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Chap. XVI.
MUSEUM: AGE OF IRON.
247
a fine of 207. to be paid from the pockets of their
residuary legatees to the government of the country.
It was in Denmark that the ancient custom of burning
the dead was first discontinued. It is known to have
prevailed much later in the adjoining kingdoms of Sweden
and Norway. According to the Icelandic historian,
Snorro Sturlesen, who some 600 years ago wrote a
chronicle of the Kings of Norway, Dan Mikillati was
the first who, by his own direction, was interred whole,
unburned, together with his war-horse, armour, harness,
and other accoutrements. The Vikings are declared
by the Sagas to have been burned in their ships, the
very vessels which had carried them proudly over the
billows, through storm and tempest: over the ship a
tumulus was heaped, a grand idea—(Nelson should have
been sunk in a 74)—but no traces of these interments
have as yet been discovered in Denmark, though
Professor Thomsen informs me that in Sweden, near Sigtuna,
the remains of a ship have been brought to light from
an excavated barrow. On the other hand, to meet with
a human skeleton, with axe, sword, the bones of a horse,
harness, stirrups, and other accoutrements, is no
uncommon occurrence.
The cases of this department of the museum contain
large collections of all warlike implements—swords,
javelins, arrow-heads, instruments for the shoeing of
horses, &c., of corroded iron—interesting to the true
antiquary, but to unlearned minds like my own suggesting
uncomfortable ideas of “ marine stores and receivers of
stolen goods.” I may be a heathen—I can’t help it: rusty
iron has no charm for my eyes; it is rusty iron always.
The swords are of larger dimensions than those of the
Bronze age, the hilts frequently adorned with plates of
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