The Viking Age (Vol. 1&2) - Paul B. Du Chaillu

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721.—Stone-set grave, Blekinge. Length, 38 feet.

      Fig. 722.—Triangular grave. Sides 60 to 65 feet long, with a small elevation in the middle, and a bautastone nearly 5 feet high and 2 feet 6 inches broad. Lyngstad, Södermanland.

      Among the most remarkable and not uncommon stone-set graves are those of the so-called “ship-form” setting; they belong both to the earlier and later iron age. This peculiar form of grave is found on the peninsula of Scandinavia and on the islands of Gotland, Öland, and other islands of the Baltic, in Courland and Livonia, and was also erected in England and Scotland by the people of the North.

      Fig. 723.—Blekinge. Diameter, 30 feet.

      Fig. 724.—Listerby ridge, Blekinge. Diameter, 18 feet.

       Stone-set graves.

      Fig. 725.—Graveyard with mounds and stone-set graves at Åsby, Södermanland.

      One of the most interesting is that where the rowers’ seats are marked, and even a stone placed in the position of the mast.

      The longest ship-form grave which I think is known is one near Kåsberga, a fishing village in the southern part of Sweden, with a length of 212 feet and a width of 60 feet. It is made by thirty-eight stones, the two forming the prow being 12 and 18 feet in height above the ground—the latter being the northern one.

      Fig. 726.—Ship-form grave, Karums parish, Öland.

      But the finest of all, though less in size, is the famous one of Blomsholm, near Strömstad, the whole neighbourhood of which is surrounded with mementoes of the past—graves, dom-rings, mounds, bautastones, and rock-tracings.188

      Fig. 727.—Ship-form graves, Blomsholm, Bohuslan, made of forty-nine upright stones (formerly there were fifty-one). Length, 141 feet; greatest breadth, 31½ feet; prows north and south, the northern headstone 11 feet high, the southern 14½, the stones gradually diminishing in size towards the centre, where the largest is about 3 feet. Built on a small mound or elevation which was higher in former times.

      Fig. 728.—Sjusta mound, Skog parish, Upland; 204 feet in circumference; 28 feet high; with a row of stones at its base. At the south end is another stone-set mound.

      Fig. 729.—Type of Mound with bautastone at the top and circle of stones at the base.

      Fig. 730.—Mound, 3 feet high, with bautastone, Balunda parish, Westmanland.

      Fig. 731.—Triangular graves; stone forming the apex, with runes, is about 25 feet from the two others, which are 14 feet apart—Björktorp, Blekinge.

      Fig. 732.—Incomplete mound; 50 feet in circumference; 10 feet high; largest stone over 6 feet high; in Thortuna parish, Westmanland.

      Fig. 733.—Mounds on Kjula-ridge. Södermanland.

      Fig. 734.—Mound set with boulder-stones, Dalsland; circumference of boulders, 100 feet; height of mound, 4 feet, on the top of which are two flat stones standing on edges. Near it is a boulder stone-setting, probably a dom-ring.

      Many of the cairns, which are often beautifully arranged, are small, being 4 or 5 feet in height, or sometimes almost even with the ground, their diameter varying from 20 to 80 feet. Numbers of them have stone-settings, sometimes close, sometimes not.

      Fig. 735.—Diameter, 20 feet.

      Fig. 736.—Diameter, 16 feet.

      Fig. 737.—Diameter, 16 feet.

       Cairns—Blekinge.

      Fig. 738.—Round cairn at Björkeby, Foresund, Södermanland.

      Fig. 739.—Square cairn, island of Öland.

      Fig. 740.—Anund’s mound, Vestmanland. Circumference, 652 feet; height 84 feet. A great number of standing or fallen bautastones are found near the mound.

      One of the most interesting graves which have been recently opened in England is one belonging to the manor of Taplow, near Maidenhead, about fifty miles by river above London. The mound, 240 feet in circumference, and 15 feet high, overlooks the Thames and the surrounding lands.

      Fig. 741.—Gold fibula ornamented with garnets and red glass. ⅔ real size. Taplow, England.

      Fig. 742.—Fibula of bronze,½ real size, the edge of the triangle and nail heads of bronze, the middle a thin silver plate. Found in a mound with 14 urns and burned bones, a spear point of iron, &c. Zeeland, Denmark.

      Among the objects were two shield bones, one sword, fragments of others, fragments of a spear head, one bronze vessel, one wooden bucket so common in the graves of the North, with bronze hoops, &c., two pairs of glass vessels (one of which is here represented) similar to one found with a burial ship in Vold in Norway, forty checkers, two pairs of ornaments for drinking horns (all of silver gilt), one green glass bead, &c. &c.; a fibula of the same form as those of the North. But the most remarkable article was a quantity of gold thread belonging to a garment, the triangular form of the pattern still remaining.

      This grave, like the one of King Gorm of Denmark and several others of the North, is in the old churchyard where the ancient parish church stood. On the slope of the mound itself several Christian graves are seen. The viking, like some of the chiefs of the North, was probably buried on his estate, on the land that had descended to him through his ancestors or which possibly he might have conquered from some of his foes. These antiquities by their form seem to belong to the later iron age.

      Fig. 743.—Vessel of green glass. ⅔ real size. Taplow, England. 11⅛ inches in height.

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