IRON IN NORTHERN EUROPE. 9 



Some very interesting "finds" of articles belonging to 

 the Iron Age have been made in the peat bogs of Slesvick, 

 and described by M. Engelhardt, Curator of the Museum at 

 Flensborg. One of these, in the Moss of Nydam, comprises 

 clothes, sandals, brooches, tweezers, beads, helmets, shields, 

 shield bosses, breastplates, coats of mail, buckles, swordbelts, 

 sword sheaths, 100 swords, 500 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.* 



In the summer of 1862, M. Engelhardt found in the same 

 field a ship, or rather a large flat-bottomed boat, seventy 

 feet in length, three feet deep in the middle, and eight or 

 nine feet wide. The sides are of oak boards, overlapping 

 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 



* See Lubbock in Nat. Hist. Eev. interesting spot with M. Engel- 

 Oct. 1863, and Stephens in Gent. hardt in 1862. See also " Denmark 

 Mag. Dec. 1863. On one of the in the Early Iron Age," by C. En- 

 arrows were some Runic characters. gelhardt. 

 1 had the pleasure of visiting this 



