ANTHROPOLOGY. 



Prepared under the direction of Prof. Otis T. Mason. 



THE PRESERVATION OF ANTIQUITIES AND NATIONAL MONUMENTS IN DEN- 

 MARK.* 



A report made at the request of the legation of Austria-Hungary in Copenhagen. 



By J. J. A. Worsaae. 



[From the Memoirs of the Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, 1877.] 



(As requests have frequently been received from institutions and individuals in 

 many countries, as France, England, Sweden, and Finland, for information relative 

 to the measures undertaken in Denmark for ethnological explorations and the preser- 

 vation of antiquities and national monuments, it has been thought proper to publish 

 the present report, made at the end of 1875, particularly since there exists no work of 

 a similar character in the arclueological literature of Denmark.) 



A. — Antiquities. 



dp to the commencement of this century, there was no public collec- 

 tion in Denmark devoted especially to national antiquities. A few 

 objects found in the country were, indeed, preserved in the Cabinet of 

 Arts (Kunstlcammer), founded by King Frederick III, in the latter half 

 of the seventeenth century (1G48-1G70), and containing, according to the 

 fashion of the times, antiquities of all lands, medals, specimens of nat- 

 ural history, objects of ethnography and art, furniture, and curiosities, 

 thrown together pell-mell. But these rarefies were obtained mainly from 

 accidental finds, and not from careful explorations. They were prin- 

 cipally objects of gold and silver exhumed in various places, and be- 

 longing to the class called ddnefce (in old Norwegian ddnarfe, from ft-, 

 "property," and ddnar, "of a dead man"). The Danish law, (5-9-3, 

 authoritatively interpreted by the ordinance of March 22, 3737), in effect 

 granted to the king, or to the crown, in accordance with an immemorial 

 custom, all treasure or deposit of gold, silver, and precious objects, 

 without an owner, found in the earth; and the finder was bound, under 

 certain penalties, to turn over his stock to the treasury without any in- 

 demnity. But since under this system many precious objects were sold 

 and melted up secretly, to the prejudice of arclueological science, an 

 ordinance was passed August 7, 175_', which claimed for the crown 

 the right of danefce, under the same penalties, but granted to the finder 

 the full value of the metal, except when the proprietor of the soil had 

 caused explorations to be made with the express purpose of seeking 

 treasures, or when that which should be discovered in the monuments 



* Translated from tin- French translation of E. Beauvois. The Danish text: Om 

 Bevaringen a/ de fcedrelandske Oldsager og MindesmoerJcer i Danmark, appeared in "Aar- 

 b^ger for nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historic," 1-77, pp. 1-19. 292 



