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damaged, and some argue that this was done to rep-

resent a ritual “killing” of an enemy. Animals, par-

ticularly horses, were also slaughtered as part of the

ritual.

HUMAN SACRIFICE

Human sacriﬁce seems to have become widespread

in the ﬁrst century

B.C. Most of the evidence comes

from Danish bog areas, where the bodies of the men

and women who were killed have been preserved in

the acid soils of peat bogs under anaerobic condi-

tions. The skin, hair, and, in some cases, stomach

contents of these bodies have been preserved by the

tannins in the peat soils. This extraordinary state of

preservation has allowed archaeologists to learn de-

tails about the clothing, hairstyles, and diet of these

people. Tollund man, a body discovered at Tollund,

Denmark, in 1950, is one of the best-preserved bog

bodies. He was unclothed except for a leather girdle

and a leather cap that was laced across his chin. His

last meal was gruel. Around his neck was a hide rope

with which he had been strangled before being sub-

merged in the bog. Tollund man is now on display

in the Silkeborg Museum in Denmark.

Another example is Grauballe man, also from

Silkeborg, who was found to have eaten a ﬁnal meal

of porridge containing chieﬂy barley, oats, and

emmer wheat, along with some weed seeds, shortly

before he had his throat cut. He was killed some-

time in the ﬁrst century

B.C.

CAULDRONS, WAGONS,

AND WEAPONS

The Roman Iron Age and the Migration period saw

a return to sacriﬁcial offerings consisting predomi-

nantly of weapons. From the later part of the pre-

Roman Iron Age, between nineteen and twenty-

one cauldrons have been recovered from bogs or in

graves. Few were located on dry land. The caul-

drons found in bogs and those found on dry land

are all individual ﬁnds. Cauldrons from graves fre-

quently contain a rich set of associated ﬁnds with a

full set of weapons (sword, shield, and javelin/

lance) and gold ﬁnger rings.

The ﬁnd material of this period becomes mark-

edly variegated, and various imported luxurious

items enter the archaeological record. Particularly

striking are the two large Celtic display wagons

from the Dejbjerg bog in Denmark. The remains of

comparable wagons are also known from two cre-

mation burials, one from Langa˚ on Fyn, and one

from Kraghede in north Jutland. Imported swords

are also found in both bogs and graves.

Swords tend to be solitary ﬁnds. Two major

weapon deposits of this period are located at Hjort-

spring bog and Krogsbo

⁄

lle bog. The great majority

of the recoverable archaeological wealth was depos-

ited in hoards during two periods: the early pre-

Roman Iron Age and the early Germanic Iron Age.

The ﬁnds of rings from the early pre-Roman Iron

Age are usually interpreted as votive deposits. In the

Smederup bog in eastern Jutland, a plank-built well

was found not far from the place where great quan-

tities of rings were dug up. It is regarded as a votive

well and may therefore emphasize the sacred charac-

ter of the bog. Artifact studies have shown that arti-

fact types deposited in the bogs of one area are not

deposited in graves of the same area.

Two artifacts of great importance have Celtic

origins. One is the Gundestrup cauldron, a silver

bowl with highly realistic embellishments in relief,

including a representation of a human sacriﬁce; it

has been suggested that it was used for catching a

victim’s blood. Another interesting ﬁnd is the

Hjortspring boat, a war canoe that was unearthed

on the island of Als off southeastern Jutland. This

canoe carried between twenty-two and twenty-four

paddlers and is the oldest surviving example of a

boat in Scandinavia. It contained deliberately dam-

aged war equipment, including some single-edged

iron swords, which were evidently ceremonial offer-

ings. Studies have concluded that this was a reli-

gious deposition of the hoards.

