Page:Rude Stone Monuments.djvu/316

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290
SCANDINAVIA AND NORTH GERMANY.
Chap. VII.

à fortiori it carries with it King Hildetand's tomb at Lethra. It is true we have not the same direct means of judging of its date as we have of our own monuments. The Danes treat with such supreme contempt any monument that does not at once fall in with their system, that they will not even condescend to explore it. So soon as Worsaae found some "flint wedges" in the tomb, he at once decreed that it was prehistoric, and that it was no use searching farther; and we are consequently left to this fact and its external similarities for our identification. Here, again, is a difficulty. The two drawings above given (woodcuts Nos. 101 and 102) may show them too much alike or exaggerate differences. The one is an old drawing from nature, the other a modern restoration; still the essential facts are undoubted. Both are chambered long barrows, ornamented by rows of tall stones, either partially or wholly surrounding their base, and both have external dolmens on their summit, and both contain flint implements. If this is so, the difficulty is rather to account for so little change having taken place in 230 years than to feel any surprise at their not being identical. The point upon which we wish to insist here is that they are both post-Roman, and may consequently belong to any age between Arthur and Charlemagne.

The remaining battle-fields of which representations are given in Sjöborg are scarcely so interesting as that at Braavalla, which with the tomb of the king slain there are landmarks in our enquiry. If those circles on Braavalla Heath do mark the battle-field, and that tomb at Lethra is the one in which the blind old king was laid—neither of which facts I see any reason for doubting—all difficulties based on the assumed improbability of the monuments being so modern as I am inclined to make them are removed, and each case must stand or fall according to the evidence that can be adduced for or against its age. To return, however, to the battle-fields given by Sjöborg. Figures 43 and 44 represent two groups of circles and Bauta stones near Hwitaby, in Malmö. These are said to mark two battle-fields, in which Ragnar Lothbrok gained victories over his rebellious subjects in Scania: Sjöborg says in 750 and 762, as he adopts a chronology fifty years earlier than Suhm. But be this as it may, there does