THE AMERICAN-SCANDINA VIAN REVIEW 
85 
writing are thousands of years older than in the North—fixed points 
to which he could attach his chronology so far as it dealt with the 
historical era. 
From that time on he has continued with untiring industry and 
with keen discrimination his research in various ages and cultural 
fields. Round about him other scholars have entered on the same 
profitable line of work, and in general it may now be said that we 
actually know something in a domain where formerly we could only 
guess. In that respect Montelius’s synthetic description of life in 
the North from the prehistoric era down to the introduction of Chris¬ 
tianity marks a departure from all that had gone before. This work 
has been several times revised and has been published in several lan¬ 
guages. It should be of interest not least in America and England 
where people even now love to make for themselves fantastic pictures 
of the “viking forefathers” as beings suddenly rising full-fledged out 
of a primitive state of civilization. From Montelius they can learn how 
the forefathers of these vikings had been for 2,500 years in constantly 
growing intercourse with the peoples around the borders of the Med¬ 
iterranean and the Atlantic as well as those in the interior of the con¬ 
tinent; how 1,500 years earlier they had developed a Bronze Age civi¬ 
lization which in metallurgical skill and the finished artistic beauty 
of its products is not inferior to that of the countries around the Med¬ 
iterranean; and how during the era of the migration of nations they 
had in their own countries created independent works of applied art 
with a sense of style and a technical perfection that has never been 
excelled, royal weapons and ornaments of gold and shining stones 
worthy to encircle the neck and brow of an empress. And it should 
surely also be of interest to know how the vikings themselves lived at 
home, in what boats they sailed, with what weapons they fought, what 
instruments they played on, what implements their traders used in 
weighing their goods or their money, their farmers in ploughing and 
harvesting their fields, or their women in spinning and lighting the 
fires and cooking the food in the old farmhouses. And all these things 
we actually do know, thanks to the research work of Oscar Montelius 
continued through a lifetime of patriarchal length. 
What kind of man, then, was this indefatigable seeker after 
knowledge? Bowed with care? Near-sighted? Buried in the past 
and oblivious of the present? 
Tall and straight and fair was he. Even in old age when near¬ 
ing eighty he carried his handsome Northern head high, and his deep 
voice rang like that of some old Northern chieftain. His glance was 
keen under bushy eyebrows, but his nature was free from all hardness. 
No one could be gentler than this old giant. Honored as few scholars 
in his field have been, personally admired by those who knew him, 
and—of course—flattered by thousands who wished to make use of 