A DECLINE IN POPULATION

One surprising aspect of this period is that it has

yielded relatively few archaeological remains. Earlier

archaeologists, who worked primarily with grave

ﬁnds, viewed the pre-Roman Iron Age as a regres-

sion period and, in some areas, such as Tro

⁄

ndelag,

Norway, it would appear there was virtually no use

of iron. This suggests that the population had de-

clined. Although these early centuries remain com-

paratively obscure, since very few settlements are

known from this period, in the 1990s and 2000s,

thanks to a change of focus from grave goods to

habitation sites, modern archaeological research has

been able to contribute tremendously to our under-

6: THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

270

ANCIENT EUROPE

standing of the pre-Roman Iron Age, providing a

new picture of society, especially in southern Scan-

dinavia. In fact, settlement development from the

Bronze Age to the Early Roman Iron Age now ap-

pears to have been continuous. Certainly the cli-

mate, which for about two thousand years had been

drier than it is now, became both wetter and colder,

so that, toward the north, deciduous trees began to

disappear and the glaciers began to re-form on the

high ground. Investigations of Danish raised bogs

have shown that the climate has ﬂuctuated over the

past 5,500 years and that these ﬂuctuations lasted

for about 260 years. The climatic changes in the

ﬁnal phase of prehistory can be located with great

accuracy. A trend toward increased precipitation

and lower summer temperatures set in about 600

B.C., just before the transition to the pre-Roman

Iron Age. The next ﬂuctuation took place about

300

B.C., and yet another very close to A.D. 0. This

climatic deterioration probably affected the efﬁcien-

cy of farming.

LAND-USE PATTERNS

In southern Scandinavia, the late pre-Roman Iron

Age was characterized by woodlands that expanded

at the expense of open land (pastures, arable land).

This may have been caused by a concentration of

settlement in permanent farms and villages. This

means that the late pre-Roman Iron Age landscape,

broadly speaking, was similar to the Late Bronze

Age landscape. On a smaller scale, however, it dif-

fered in the organization and land-use pattern of its

permanent villages: inﬁelds with arable ﬁelds and

meadows around the farms, and outland with pas-

tures and coppiced woods. In general, the transition

to the pre-Roman Iron Age in Sweden did not bring

about any sudden restructuring of agriculture. The

farms were still isolated, with longhouses the same

size as they had been during the Late Bronze Age,

with room for one extended family.

This was different from Jutland. There, long-

houses became much smaller in the pre-Roman

Iron Age, with room for only one family household,

but with many houses clustered together like vil-

lages. In Scania there were no villages prior to about

A.D. 500, unlike in other parts of “Denmark.” Be-

fore that, in the Bronze Age and pre-Roman Iron

Age, there were single farms with Celtic ﬁelds,

probably under shifting cultivation, which slightly

later developed into double or triple farms that

seem to have belonged to kin-groups rather than

constituting true villages. Nucleated villages were

ﬁrst founded between

A.D. 500 and 700. Single

farms were not established again with any regularity

until the Early Middle Ages.

In Sweden, the excavations of the Skrea project

in Halland have unearthed a number of large-scale

settlements ranging from the Late Bronze Age to

the Early Iron Age. While damage from modern ag-

ricultural activities has compromised the preserva-

tion of some of the sites, there is still a large quantity

of information identifying the settlements as large

agrarian units. These settlements are located at dry

ridges, often composed of glacioﬂuvial deposits or

other self-draining soil types. Those dry areas were

used for living and farming. Vast grounds consisting

of heavier soil types suitable for grazing and for hay

crops surrounded them. In all archaeological work

thus far there has been a clear correlation of site type

to soil type. These settlements were inhabited for

ﬁfteen hundred to two thousand years, some even

longer.

A second type of settlement is smaller and more

sporadic. It tends to correlate with different land-

scape zones, however. Some are on small ridges in

otherwise wet areas or in areas with relatively small-

scale landscapes. The relationship between the two

scales of settlements remains unclear.

Another key site for looking at architecture and

settlement is located on the tofts of Lilla Köpinge

village. It is in southeastern Scania, near the medi-

eval town of Ystad. It was the subject of intensive in-

vestigations, along with Stora Köpinge, which is

one of the emporium-like market sites founded in

the 800s. Each farm appears to have had its own

ﬁxed site, on which several layers of longhouses can

be found. The longhouses are relatively large: 17 by

26 by 5.6 meters. Their overall area is not much

larger than that of longhouses in the Late Bronze

Age, but the greater length of the buildings made

it possible to house a greater number of livestock.

The farms also had some smaller buildings, includ-

ing sunken-ﬂoor huts, which were used primarily

for weaving. In Denmark, the ﬁrst sunken-ﬂoor

huts do not appear before the late Roman Iron Age.

In the Köpinge area, by contrast, there is concrete

evidence dating them to the pre-Roman Iron Age.

