TRACES OF BAAL WORSHIP IN NORTHERN EUROPE. 75 



lets, etc. ; the character of the ornaments on the bronze imple- 

 ments ; the engravings in Bronze Age tumuli ; the worship of 

 Baal; certain peculiar methods of reaping and fishing; and 

 the use of war-chariots. 



The implements and ornaments of bronze certainly appear 

 to have belonged to a race with smaller hands than those of 

 the present European nations ; the ornaments on them are 

 also peculiar, and have, in Professor Nilsson's opinion, a 

 symbolic meaning. Although the great stones in tumuli 

 attributed to the Bronze Age are very seldom ornamented, 

 or even hewn into shape, still there are some few exceptions ; 

 one of these being the remarkable monument near Kivik in 

 Christianstad. From the general character of the engravings, 

 Professor Nilsson has no hesitation in referring this tumulus 

 to the Bronze Age, and on two of the stones are representa- 

 tions of human figures, which may fairly be said to have a 

 Phoenician, or Egyptian appearance. 



On another of the stones an obelisk is represented, which 

 Professor Nilsson regards as symbolical of the Sun-God ; and 

 it is certainly remarkable that, in an ancient ruin in Malta,* 

 characterized by other decorations of the Bronze Age types, 

 a somewhat similar obelisk was discovered; we know also 

 that in many countries Baal, the God of the Phoenicians, was 

 worshipped under the form of a conical stone. 



Nor is this, by any means, the only case in which Professor 

 Nilsson finds traces of Baal worship in Scandinavia. Indeed, 

 the festival of Baal, or Balder, was, he tells us, celebrated 

 on Midsummer's night in Scania, and far up into Norway, 

 almost to the Loffoden Islands, until within the last fifty 

 years. A wood fire was made upon a hill or mountain, and 

 the people of the neighbourhood gathered together in order, 



* For an account of the ruins of p. 407, or Dr. Adams's Archseol. 

 Hagiar Kem, see Furse, Trans. Int. and Nat. Hist, of the Nile Valley, 

 Congress of Pre-hist. Archaeol. 1868, and the Maltese Islands. 



