

[403] New Statist. Acc. vol. iv. p. 97.

[404] Hand-Book of Irish Antiquities, p. 166.

[405] The Antiquities of Ireland and Denmark, by J. J. A. Worsaae, Esq. Dublin, 1846. P. 14.