PRE-ROMAN IRON AGE SCANDINAVIA

ANCIENT EUROPE

271

MOBILE SETTLEMENTS

One of the observations made for this period is that

the settlement was mobile and that villages moved

from time to time. Over the long term, they may

have come to remain in the same place for longer

periods. The greater or lesser mobility of the village

communities of this period was ﬁrst revealed with

the extensive excavations at Gro

⁄

ntoft. Gro

⁄

ntoft is a

rural settlement in western Jutland dating from

about

A.D. 200, and it provides invaluable informa-

tion on these Early Iron Age farmers. The settlers

must have lived in buildings very similar to those of

their Bronze Age predecessors, grouped in villages

surrounded by fences. The excavations reveal a sin-

gle “wandering village” in the same resource terri-

tory for a period of about three hundred years.

Gro

⁄

ntoft probably housed about ﬁfty people and

about sixty cattle, but it is difﬁcult to know how rep-

resentative this site is of the period. The houses are

of three-aisled construction, which is found at all

the Danish Iron Age settlements. This construction

dates as far back as the middle of the second millen-

nium

B.C. In about 500 B.C., it evolved into a rec-

tangular house shape unvaryingly oriented east-

west, with a roof supported by two parallel rows of

interior posts. Entrances were found in both long

sides of the house. The walls of the houses were

sometimes made of massive or light timber and with

wattle and daub. There were sometimes also mas-

sive earthen and turf walls. The houses were often

divided into two sections: the east end sheltered cat-

tle while the west end with the hearth was for

human dwelling. The dwelling section often had a

clay ﬂoor while the barn may have had a stone-

paved gutter and stall partitions. At all stages, the

village economy strongly emphasized animal hus-

bandry. Houses without stalls did exist, however.

When an individual house went out of use, it was

torn down and moved to another site within the vil-

lage territory. The old site was plowed over and the

soil was again tilled. The constant moving shifted

the original ﬁeld boundaries marked by balks. The

balks (forming the so-called Celtic ﬁelds), which

were visible at the excavations and thus stem from

many phases of cultivation, may have been separat-

ed by land left fallow for a period of time. There is

evidence of fences dating to roughly 300

B.C.; these

were probably used to protect the village and the

houses from the cattle.

There are other signs that rural settlements

were increasing in number and size toward the end

of the Early Iron Age. Many of the Danish settle-

ment sites were excavated in the early 1990s. How-

ever, while Gro

⁄

ntoft has the most extensive chro-

nology and has been thoroughly studied, more sites

dating closer to the centuries around

A.D. 1 provide

further information on mobile village communities.

HODDE

Excavations at Hodde, Jutland, began in the 1970s.

Hodde is typical of ﬁrst-century

B.C. rural settle-

ment and has many traits that are present in Danish

villages up to the beginning of the Viking Age. At

its greatest extent, Hodde consisted of twenty-

seven farmsteads. Each was composed of a long-

house with dwelling and cattle barn under the same

roof, and a few smaller subsidiary buildings, perhaps

barns or workshops. A fence surrounded each build-

ing complex, and a common fence, pierced by gate-

ways affording direct access from each farmstead to

its ﬁeld, enclosed the entire village. There was an

open area in the center of the settlement. One of the

farmsteads, larger than the rest, may have been the

residence of a chieftain. While some evidence of

blacksmithing, pottery making, weaving, and spin-

ning does exist, the primary economic activities

were cattle breeding and crop raising, in keeping

with the traditions of the Bronze Age but on a

much larger scale. Other sites in Jutland show that,

alongside such villages, there were also smaller agri-

cultural settlements with only two or three farms,

but we do not know why there were such great vari-

ations in the scale of settlement in the Danish coun-

tryside.

OTHER SETTLEMENTS

The evidence of house construction that is apparent

in the Danish material cannot be detected in Köp-

inge, Scania (Sweden). Instead there are small,

gradual changes. Continuity in settlement develop-

ment in the Köpinge area—as in Denmark—from

the pre-Roman Iron Age to the Early Roman Iron

Age is apparent, in that many sites date to both peri-

ods. No stall partitions have been documented, un-

like the case in Denmark. Nor does the relatively

regular placement of the pairs of roof-bearing posts

give us any guidance about the existence of stalls.

