The early Nordic Bronze Age ships are in form and construction clearly
inspired by east Mediterranean ships. Ships are very complex constructions,
transmitting tradition. The construction of the Nordic sea-going Bronze Age
ships as depicted in rock art and an early example on the Rørby sword from
the seventeenth or sixteenth century (Figure 92) could hardly have originated
in small drawings. It demanded an understanding of the craftsmanship behind
the techniques of bending the wood for the high curved stems, and for the
complex double construction of both keel and stem.^110The Rørby sword, a chance find in 1957, has a tip curled upward and inward,
imitating the curved prow of a ship, and was obviously meant for display rather
than for battle. Along its blade is the image of a “pentekonter” propelled by at
least fifty oars. Like the other decorations on the sword, the “pentekonter” was
not engraved or incised on the bronze, but was included in the casting, thus
indicating that other swords with the same image were produced in the foundry.
Chariots in southern Scandinavia
Chariots too may have come to southern Scandinavia at the same time as bronze
swords, spearheads, axes and ships. Because southern Scandinavia had until then
been still in the Neolithic period, and hardly acquainted with warfare, it is again
conceivable that a few hundred well-armed men from the south could have taken
over a considerable stretch of the shore where amber was being collected. The
many swords and spearheads that have been found suggest that a takeover was
accomplished by men on the ground rather than in chariots, but at least a few
chariots may have been (or may have soon become) part of the scene. Chariots
and spoked wheels appear often—although not nearly so often as ships—in
Scandinavian rock carvings and these have been studied in exhaustive detail by
Jens Johannsen.^111 Johannsen catalogued 116 rock carvings of two-wheeled
chariots, the wheel having four spokes, and another fifty-four of two-wheeled
vehicles in which the wheels are shown simply as circles without spokes.^112 The
images cannot be securely dated, but Johannsen puts the earliest in Period I of
the Nordic Bronze Age, which he dates to 1700–1400 BC.^113 He does not reckon
with a military takeover of southern Scandinavia, suggesting only “that an import
of chariot-like carts took place in the earliest Bronze Age.”^114 The most famous
evidence for Scandinavian chariots is the Trundholm (Denmark) sun-cart, the date
of which is also much disputed (it could be as early as 1500 BC, or as late as
800 BC).^115
Quite definitely early in the Nordic Bronze Age, but difficult to interpret, is
evidence that comes from a votive deposit found in 1887 in a bog at Gallemose
in Jutland.^116 During the Bronze Age the bog was a lake, and the votive deposit
was lowered into the lake some 50 m from the shore. The deposit contained axes
and rings, and also what seem to be bronze fittings to a chariot yoke.^117 All of the
bronze items together weighed slightly more than 12 kg. As commented by Klavs
Randsborg, who has especially studied the Gallemose hoard, a dozen kg of bronze
160 Militarism in temperate Europe