cup already described, (page 72,) which was covered inside with a thin plating of gold. Besides this were found merely another figure of a bird, and some other trifles of less importance, such as the remains of metal plating, painted pieces of wood, &c. The contents of this remarkable barrow were comparatively unimportant, but it had been opened before. It was plainly discernible that four of the beams of the ceiling had been cut through at some previous time, and that an entrance to the tomb must have been effected in this way, probably by the well-known openers of barrows in the middle ages. The discovery of a short wax candle, placed on one of the beams of the ceiling which had been cut through, still more confirms this supposition.
Opposite to the barrow of Thyre, on the other side of the church at Jelling, is seen a similar elevation, in which her consort King Gorm is interred, which however has not yet been examined. These tumuli are the largest and most considerable in the whole country, their height is about seventy-five feet, and their circumference at the base above five hundred and fifty feet. Such mounds are extremely rare in the North. Usually, the barrows are only from twelve to twenty-two feet, the latter size being very uncommon.
It is worthy of notice that at the same period, when large elevations were thus piled over deceased persons of distinction, bodies of wealthy persons were deposited in the natural sandbanks. In several places in this country, for instance in the parish of Herfölge, at Himlingöie, in the domain of Vallö, at Sanderumgaard, and at Aarslev in Fühnen, there have been discovered in sand-banks where no artificial barrows were perceptible, unburnt bodies, trinkets of gold and glass, together with a buckle with a Runic inscription, mosaic birds, in short, objects which with reference both to the shape and the material, are undoubtedly to be referred to the latest period of paganism. The circumstance that several corpses are here usually found interred, leads to the conjecture that towards the close of the heathen period there were general places of interment, which