Conversely, the length of the houses and the loca-

tion of the hearths seem to indicate that one end

6: THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

272

ANCIENT EUROPE

was used as a barn, and that more animals were

housed there than was the case in the Late Bronze

Age. As with the structure of settlement, the archae-

ological material clearly demonstrates that these

were isolated farmsteads. Only toward the end of

the period do we ﬁnd evidence of agglomerated set-

tlements of two or more farms.

Information about the mobility of the Iron Age

village society can also be gleaned elsewhere in Den-

mark, for example, in the low marsh regions by the

North Sea in the south of Jutland, where the large

migrating villages are characteristic of the period. At

Drengsted, a very small area was found to contain

a series of settlements, some with cemeteries dating

from the ﬁrst century

B.C. to the ﬁfth century A.D.

At Dankirke in southwestern Jutland, a small area

was found to contain several settlements, with their

cemeteries dating from the same time period. In

Gro

⁄

ntoft, Hodde, Drengsted, and Dankirke, the

patterns seem to be identical. Over the centuries,

mobile village communities centered around large

herds of cattle moved around within narrowly de-

ﬁned resource territories.

REGIONAL VARIATIONS

The period of 200 B.C. to A.D. 200 is characterized

by a warm, dry climate favorable for cereal cultiva-

tion. Descriptions of the cultural landscape and of

land use in the Early Iron Age have long borne the

stamp of the archaeological material from Jutland

and areas preserving a fossilized cultivation land-

scape, such as Gotland and Östergötland. It is usu-

ally thought that most regions in southern Scandi-

navia underwent the same development at roughly

the same time, not just of the cultural landscape but

also in social and political terms; it is only as a result

of differences in the form of the natural landscape

in different regions that this development can be

studied today, and then only in certain regions. In

recent years large regional and local variations have

become more evident, not just between areas with

a fossilized cultivation landscape and those without,

but also within each category. In Köpinge, it is im-

possible to know whether the farms in the area co-

operated in any form of joint fencing, or what type

of cultivation system was used. Analyses of carbon-

ized plant material from the habitation sites show,

however, that hulled barley had become the main

crop and that weeds like Chenopodium had become

more common, which indicates the presence of ma-

nured ﬁelds. The meadow plants in the material can

be interpreted as hay waste and evidence of the stall-

ing of animals. Traces of the production and work-

ing of iron have been documented. Iron extraction

may also have led to the establishment of special

habitation sites, as in the Krageholm area. Manur-

ing and cultivation switch are also seen in the Bjares-

jo area of Sweden.

CAIRN FIELDS AND

CULTIVATION STYLES

In Norway in the early 1980s, there were systematic

investigations of some cairn ﬁelds that had previous-

ly been interpreted as grave ﬁelds. Cairns are formed

from clearing a ﬁeld in preparation for plowing.

They are simply rock piles. The typical clearance

cairn ﬁeld is characterized by a dense pattern of

small cairns. These may belong to an extensive or to

an intensive strategy of cultivation. The two strate-

gies can coexist. Clearance cairn ﬁelds are character-

ized by a lack of internal boundaries, the usual evi-

dence of a permanent arable ﬁeld. The spatial

organization of the cairn ﬁelds has no relation to the

territorial division of farms from historical times.

Phosphate analysis has located several settlements

within the same cairn ﬁeld. There are indications

that the settlements had been abandoned and then

used as arable ﬁelds. In some cases several phases of

this cycle can be documented. This phenomenon is

similar to what was occurring in the same period in

the Danish village of Gro

⁄

ntoft.

Most prehistoric houses are found in Jaeren and

Lista in Norway and belonged to the Roman Iron

Age and the Migration period. They are three-aisled

longhouses with stone walls. It was assumed that

these house remains represented the ﬁrst farms in

Norway, which were the result of the climatic

change in the pre-Roman Iron Age. That change

forced people to house their cattle indoors and to

collect winter fodder. Research in the 1990s and

early 2000s indicates that the settlement change in

southwestern Norway was caused by a shift to a

more intensive type of cultivation. No one has

found the houses from the ﬁrst millennium

B.C. be-

cause the farming system was based on bush fallow

and shifting cultivation. In southwestern Norway, it

was assumed that the clearance cairn ﬁeld areas were

evidence of extensive cultivation in the Bronze Age

PRE-ROMAN IRON AGE SCANDINAVIA

ANCIENT EUROPE

273

and the pre-Roman Iron Age. For a long time, how-

ever, settlement history in eastern Norway was writ-

ten primarily on the basis of place names, graves,

and archaeological artifacts. Extensive archaeologi-

cal investigations in eastern Norway in the 1990s

and early 2000s have located an increasing number

of Bronze and Iron Age houses. More than twenty

different settlement sites have been investigated,

partly as research excavations, and partly in conjunc-

tion with rescue excavations (e.g., for the new Oslo

airport at Gardermoen). These are found primarily

in the presently cultivated lands—under the tilth.

