forcefully by Helle Vandkilde.^99 She puts special emphasis on the “warriorhood”
that commenced in Scandinavia along with the Nordic Bronze Age and that linked
Scandinavia to the Carpathian basin and the Aegean. Vandkilde also suggests that
the three areas were linked in an Indo-European framework.^100
The Apa was only the first of the many swords found in southern Scandinavia.
The formidable Sprockhoff Ia, a flange-hilted slashing sword, was apparently
developed in the Carpathian basin but was most favored in southern Scandinavia.
As J. D. Cowen showed, Denmark has yielded more specimens of the Sprockhoff
Ia than all the rest of Europe combined.^101 The earliest of these cut-and-thrust
swords date from the late fifteenth century BC.
Bronze spearheads came to southern Scandinavia along with swords, but not
much has been done with them. Reviewing the weaponry of Period I of the Nordic
Early Bronze Age, Christian Horn observed that “studies of Bronze Age weaponry
are mainly concerned with swords and neglect spearheads.”^102 Horn restored some
balance to the topic by inspecting 154 bronze spearheads, as well as fifty swords,
from the EBA I in Denmark and southern Sweden. His conclusion was that the
spearheads show as much use-wear as do the swords.
Whether bronze axes were part of the new weaponry in southern Scandinavia
is not clear. A few of the same disk-butted axes that were prized in the Carpa -
thian basin have shown up in the Bronze Age Ib period of Scandinavia. Vandkilde
believes, although with some reservations, that these axes were weapons.^103 They
appear in the company of spears and very efficient swords, and so certainly had
military connotations, but the likelihood is that when a weapon was actually needed
a warrior would probably not have chosen his axe. That the axes here were gifts
Militarism in temperate Europe 157Figure 5.6Four of the Apa swords found at Dystrup. Courtesy John Lee and the
National Museum of Denmark