12 TH. PETERSEN. [1907 



of which is beyond doubt, it is moreover evident that all the anti- 

 quities found have been deposited in this boat. Tlie objects 

 showing no traces of the action of fire, and no burnt bones having 

 been found in the boat, it must also be assumed that we have to 

 do with unburnt burial. The features of this grave thus closely 

 correspond with the series of unburnt boat-graves which syste- 

 matic excavations during the last years have brought to light in 

 this district, most of which may be attributed to an early stage 

 of the Viking age, some of them, perhaps, even to the preceding 

 period. 



On revising the list of the antiquities enumerated above, it is 

 evident that we have here to deal with a double-grave, some of 

 the objects exclusively belonging to the equipment of a man, others 

 again to that of a woman. To the first must be attributed the 

 two swords, the axe-head, the shield-boss and probably also the 

 spear-head and the whet-stone, while the woman has been equipped 

 with the brooches, the beads, the scissors, the spindle-whorl and 

 weaver's reed and undoubtedly also the whalebone plate and the reli- 

 quary.^) Two persons have thus evidently been buried 

 in this boat, a man and a woman; from the rich furniture 

 of the latter it may also be concluded that she was the 

 man's legitimate wife. Has this woman voluntarily accom- 

 panied her husband in death? Some passages in the old Northern 

 literature, taken together with archæological observations^), seem 

 to show that this custom was not unknown in Scandinavia 

 during the Pagan times. The matter is, however, very difficult to 

 prove archæologicaliy and quite impossible, when the corpses, as 

 is here the case, are deposited unburnt and the skeletons entirely 

 decayed ; from the grave-articles there can naturally be deduced 

 only an approxlmate date for the burial, and we must alwaj^s 

 take into account the possibility of the grave being opened on the 



1) Comp. the shrine mentioned p. 15 below. 



2) K. Weinhold, Altnordisches Leben, Berlin 1856, p. 477. O. AI m gren, 

 Vikingatidens grafskick i verkligheten och i den fornnordiska litteraturen, 

 p. 323 f. H. S c h e t e 1 i g, Ship burials (repr. fr. the Saga Book of the 

 Viking Club, Jan. 1906), pp, 34 f. 