This means a large material culture is now available,

consisting of buildings from the Bronze and Iron

Ages.

The study of the principal house types that re-

sulted from these excavations suggests that one

principal type dominated from the Bronze Age to

the Migration period. The three-aisled buildings

were 15 meters long or more. As in contemporary

cases from Denmark and Scania, there are indica-

tions of separate dwelling and cattle compartments.

Each farmstead had two or three houses. This evi-

dence dates the beginning of the “historical farm”

to the Bronze Age. The cattle compartments show

that cattle were stalled indoors and that winter fod-

der may have been collected. Within this system it

must have been possible to collect manure and

spread it on the ﬁelds. Therefore there is the possi-

bility that an intensive type of cultivation was associ-

ated with the cairns.

The results of these investigations are consistent

with the results from the cairns. Many house struc-

tures are contemporary with the ﬁeld clearance

cairns. The spatial organization of the cairn ﬁelds

has no relation to the territorial division of the farms

from historical times. At the site of Einang in Val-

dres, Norway, situated on the outlying lands of

three different historical farm territories, the cairn

ﬁeld is located on the hillside, in an area which, in

recent times, has been used chieﬂy as a pasture. The

recent farmsteads, by contrast, are located along the

valley bottom. They have prehistoric names and, in

the graves associated with them, artifacts from the

Late Iron Age have been found. In the clearance

cairn, conversely, the graves contained artifacts

from the Roman period. A pollen analysis shows

that this area was cultivated continuously from the

Late Bronze Age to the Migration period. The evi-

dence from this locality points to a radical change

in the structure of the landscape in the middle of the

ﬁrst millennium.

Sites from northern Norway show mixed econ-

omies of farming and ﬁshing and individual farms

rather than settlement complexes. Archaeological

information coming from sites such as Bleik and

Toften in Ando

⁄

ya point to a heavy exploitation of

local marine resources and the beginnings of pro-

duction of cured ﬁsh.

See also Tollund Man (vol. 1, part 1); Hjortspring (vol.

1, part 1); Emporia (vol. 2, part 7); Pre-Viking and

Viking Age Norway (vol. 2, part 7); Pre-Viking and

Viking Age Sweden (vol. 2, part 7); Pre-Viking and

Viking Age Denmark (vol. 2, part 7).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Batey, Colleen E., and James Graham-Cambell, eds. Cultur-

al Atlas of the Viking World. London: BCA, 1994.

Becker, C. J. “Früheisenzeitliche Dörfer bei Gröntoft. West-

jütland. 3. Vorbericht: Die Ausgrabungen 1967–68.”

Acta Archaeologica 42 (1971): 79–110.

Berglund, Björn E., ed. The Cultural Landscape during

6000 Years in Southern Sweden: The Ystad Project. Eco-

logical Bulletins, no. 41. Copenhagen, Denmark:

Munksgaard International, 1991.

Callmer, J. “The Process of Village Formation.” In The Cul-

tural Landscape during 6000 Years in Southern Sweden:

The Ystad Project. Edited by Björn E. Berglund, pp.

337–349. Ecological Bulletins, no. 41. Copenhagen,

Denmark: Munksgaard International, 1991.

Derry, T. K. A History of Scandinavia: Norway, Sweden,

Denmark, Finland, and Iceland. Minneapolis: Univer-

sity of Minnesota Press, 1979.

Fabech, Charlotte, and Jytte Ringtved, eds. Settlement and

Landscape: Proceedings of a Conference in A

rhus, Den-

mark, May 4–7, 1998. Moesga˚rd, Ho

⁄

jbjerg, Denmark:

Jutland Archaeological Society, 1999.

Hedeager, Lotte. Iron-Age Societies: From Tribe to State in

Northern Europe, 500

B.C. to A.D. 700. Cambridge,

Mass.: Blackwell, 1992.

