Fig. 28.
Fig. 29.
Fig. 30.
Figs. 28 to 30.—Bronze and Paalstabs. (From Danish Arts.)
Fig. 31.
Fig. 32.
Fig. 33.
Fig. 34.
Figs. 31 to 34.—Bronze Axes, Paalstabs, and Moulds. (From Danish Arts.)
Fig. 35.
Fig. 36.
Fig. 37.
Fig. 38.
Figs. 35 to 38.—Bronze Swords and Spear-Head. (From Danish Arts.)
Figs. 39 and 40.—Bronze Button for Sword Belt.
(From Danish Arts.)
These earlier implements are often made of pure copper. Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin, generally from two to four per cent. of tin, and is consequently harder than copper. Knives, hammers, gouges, sickles, daggers, spears, swords, shields, many kinds of vessels, and articles of personal adornment made in bronze, belong to the earlier time of the Bronze period, and similar articles were made in this material in the prehistoric Bronze ages all over the known world (Figs. 35 to 40).
An interesting object is a breast-plate, belonging to this early Bronze period; it is decorated with zigzags in bands, and a well-arranged scheme of spiral ornamentation (Fig. 41). Urns of earthenware, sometimes decorated with zigzags and sacred signs, have been found in graves. These urns contained ashes of the dead (Figs. 43, 44).
Fig. 41.—Breast-plate, with Spiral Ornaments. (From Danish Arts.)
Many of the bronze implements and other articles have been found in tombs, in caves in great quantities, both finished and unfinished, in “Kitchen Middens,” or refuse heaps, in river-beds, and in bogs.
Fig. 42.
Fig. 43.
Fig. 44.
Figs. 42, 43, and 44.—Urns of the Bronze Age (From Danish Arts.)
Fig. 45.—Bronze Bowl found in Sweden. (Scand. Arts.)
Fig. 46.—Urn of the Stone Age found in Swedish Dolmen. (Scand. Arts.)
Some of the objects found in North Germany, and particularly in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, are exceedingly beautiful in their shape and decoration. From nowhere else in the world come so many objects, and so much that is characteristic of the prehistoric Bronze age. This period has been ably treated, and at great length, by Mr. J. J. A. Worsaae, in his “Danish Arts,” and by Mr. Hans Hildebrand, in his “Arts of Scandinavia,” to which books we are indebted for the accompanying illustrations. It may be noticed that much of the decoration on these objects consists of a few simple elements with much geometric repetition. The varied forms are chiefly spirals interlocking at regulated distances, concentric rings, triangles, zigzag lines, and bands formed of lines which are reminiscences of the earlier withy lashings, with which the stone celts were fastened to their hafts. The raised, as well as the flat twisted-like bands, are derivatives from the twisted strings that would naturally be tied around the pottery of an early date to carry it by (Fig. 45).
Fig. 47.—Bronze Hatchet found in Sweden. (Scand. Arts.)
The spirals, zigzags, ring-crosses, wheels, triskeles, reciprocal meanders, semicircles, &c., are geometrical developments of sun-snake, lightning, the sun itself, cloud-forms, moon-forms, star-forms, and the sacred fylfot or swastika, all of which had their origin in Egypt, India, Central Asia, or Greece. At first they were used as isolated signs, or pictographs, to represent physical phenomena, that were objects of Nature-worship with almost all the nations of the world after the dawn of civilisation, and when these signs migrated into the art of other nations or later peoples, who were either ignorant of their meaning or understood them in an imperfect way, they ceased to be employed as isolated signs of the various divinities they originally represented, and were copied, and repeated, as required, to fill in a geometrical way the space at hand to be ornamented.
Fig. 48.—Sun Signs.
A, Wheel Cross or Wheel; B, Sun God Signs; C, Fylfot, or Swastika; D, Triskele; E, Stars or Sun Signs.
A beautiful piece of workmanship is the bronze horn (Fig. 50). Worsaae thinks that this horn was used in the worship of the gods in the early Bronze age, owing to the great number of sacred signs engraved on it. Sun-wheels, sun-snakes, and sun-boats, developed into spiral ornament, may be seen on it.
Fig. 49.—Sun Signs. (From Danish Arts.)
F, Sun-snakes; G. Swastika; H, Triskele; I, Star or Sun.
N.B.—The Swastika here is evidently a double Sun-snake.
Fig. 50.—Bronze Horn or Trumpet, found at Wismar, in Mecklenburg. (From Danish Arts.)
There is one ornament that plays an important part in the Bronze and Iron periods, of which much has been written, the “fylfot” or “swastika.” It has been found in nearly every quarter of the ancient world, except Egypt and Assyria, both in savage ornament and in the art of cultured races. The “fylfot” or “many” or “full-footed” cross in Anglo-Saxon, it is also known by the names of “gammadion,” “croix gammée,” “croix cramponée,” “tetraskele,” &c. The Indian name for it is the “swastika” or “svastika,” which means “good luck,” or “it is well.” The fylfot, according to the opinion of many archæologists, was originally the sign of the sun, and used as a sacred symbol in the worship of the sun; others think it was a sign used to symbolize the rotatory motion of the planets; it is quite likely it has been used by