spears, 30 axes, 40 awls, 160 arrows, 80 knives, various articles of horse gear, wooden rakes, mallets, vessels, wheels, pottery, coins, etc. Without a single exception, all the weapons and cutting implements are made of iron, though bronze was freely used for brooches and other similar articles.[1]
In the summer of 1862, M. Engelhardt found in the same field a ship, or rather a large flat-bottomed boat, 70 feet in length, 3 feet deep in the middle, and 8 or 9 feet wide. The sides are of oak boards, over- lapping one another, and fastened together by iron bolts. On the inner side of each board are several projections, which are not made from separate pieces, but were left when the boards were cut out of the solid timber. Each of these projections has two small holes, through which ropes, made of the inner bark of trees, were passed, in order to fasten the sides of the boat to the ribs. The rowlocks are formed by a projecting horn of wood, under which is an orifice, so that a rope, fastened to the horn and passing through the orifice, leaves a space through which the oar played. There appear to have been about fifty pairs of oars, of which sixteen have already been discovered. The bottom of the boat was covered by matting. I visited the spot about a week after the boat had been discovered, but was unable to see much of it, as it had been taken to pieces, and the boards, etc., were covered over with straw and peat, that they might dry slowly. In this manner, M. Engelhardt hoped that they would perhaps, at least in part, retain their original shape. The freight of the boat consisted of iron axes, including a socketed celt with its handle, swords, lances, knives, brooches, whetstones, wooden vessels, and, oddly enough, two birch brooms, with many smaller articles. Only those, however, have yet been found which remained actually in the boat; and as, in sinking,
- ↑ See Lubbock in Nat. Hist. Rev., Oct. 1863, and Stephens in Gent. Mag., Dec. 1863. On one of the arrows were some Runic characters. I had the pleasure of visiting this interesting spot with M. Engelhardt in 1862. See also Denmark in the Early Iron Age, by C. Engelhardt.
