INHABITANTS— PREHISTOEIC EEMAINS. 59 



age, for no discoveries have been made except of stone arms and implements, 

 besides coarse earthenware. Both the coast-line and the saline character of the 

 waters must have also undergone great changes since then, for the oyster, at that 

 time so common, can no longer live in these seas, owing to the small quantity of 

 salt they now contain. Some of the bones found in the middens — as, for instance, 

 those of the Tetrao lO'ogallus — also hear witness to the severity of the Danish 

 climate at this period. 



To the remains found in the peat beds and middens must be added the weapons, 

 utensils, and ornaments collected in great quantities from the megalithic graves of 

 divers forms, with one, two, or more chambers, scattered over the land. Among 

 these monuments the oldest are the round barrows and long mounds. The giants' 

 chambers {Jœttcstuev or steendysser) are built with more art, and are composed of 

 several compartments of granite blocks, covered over by a hillock of earth. Many 

 seem to have been family sepulchres, and in them have been found the bones of 

 wild and domestic animals buried with the dead, together with implements, arms, 

 and ornaments. These burial-places belong mostly to the last period of the 

 polished stone and bronze age, and to a settled people already skilled in stock- 

 breeding and the elementary principles of agriculture. 



Iron seems to have finally prevailed in these regions about the time of Septimius 

 Severus, or towards the close of the second century, and from this epoch also date 

 the earliest Hunic inscriptions. Very remarkable objects of local origin, or 

 imported from abroad, have been discovered in some of the graves. Such is the 

 cup found at Stevns Klint, in Sjalland, with a chased silver rim bearing a Greek 

 legend. At Bornholm the age of iron was developed under special conditions. 

 Here are thousands of graves called hrandplctter, consisting of excavations filled 

 with charcoal, human ashes, and bones, with fragments of arms and implements 

 in iron and bronze, contorted by the action of fire. The burial-place of Kannike- 

 gaard, near Nexo, alone contains over twelve hundred of such graves, and two other 

 cemeteries have nine hundred each ; but the more recent graves were all isolated. 

 The practice of cremation has caused the disappearance of a great part of the 

 precious objects buried with the dead. 



"Whoever the people of the stone age may have been, E,ask and Nilsson believe 

 that the whole of Denmark was occupied by Lapp tribes in prehistoric times. 

 Others, on the contrary, hold that the Finnish Lapps reached the peninsulas and 

 southern isles of Scandinavia only in erratic groups. In any case it is certain 

 that the country has at some time been occupied by races of very different origin 

 from its present Norse inhabitants. The comparative study of the crania made by 

 Sasse in the Sjalland graveyards shows that till the sixteenth century a people of 

 \eTy feeble cranial capacity here held its ground by the side of the large-headed 

 Frisic stock. Some articles of dress would also seem to suggest the presence of 

 old Celtic peoples, the peculiar head-dress till recently worn by the peasant women 

 in Fyen, ^ro, and Falster presenting a striking resembbnce to that of the 

 Antwerp peasantry. 



After the subsidence of the mig-htv waves of migration which drove the 



