8.1 The Coming of the Indo-Europeans. No one has yet been able to
determine when the first speakers of Indo-European entered
Scandinavia. The prehistoric skulls unearthed by the archeologists´
spades are mute testimony to the presence of nomadic hunters as far
back as 10,000 B.C., when the glacier began melting away. These
mesolithic men used simple chipped flint implements to pursue the
reindeer, whose bones and horns they turned into axe handles and
harpoons. Climatic and geographic conditions were far different from
those of today: for a very long time the Baltic was a freshwater
lake, and from the Continent one could march right across Denmark
into Sweden. Living sites representing the so-called Maglemose
culture have been found in Sjælland from about 6000 B.C. They
display bone, flint and wood implements, as well as household
objects decorated with geometrical incisions and animal figures.
Around 5000 B.C. appear the classical Danish "kitchen middens",
refuse heaps containing the bones of animals and fish, oyster
shells, implements and earthen pots. Their enormous size, with a
depth of up to six feet and a length of up to five hundred feet,
testify to a more or less permanent habition.
Not until the Neolithic Age, from about 3000 B.C., can we be
reasonably sure that Indo-European was spoken in Scandinavia. At
that time a mode of living was introduced which remained
substantially unchanged down to early modern times: agriculture and
cattle herding were established. Men learned to make pottery
called "funnel beakers", decorated with zigzag, crisscross and
triangular figures. A new type of axe appeared, probably intended
for warlike purposes, which has lead to calling them the battle-axe
people (Note: the Norse word is "sax", pl. "söx" a short one-edged
sword - my interpolation). New habits of burial were adopted, single-
grave burials to replace the earlier megaliths known as dolmens and
passage graves. Some scholars have speculated that the battle-axe
people might have been the first Indo-Europeans, whose well-known
habits of expansion and conquest enabled them to overrun most of
Europe and western Asia in the third millennium B.C. In any case
there has been no evidence of any cultural revolutions since that
time radical enough to be accounted for by mass invasions, excepting
for the immigration of Finnish speakers into Finland and northern
Scandinavia, possibly in the first century of our era (Kivikoski
1967:74).
Around 1500 B.C. the manufacture of bronze was introduced in the
north, a skill that had spread from Asia Minor. This alloy of copper
and tin was greatly superior to stone, but its expense limited its
use to weapons and personal ornaments. Ordinary objects continued to
be made of stone and wood; the bronze objects marked their owners as
members of an aristocratic, warrior class. The northern peoples had
to import the new materials, but quickly attained great skill in
their treatment of them. The casting of bronze reached its
culmination in the bronze trumpets known as lurs (Note: the Norse
word is "lúðr", gen. "lúðrs" a trumpet, horn - my interpolation),
which have been found especially in Danish soil; these come in
pairs, are gracefully curved and engraved, and were presumably blown
by twin trumpeters at the head of festive religious processions.
Burial mounds raised in honour of the tribal chiefs testify to the
growth of leadership. Cremation (Note: the Norse word for such a
funeral is "bálför" (funeral - from "för"(a journey - from "fara")
and "bál" (fire; flame, blaze; pyre, funeral pile) - again, my
interpolation) later takes the place of mound burial, hinting
perhaps at a new and more immaterial conception of the soul and its
survival after death. (Note: this "immaterial conception of the
soul" and its "survival after death" is highly characteristic of the
Aryan people, who neither bury nor mummify, but practice cremation
as a visible sign of their belief in an Immortal Soul and a Divine
Being of an immaterial and eternal nature - nýtr manngi nás - again,
my interpolation) The most dramatic remains of the Bronze Age are
the rock carvings (Da Nw helleristninger/Sw hällristningar) found on
board cliff surfaces throughout Norden as far north as Finnmark. The
fact of their being stylized rather than naturalistic suggests an
attempt to communicate ideas: they are symbolic without being
clearly interpretable. There are stick-like human figures, alone and
in groups, on boats and in processions, as well as animals, trees,
wagons, circles, wheels, cupshaped hollows, swastikas and other
symbols that may reflect sun worship, fertility rites and sacrifices
(Hagen 1965). (Note: the swastika (an Indian word) is believed to be
the most ancient and important symbol of the Aryan religion and its
sudden arrival in conjuction with cremation is highly suspicious;
the sun and the sacred fire are also central to Aryan worship, which
typically takes place in the prsense of light - before the sacred
fire, at dawn and at dusk - in Ásatrú, the sacred fire which burns
in a place of worship is personified as a manifestation of Divinity
and called by the ON name "Lóðurr" or "Véi"- he is "inn vígði eldr",
the sacred fire, while the ancestral fire in the home is connected
to Heimdallr/Rígr; the sun is also personified as "Sól" or "Sunna",
which is related to Sanskrit "Surya", Pali "Sunna"; "Rígr" is
related to other Norse words like "Regin" and also to those others
like "ríkja"(to rule) which have K instead of G - the primitive
meaning of all these words is to "shine", and the secondary sense
is "to rule, be powerful" (see Sankrit verbal root "Ráj", derivative
words and the primary nominal root "Ruch" - to "shine" and "light",
respectively)
Around 500 B.C. the use of iron was introduced, and the remaining
centuries down to the dawn of history are referred to as the Iron
Age. The Early Iron Age (to about A.D. 50) was a cold, moist period
with few finds. The population may have been cut off from southern
trade routes by the movement of the Celts across Europe and into
Britain. The Celts were also Indo-Europeans, but by the beginning of
the Iron Age they were no doubt clearly differentiated
linguistically from the Germanic peoples clustered around the
confluence of the North Sea and the Baltic. The Celts may even have
transmitted the smelting of iron to the Germans, since the
word "iron" may be a Celtic loan. (Note: while it is certain that
the moving Celts used iron, it is by no means certain how the Nordic
peoples picked up the habit as they were clearly already settled far
from Asia prior to the Iron Age - my interpolation) In the later
centuries of the period, however, the Germanic peoples began
pressing southwards into Celtic Gaul, establishing dominion by 51
B.C. (Stenberger 1962:122). The Celts were gradually absorbed,
except in Britain, and the Germans now faced the Romans across the
Rhine and the Danube. In Scandinavia the period that followed is
called the "Roman Iron Age"; it lasted to the fall of the Roman
Empire and the Germanic migrations of the fourth and fifth centuries
A.D. For Scandinavians it was a period of favorable climate, with
rapidly rising standards of culture, thanks to close contacts with
the Romans and their traders. Graven finds in Norden show rich
treasures of Roman artifacts, as well as a highly developed native
productions. (Note: about the phrase "thanks to close contacts with
the Romans and their traders" - it has often been said that the
Romans were good at everything imaginable except religion, which
even the "barbarians" in the North could understand - thanks, I
believe, to the Aryans who once showed them the way to the Light).