oldest religious ideas of the North in prehistoric archæology, the science which investigates and throws light upon every species of relic preserved from antiquity. Here it is especially burial rites and the placing in graves of objects supposed to be offerings which have mythological signifi

a. In the remains of the earliest stone age, the refuse heaps, no burial places have been discovered; but from the latest stone age have been found a great number of graves, round and long barrows, sepulchral chambers (Figs. 1-3), and stone "chests," in which bodies were laid unburned and supplied with the necessary implements, which shows a belief in a continued life after death. Burned places and remnants of pyres in the graves seem to indicate

offerings to or for the dead, and hewn in the stones are often found certain saucer-like depressions, wheels and crosses, which most likely have religious significance (Fig. 4).

b. In the bronze age, which ends some hundred years before the birth of Christ, men long preserved burial rites from the stone age.

Bodies were not burned, but were placed in raised mounds in a tightly closed stone setting or in chests of hollowed trunks of oaks. Later, however, the burning of bodies became more and more common; ashes were preserved in stone vessels or most often in clay urns within the mounds; many times use was made of old mounds from the stone age. The greatest number of our barrows contain, therefore, tombs from the bronze age (Figs. 5-7). The reason for this change in the mode of burial seems to

be the rise of new ideas about life after death. At first people believed in a continued life of the body, later they burned the body to set free the soul. Likewise in the stone age men deposited in the graves sacrificial gifts, handsomely wrought objects for use or ornament. For decoration are used now also hooked crosses

and trefoils (Figs. 8-9). These emblems, whose significance is not known, are found used as sacred tokens ("religious symbols") among all Indo-European peoples.

c. The iron age begins probably sometime in the fourth century B.C. In very ancient times, even, the Northmen had enjoyed commercial relations with Asia and Greece. From about the time of Christ's birth there begins a strong Roman influence, which, among other things, gives

the Gothic-Germanic people a peculiar alphabetic writing, the Runes. The iron age stretches even into historic times; the last division is the Viking time (c. 800-1000). In the course of the iron age people again stopped burning bodies, since, as Snorri says, the cremation-age was succeeded by the mound-age. Bodies were once more regularly provided with objects for use-weapons and vessels for food and drink. Discovery has been made of large and splendid offerings (e.g. golden horns), urns with slain animals, perhaps even altars upon which rude images of the gods seem to have been raised (Fig. 10). Several other things from the middle-iron-age will be touched upon in what follows; but we do not see anything really definite, indicating belief in gods, until far on toward Viking times.

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3. Common Norse Language.-At the beginning of the Christian era, the Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes constituted but one tribe, speaking the same language, Urnordisk, Primitive Norse. This common language was preserved, with a succession of natural transitions and changes, to be sure, to about the year 1000. In Viking times this was called den danske Tunge, "the Danish Tongue," and from it the separate Norse

In a single instance undoubted images of gods were found in certain marsh-lands.

languages have gradually been developed. It is also probable that the Northmen had the same heathen religion in all the main

FIG. 4.-Stone with Saucer-like Depressions, Wheels and Crosses.

points; even in the worship of the gods there has been but little difference in the different provinces.