84 Proceedings of the Royal Physical Society. 



IV. The " KjoJcJcen-Moddinger" of Denmark, and their Similitudes on the 

 Elginshire Coast. By the Rev. George Gordon, LL.D., Minister of 

 Birnie. Communicated by George Logan, Esq., W.S. (Illustrative 

 Specimens of the different Shells were Exhibited.) 



Kjokken-Moddinger is a Danish word applied to masses 

 of the remains, chiefly of edible shell-fish, found around the 

 shores of Denmark. When literally given in English it 

 comes to be a well-known and homely term, which is pro- 

 bably not very different in sound from the original. In 

 Denmark these masses have been long known, but were 

 little regarded by the archaeologist, and at times spoken of 

 by the geologist as shells left by the sea when the land 

 was more deeply immerged in the ocean than it is at pre- 

 sent. Within the last few years it has been ascertained 

 that these collections of shells are the dust-heaps made up 

 of the debris of the food on which the earlier inhabitants of 

 that territory subsisted, and closer examination of their 

 contents has thrown light on the manners and customs of 

 those rude tribes who first settled on the shores of Scan- 

 dinavia. 



Kjokken-Moddinger are by no means rare along our own 

 shores. Several of them have been compared with the de- 

 scription given of those in Denmark, and they are found to 

 agree in many striking particulars. They are most likely 

 to be found all round the British coasts. The object of the 

 present notice is to invite attention to some facts, which, if 

 well worked out by such as have the opportunity, will tend 

 to show how the earlier occupiers of Morayland lived and 

 fared. This end will be best advanced by those who take 

 an interest in the subject making known any locality where 

 shell-heaps have been met with similar to those which are 

 here to be enumerated. 



From two papers, one by Mr Lubbock in the " Natural 

 History Beview" for October 1861 ; the other by Mr Nor- 

 man, published by Macmillan and Company, it appears that 

 the people, of whose means of living these shell-heaps are 

 the vestiges, existed in Denmark in what is known in anti- 

 quarian works as the Stone Age, or that earliest period of 



