Re: [tied] Early Roman Iron Age Burials in Denmark II

The fact that horse remains were found in Denmark doesn't say anything
definite yet. Anyway South Scandinavia has been settled by IE population and
horse had to be of a special importance in that society - remember typical
IE Bronze Age petroglyphs from this region depicting chariots (BTW I can not
explain to myself how chariots with spoked wheels which seem to be invented
in steppes near Ural relatively late - about 2000 BC - succeeded to reach so
quickly such a distant place as Sweden? And what to do with chariots in
northern forests?)

Thus we need to find some specific traits which correspond to East Iranian
burial ritual if we want to use this as a support for our hypothetical
constructions.

"flat-nosed and ugly"
As far as I remember such a description was applied only to Huns and never
to Sarmatians (the latter were typical europeoids - their skulls prove it,
only easternmost groups had some mongoloid admixture).

"Ygg's (Odin's) steed"
What is Ygg ? A variant of Odin's name? Or one of his epithets?

Alexander

----- Original Message -----
From: <tgpedersen@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2001 2:48 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Early Roman Iron Age Burials in Denmark II



--- In cybalist@..., "Alexander Stolbov" <astolbov@...> wrote:
> As far as can understand there we no horse burials in Roman Iron
Age Denmark
> at all, right?
>
> Alexander
>
>

No, not even Albrectsen seems to mention them, at least on Fyn, and
he is very thorough. But I found something in Politikens
Arkaeologileksikon, entry Hest (Horse).

"... Although the early history of the horse [in Denmark], we have on
the other hand from the Iron Age and later an excellent bone material
because of the special position of the horse in relation to the other
domestic animals. Whereas pigs, sheep and oxen (see: Kvaeg [Cattle])
as meat supplies have been carved up and the bones broken, we find
the horse either as a sacrificial animal or buried with its master.
Already from Pre-Roman Iron Age we find together with the Hjortspring
find large parts of a skeleton, and in the large war sacrifice finds
in Roman Iron Age (Nydam, Illerup etc) we find also whole skeletons."

Not very specific, I'm afraid. I'll keep looking.

I find in Claus Deleuran's "Illustreret Danmarkshistorie for Folket",
4. del, Den yngre eller Romerske Jernalder, MXMI, about horse
sacrifices:

"In Rislev Mose [bog] north of Naestved [on Sjaelland] there was
another kind of sacrifice [than the weapon deposits] from that time.
It is also called Val-mosen. A lot of domestic animals, sheep, dogs,
oxen and horses were deposited in the bog, and further two women of
approx. 30 and 19 years. And a 14 year old boy.

The corpses were kept down with poles, cf the poles that vampires and
ghosts are traditionally poled down with.

Rotting corpses fill up with gas, so if you leave out the poles, they
suddenly come up out of the bog and go: Boo!

Of the horses only the skulls and the bones of the neck and lower
legs were found (bogs on Sjaelland do not contain tannic acid like
those of Jutland), but we imagine that they were left in the hide of
the horse. [picture of horse hide with head impaled over a bog].

This custom is often seen in the Iron Age (cf the Old Irish ritual,
see band 3, p. 18). The display of it that one could see at Lejre
Forsøgscenter [the Lejre experimental Iron Age village] comes from a
corresponding custom in the Altai mouintains in South Siberia in the
1800's, and among the Oghuz east of the Caspian Sea around 920,
described by the Arab Ibn Fadlan and in "Skalk" [a national very
popular archaeology magazine; archaeology has been described as the
national passtime of the Danes] no 3, 1957 (Fotnote: It is tempting
as origin of that custom to think of the Huns, who seem to have been
Turkic-speaking, and who had a great influence on the Germanic
peoples in the 400's. But before them there were in Pannonia
(Hungary) a Sarmatian people called the Jazyges. They are described
as "flat-nosed and ugly". That is the Romans' way of describing a
mongoloid look. The custom may therefore also originate with the
Sarmatians.)

The congregation probably ate the rest of the horse. As for the pole
I [Deleuran] would like to remind you that the world tree in
the "Edda" is called Ygg-drasil, ie. "Ygg's (Odin's) steed". The
afore-mentioned Altai-Turks in Southern Siberia in the 1800's also
sacrificed their horse to "the Highest God" at a 3-day celebration,
under the leadership of a shaman (a kind of priest).

Together with the waters of the bog, pole and horse form a model of
the image of the world [world model!] at the time. "

A BTW with this model of the world the primeval world ocean also
becomes *the* one and only flat, horizontal surface of the world
model. Thus it should possible to conflate the two meanings of *dan-:
1. "water, (big) river", and 2. flat terrain (german Tenne "threshing
floor")

Torsten





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