CHAP. XTI.] PREHISTORIC IRON AGE IN SCANDINAVIA. 441 



without a break in those regions down to the present 

 day. The Iron, age is divided by the Scandinavian 1 

 archaeologists into three divisions ; the first of which 

 extends as far down, according to Worsaae, as A.D. 450, 

 and is characterised by the abundant proof of the influ- 

 ence of the Eoman Empire of the West engrafted upon 

 the low German culture ; the second is marked by the 

 palpable, traces of the influence of the Roman Empire of 

 the East, radiating from Constantinople ; and the third, 

 ranging from A.D. 700 to 1000, is known as the period of 

 the Vikings. . The history of Scandinavia may be said 

 to date from the second of these, although from time to 

 time a ray of light is thrown upon its previous condition 

 in the records of other countries. In the middle of 

 the first of these periods the corsairs issuing from the 

 Baltic and the ports to the west of the Cimbric Chersonese 

 harried the coast of Britain and Gaul to such an extent 

 in the third century, that they could scarcely be kept in 

 check by the organisation of a Roman fleet, and thus pre- 

 pared the way for the conquest by which the Roman 

 Britannia 2 became England. The long ships which 

 composed their fleets were merely modifications of 

 those which are figured in p. 394, from the rocks in 

 Sweden engraved in the Bronze age. We have also 

 representations of boats of the Iron age. In Fig. 165 I 

 have reproduced a sketch incised on a rock at Haggeby 

 in Uplande, 3 representing a boat with twelve pairs of 

 oars, in which the prow and the stern are formed in the 

 same way. A boat of this kind has been discovered in 



1 Worsaae, La Colonisation de la Russie et du Nord Scandinave, trad, 

 par E. Beauvois. 1875. 



2 A.D. 286. Under Carausius, Mon. Hist. Brit., Ixxii. Ixxx. 



3 Montelius, Gongr. Int., Stockholm vol., p. 459. 



