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The people of the Bronze age introduced a higher civilisation into the world than their predecessors of the Stone ages. There appears to be a great overlap between the Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron ages of Central and Northern Europe, and the historic periods of the Eastern countries bordering on the Mediterranean. We have evidence that great periods of time must have marked the epochs of the prehistoric ages, and that the Bronze age, like the Stone and Iron ages, began at different times in different countries. The tribes who brought with them the age of Bronze into Europe composed the Celtic van of the Aryan race. The earliest productions of this period were the simple wedges resembling flat stone axes, the sides of which are slightly thickened to form ridges or flanges; the centres are also raised, which produces a ridge to prevent the head from going in too far in the handle; in some the flanges are much developed, and have also a loop cast on the side for the purpose of tying it on to the haft. Some are made with a socket and loop; these have been called “Paalstabs,” and have a flat chisel-like shape (Figs. 28, 30).

Fig. 28.

Fig. 29.

Fig. 30.

Figs. 28 to 30.—Bronze and Paalstabs. (From Danish Arts.)

Fig. 31.

Fig. 32.

Fig. 33.

Fig. 34.

Figs. 31 to 34.—Bronze Axes, Paalstabs, and Moulds. (From Danish Arts.)

Fig. 35.

Fig. 36.

Fig. 37.

Fig. 38.

Figs. 35 to 38.—Bronze Swords and Spear-Head. (From Danish Arts.)

Figs. 39 and 40.—Bronze Button for Sword Belt.

(From Danish Arts.)

These earlier implements are often made of pure copper. Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin, generally from two to four per cent. of tin, and is consequently harder than copper. Knives, hammers, gouges, sickles, daggers, spears, swords, shields, many kinds of vessels, and articles of personal adornment made in bronze, belong to the earlier time of the Bronze period, and similar articles were made in this material in the prehistoric Bronze ages all over the known world (Figs. 35 to 40).

An interesting object is a breast-plate, belonging to this early Bronze period; it is decorated with zigzags in bands, and a well-arranged scheme of spiral ornamentation (Fig. 41). Urns of earthenware, sometimes decorated with zigzags and sacred signs, have been found in graves. These urns contained ashes of the dead (Figs. 43, 44).

Fig. 41.—Breast-plate, with Spiral Ornaments. (From Danish Arts.)

Many of the bronze implements and other articles have been found in tombs, in caves in great quantities, both finished and unfinished, in “Kitchen Middens,” or refuse heaps, in river-beds, and in bogs.

Fig. 42.

Fig. 43.

Fig. 44.

Figs. 42, 43, and 44.—Urns of the Bronze Age (From Danish Arts.)

Fig. 45.—Bronze Bowl found in Sweden. (Scand. Arts.)

Fig. 46.—Urn of the Stone Age found in Swedish Dolmen. (Scand. Arts.)

Some of the objects found in North Germany, and particularly in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, are exceedingly beautiful in their shape and decoration. From nowhere else in the world come so many objects, and so much that is characteristic of the prehistoric Bronze age. This period has been ably treated, and at great length, by Mr. J. J. A. Worsaae, in his “Danish Arts,” and by Mr. Hans Hildebrand, in his “Arts of Scandinavia,” to which books we are indebted for the accompanying illustrations. It may be noticed that much of the decoration on these objects consists of a few simple elements with much geometric repetition. The varied forms are chiefly spirals interlocking at regulated distances, concentric rings, triangles, zigzag lines, and bands formed of lines which are reminiscences of the earlier withy lashings, with which the stone celts were fastened to their hafts. The raised, as well as the flat twisted-like bands, are derivatives from the twisted strings that would naturally be tied around the pottery of an early date to carry it by (Fig. 45).

Fig. 47.—Bronze Hatchet found in Sweden. (Scand. Arts.)

The spirals, zigzags, ring-crosses, wheels, triskeles, reciprocal meanders, semicircles, &c., are geometrical developments of sun-snake, lightning, the sun itself, cloud-forms, moon-forms, star-forms, and the sacred fylfot or swastika, all of which had their origin in Egypt, India, Central Asia, or Greece. At first they were used as isolated signs, or pictographs, to represent physical phenomena, that were objects of Nature-worship with almost all the nations of the world after the dawn of civilisation, and when these signs migrated into the art of other nations or later peoples, who were either ignorant of their meaning or understood them in an imperfect way, they ceased to be employed as isolated signs of the various divinities they originally represented, and were copied, and repeated, as required, to fill in a geometrical way the space at hand to be ornamented.

Fig. 48.—Sun Signs.

A, Wheel Cross or Wheel; B, Sun God Signs; C, Fylfot, or Swastika; D, Triskele; E, Stars or Sun Signs.

A beautiful piece of workmanship is the bronze horn (Fig. 50). Worsaae thinks that this horn was used in the worship of the gods in the early Bronze age, owing to the great number of sacred signs engraved on it. Sun-wheels, sun-snakes, and sun-boats, developed into spiral ornament, may be seen on it.