Helliksen, Wenche. Ga˚rd og utmark pa˚ Romerike 1100

f.Kr.–1400 e.Kr.: Gardermoprosjektet [Farm and periph-

ery in Romerike from 1100

B.C.–A.D. 1400: The

Gardermoen project]. Varia, no. 45. Oslo, Norway:

Universitets Oldsaksamling, 1997.

Hvass, Steen Hodde. Et vestjysk landsbysamfund fra ældre jer-

nalder [A western rural society from the Older Iron

Age]. Arkæologiske studier, vol. 7. Copenhagen, Den-

mark: Akademisk forlag, 1985.

Jensen, Jo

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rgen. The Prehistory of Denmark. New York:

Methuen, 1982.

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Myhre, Bjo

⁄

rn. “Agrarian Development, Settlement History,

and Social Organization in Southwest Norway in the

Iron Age.” In New Directions in Scandinavian Archae-

ology. Edited by Kristian Kristiansen and Carsten Palu-

dan-Müller, pp. 224–271. Copenhagen: National Mu-

seum of Denmark, 1979.

Näsman, Ulf. “Hus, landsby, bebyggelse [House, rural set-

tlement, and structures].” In Danmarks længste udgrav-

ning: Arkæologi pa˚ naturgassens vej 1979–86 [Den-

mark’s longest excavation], pp. 69–86. Copenhagen,

Denmark: n.p., 1987.

OPHIA PERDIKARIS

PRE-ROMAN IRON AGE SCANDINAVIA

ANCIENT EUROPE

275

THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

IRON AGE FINLAND

■

The topography, natural vegetation, and soil envi-

ronments of Finland vary substantially. In the

southwest region, encompassing the A

land Islands

and Varsinais Suomi, a warmer climate marked by

the greatest occurrence of deciduous tree growth in

Finland led to earlier agricultural development. Safe

natural harbors promoted the use of resources from

the sea and trade with foreign ships. The west coast

of Ostrobothnia had good water access and useful

connections with Sweden. The south coast of Uusi-

maa, on the other hand, was unprotected and

forbidding to access by ship. The heavy clay soils

found there were unsuitable for cultivation unaided

by a plow. Finnish farmers preferred to plant in

small forest clearings and to use rotational slash-

and-burn methods for preparing the soil. Thus,

lighter, ﬁne-grained soils found north of Uusimaa

were favored. The interior of Finland, characterized

by birch and pine forests and a complex system of

lakes and rivers formed amid glacial moraines, was

in many places not settled by farmers until the Late

Iron Age and medieval times, but its rich hunting

and ﬁshing resources were utilized by Finns

throughout the Iron Age. The soils of the interior

are mostly highly acidic with only a very thin humus

layer and are packed in most locations with many

surface stones. These soils would rarely be adaptable

to intensive plowed-ﬁeld techniques of cultivation.

The waterways were well-used routes of communi-

cation, especially during winter months when sur-

faces were frozen. Finns frequently moved through

these water systems while on hunting, ﬁshing, or

trading expeditions.

CHRONOLOGY

The ﬁve-hundred-year period starting 500 B.C. in

Finland is called the pre-Roman Iron Age. For a

thousand years prior, the Bronze Age Finns had

maintained lively contacts with their Baltic neigh-

bors, including the Scandinavians. Immigrants from

Sweden had settled along some of the coastal areas.

But in the period after 500

B.C., more Germanic

contacts and inﬂuences arrived, including a number

of loan words and a greater dependence on agricul-

ture. Southern Finns now became more aware of

the proto-Saami peoples who lived in the interior.

In the Early Iron Age, the Saami lived, herded,

and hunted farther south than several centuries

later. Their present situation is now far to the

north. Other Finnish connections with Finno-Ugric

tribes to the east promoted trade of bronze or iron

goods.

Some scholars have seen in the archaeological

record evidence that the beginning of the Iron Age

in Finland is marked by a decline in settlement and

a general impoverishment of the population, al-

though the reasons for this having occurred have

never been clear. By the late twentieth century,

most archaeologists argued for a continuation of

population and settlement in Finland. Changing liv-

ing and burial habits may account for the lessening

of some aspects of cultural visibility in the archaeo-

logical record. In particular, fewer metal objects

have been found from graves of the Early Iron Age,

but when archaeologists have focused their search,

they have sometimes found dwelling sites easier to

276

ANCIENT EUROPE

Provinces and traditional cultural regions of Finland. ADAPTED FROM TALVE 1997.

locate than the corresponding burial sites. This ex-

perience is the opposite of what Late Iron Age ar-

chaeologists have found. Later Iron Age burial sites

have been more readily located.

Iron came to Finland c. 500 B.C., and by the

Roman period (

A.D. 1–400), local iron production

is clearly in evidence. Iron tools and weapons were

still rare in ﬁnds (meaning, for the most part, from

IRON AGE FINLAND

ANCIENT EUROPE

277

Fig. 1. Provincial Roman glass drinking horn decorated in

blue and opaque white, reconstructed from pieces found in

fourth-century grave at Varsinais Suomi. NATIONAL BOARD OF

ANTIQUITIES FINLAND/HARALD MALMGREN 1966. REPRODUCED BY

PERMISSION

graves), but by the end of the ﬁrst millennium A.D.,

all parts of Finland had some iron. It is this lack of

metal ﬁnds (either of bronze or iron) from the Early

Iron Age that has created the impression, perhaps

the illusion, that the period was more impoverished

than what had come before or what came after. The

situation changed within a few centuries, however.

Already in the Roman period, material culture, as

evidenced by the abundance of artifacts recovered,

shows visible prosperity returning to the country.

REGIONS OF FINLAND

During the ﬁrst millennium A.D., Finnish tribes in

the east were moving westward, and new immi-

grants expanded the existing population of Finland.

Other Finns from nearby Baltic lands also moved

into Finland. To the west, the population of the

land Islands and Varsinais Suomi was growing

through an inﬂux of Germanic settlers. A 1990s re-

search project conducted around Paimio in Var-

sinais Suomi included the excavation of a burial

ground and dwelling sites near Spurila and a variety

of botanical, pollen core, and phosphorus studies

that reveal signs of human activity. The burial

ground was in use from the ﬁrst century

A.D. into

the eighth century. Datable artifacts, mainly

brooches, span the period from c.

A.D. 100 to 600.

Artifact types indicate connections both with the

southern Baltic shore and southern Scandinavia.

One dwelling site was dated c.

A.D. 400. Pollen

cores show intermittent slash-and-burn activity dur-

ing the early period under consideration here, al-

though the earliest cultivation seems to date from

the pre-Roman period. Palaeoethnobotanical

studies of plant remains recovered from early soil

layers demonstrate that the settlers of Paimio grew

mainly emmer wheat and ﬂax. The occurrence of

common cultivation weeds also indicates the pres-

ence of human agriculture.

Settlement in south Ostrobothnia was limited.

At Trofastbacken, Korsnäs, a pre-Roman Iron Age

house with hearth, pottery remains, and a wide

stone foundation supporting turf walls has been in-

terpreted as a base structure for seasonal activity.

Occupied probably only in the spring, this house

provided shelter for hunters who came to this locali-

ty to hunt seal from the ice surface. Iron Age peo-

ples occupied the coast of northern Ostrobothnia as

well. Small settlements dating from the ﬁrst six cen-

turies

A.D. show close Scandinavian ties across the

Gulf of Bothnia. A system of barter trade was con-

ducted at numerous points along the shores. One

impetus for this trade was the presence of the early

proto–market town of Helgö, precursor to Birka in

the Lake Mälar region of eastern Sweden. Helgö,

which began as early as the fourth century

A.D., has

been described as a production and trading center

supported by chieftains in the area. Ostrobothnians

may have been particularly interested in trading

with the Swedes for bronze ingots and ornaments.

In return they could have offered fur pelts. The

Finnish word raha has come to mean “money,” but

originally it meant “fur pelt.” Barter trade with pelts

could have become so ubiquitous in the region that

the pelt itself became a kind of currency.

A similar trade situation developed in the east-

ern Baltic, across the Gulf of Finland, between Finns

and Estonians. Fisherman of individual households

or extended families developed and maintained pre-

arranged trade relations with household counter-

parts on the opposite coast by bartering Baltic her-

ring for grain and other cultivated foodstuffs difﬁ-

cult to grow in the coastal soils of southern Finland.