Fig. 49.—Sun Signs. (From Danish Arts.)

F, Sun-snakes; G. Swastika; H, Triskele; I, Star or Sun.

N.B.—The Swastika here is evidently a double Sun-snake.

Fig. 50.—Bronze Horn or Trumpet, found at Wismar, in Mecklenburg. (From Danish Arts.)

There is one ornament that plays an important part in the Bronze and Iron periods, of which much has been written, the “fylfot” or “swastika.” It has been found in nearly every quarter of the ancient world, except Egypt and Assyria, both in savage ornament and in the art of cultured races. The “fylfot” or “many” or “full-footed” cross in Anglo-Saxon, it is also known by the names of “gammadion,” “croix gammée,” “croix cramponée,” “tetraskele,” &c. The Indian name for it is the “swastika” or “svastika,” which means “good luck,” or “it is well.” The fylfot, according to the opinion of many archæologists, was originally the sign of the sun, and used as a sacred symbol in the worship of the sun; others think it was a sign used to symbolize the rotatory motion of the planets; it is quite likely it has been used by different early peoples for both. It has been associated with other sun signs, as the circle, concentric circles, with the S-shaped sun-snakes, as on the prehistoric whorls from Hissarlik, and very frequently with the solar divinities, as the horse, boar, ram, lion, ibex, and goose, &c. It is found on Cyprian and Rhodian pottery and on the “geometric” pottery of Greece. Its appearance on many objects of early Christian art can be accounted for. In these cases the Christian missionaries permitted the continued use of it to their pagan converts, but they themselves attached a new meaning to it, regarding it as merely a substitute for the symbol of the cross.

Fig. 51.—Pinak or Plate, Archaic Period, from Camiros, Rhodes, showing Fylfot, and Sun Signs, and Sacred Boar. (British Museum.)

Some writers have argued, with a good deal of plausibility, that the Greek fret pattern, Chinese and Japanese frets, were only developments from the fylfot. This is purely conjectural, for as regards the Greek fret, it is more likely that it had an Egyptian source, as so many of the Greek ornaments are but developments of Egyptian and Assyrian forms. The fret used by the Greeks has been found in Egypt in the ceiling ornament of tombs more than a thousand years before it appeared in Greece. The Chinese frets may have in some instances a fylfot origin, but at present this is doubtful, as it has not yet been proved. The drawing of the archaic Greek plate (pinak), in the British Museum, given at Fig. 51, from the Greek colony of Rhodes, is very interesting, as it shows a well-developed fylfot between the legs of the boar, and an early Greek fret band; the fret here may only be a water-sign, or a river-edge representation. The spaces around the boar (animal sacred to the sun) are filled up with sun-signs and star-signs; even the large segment of radiating lines, and the form over the animal’s back may typify the sun. The whole decoration has a high religious meaning in reference to sun-worship, and is evidently a copy by a Greek artist of an oriental embroidery motive.

Fig. 52.—Silver Brooch, Plated with Gold, in the form of a Double Sun-snake or Swastika; found in Iceland. (Danish Arts.)

Fig. 53.—Gold Bowl, with Bronze Handle and Sacred Horse’s Head. (Danish Arts.)

Fig. 54.—Bronze Horn found in Denmark. (Danish Arts.)

The fylfot has been found stamped on the pottery of the lake dwellings of the Zuni, Yucatan, and other American pottery, and on objects from Iceland, Ireland, and Scandinavia. A circular form of it is seen on the gold Scandinavian ornament (Fig. 52).

Whether it originally was a pure sun-sign, or whether it signified the axial rotation of the earth round the North Pole, it is full of remarkable interest, and enters more than any other symbolic sign into historic ornament generally. In India, China, and Japan, it has been much used; this was owing to the spread of the Buddhist religion in these countries. It is found on the toes of the “Footprint” of Buddha, at the Amarávati Tope, India; and owing to its great religious significance in China, Japan, and Ceylon, we find it stamped on the account books, coins and dresses of both the living and the dead, as a universal sign of good luck.

Fig. 55.—Collar of Bronze found in Sweden. (Scand. Arts.)

Fig. 56.—Danish Bronze Knives, decorated with Sun-ships and other Sacred Figures. (Danish Arts.)

Fig. 57.

Fig. 58.

Figs. 57 and 58.—Bronze and Gold Buttons found in Women’s Graves, with the Triskele, Moon-Signs, and Sun Snakes. (Danish Arts.)

The swastika, both straight and curved-armed variety, was used indiscriminately in the decoration of objects of the Iron age, whether in bronze, iron, gold, silver, wood, or stone. It was the sign among the Romans of Jupiter Tonans, who wielded the thunder and lightning; was the sign used for Thor, the god of thunder and lightning, with the early German peoples, and the curved variety of it was used as a symbol of their highest divinity by the northern nations of Scandinavia. From this widespread use of the swastika it is conjectured that it is an Aryan symbol, brought by the people of the Bronze age from their primitive home in the plateau of Central Asia.