This kind of household economy and arrangement

for trade relations was typical of the Finns, for

whom the extended family or kin group was the

6: THE EUROPEAN IRON AGE, C. 800 B.C.– A.D. 400

278

ANCIENT EUROPE

most important social and economic unit. Such

households might sometimes consist of thirty or

more people pooling their labor and production

skills.

In what is now known as Russian Karelia, at the

eastern side of present-day Finland, pollen and char-

coal analysis of lake sediments reveals that there was

some human impact in this area during the pre-

Roman Iron Age (500

B.C.– A.D. 1), but no signiﬁ-

cant land clearance occurred until much later, dur-

ing the Late Iron Age.

THE SAAMI

In A.D. 98, Tacitus, the Roman historian, wrote in

his book Germania that a tribe he called the Fenni

lived at the northern fringes of the Roman Empire.

He described the Fenni as wild and very poor, hav-

ing no weapons, horses, or houses. If his informa-

tion were to be presumed at all correct, he could not

have been talking about the southern Finns, al-

though this description might ﬁt the proto-Saami of

northern Finland. Terms such as “Fenni,” “Finni,”

and “Phinnoi” were used by classical writers in the

ﬁrst several centuries

A.D. primarily to describe the

nomadic people of northern Scandinavia. Since

these people were so far away from the writers and

their audiences, some of the descriptions are com-

pletely fantastical.

The Saami are the indigenous people of Scandi-

navia. They were a hunting and nomadic herding

culture living in symbiosis with the large reindeer

herds of the region. Until they were pushed to the

northern territories in postmedieval times, the

Saami lived as far south as the central interior of Fin-

land. Their skill at hunting the arctic animals whose

rich fur pelts were prized as luxury items by Europe-

ans and others farther south forced the Saami into

trade relations with both Scandinavians and Finno-

Ugric tribes during the Viking and medieval peri-

ods.

THE PICTURE FROM ARCHAEOLOGY

Most Iron Age archaeological remains from Finland

come from burials. Finnish burials of the period are

often found in large stone cairns situated overlook-

ing the sea or a lake. Many of the early cemeteries,

from the ﬁrst century

A.D., are found near the

mouths of rivers. Some of the largest cemeteries re-

semble the tarand type known from Estonia. This

type is characterized by rectangular enclosures out-

lined on the ground with stones. The cemeteries

grew as new rectangles were added. The appearance

of tarand cemeteries in Finland marks closer con-

tacts with, and also immigration of, Estonian farm-

ers. Various other styles of burial, including inhu-

mations and cremation burials in urns, are known

from this time. Over time stone cairns become on

average smaller, and various forms of cremation pit

cemeteries appear. Archaeologists caution that not

all stone cairns of this period contain burials, and

some may have nothing to do with human burial.

Not only do certain types of graves characterize

the early part of the Iron Age, but grave contents

are important as well. During the Early Roman Iron

Age, we see for the ﬁrst time graves including weap-

ons in Finland. These weapon graves occur, for the

most part, in coastal areas from the ﬁrst century

A.D.

Two distinct groups can be observed among the

graves: individuals buried with a spearhead only and

others buried with a bigger assemblage consisting

often of a sword and shield plus spear. Most of these

graves are from southwest Finland and southern

Ostrobothnia. Archaeologists sometimes attribute

the appearance of weapon graves to the rise of a so-

cial class of warriors or special class of persons in au-

thority. However, spears can also be used as hunting

weapons and are easier to obtain since they require

less skill and labor to be made. The social class of

males buried with spears alone is therefore ambigu-

ous. Normally archaeologists assume that individu-

als buried with weapons are male. Where skeletal re-

mains are adequate, it is usually possible to conﬁrm

this by a visual assessment of the bones. With the

advent of DNA testing of archaeological remains,

however, some surprising gender-role contradic-

tions appeared in Iron Age remains from Europe.

Although these exceptions are quite rare, they only

serve to emphasize that the bearing of weapons can

be a mark of social status and not merely an indica-

tor of occupation.

IRON AGE SOCIETY

The Finnish worldview during the Iron Age was cy-

clical in type, meaning that all things were seen to

progress in cycles. The seasons revolved; life germi-

nated, ﬂourished, and died; and human beings lived

to be reincarnated from the kin-based groups of an-

cestral spirits. Ancestor worship and shamanic com-

IRON AGE FINLAND

ANCIENT EUROPE

279