Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/213

 FOUND IN CUERDALE. 195 afford an interesting illustration of the commerce of the north during a period of which jierhaps the commencement of the tenth century was the most active epoch. Sucli deposits, it has been seen, have been found in the north of England, more freciuently in Denmark, on the southern coast of Sweden, on the islands of Valster, Bornholm, Oland, and still more frequently in Gothland, which appears to have been the chief station for carrying on the intercourse between the east and the north. It is ])robable that the traders from the dis- tricts around the Caspian sea worked their way up the Volga to Novogorod, and then across to Riga, where they were met by the maritime chieftains of the north, who, ])artly warriors, partly merchants, formed their chief depot in Gothland, from whence they carried the produce of their arms and their trade to those various parts of Europe to which their predatory or commercial disposition led them. It is along the coast that we might most reasonably expect the discovery of these objects, and there it is exactly that they arc found, and in such proportions also as might be expected if Gothland were the great depot from which Europe was supplied with the produce of the east; in proportion to the distance from Gothland, these discoveries become less frequent, and where there is no reason to believe that the northern seamen had any communication, these articles are not found at all. The absence of any representation of created beings is a further argument in favour of the eastern origin of these ornaments ; the oriental coins generally found with them, or in the same neighbourhood, were struck by the followers of ^lo- hammed, who rejected with abhorrence any such representa- tions. On the contnuy, the taste of the Saxons and northern nations, founded and formed in a great degree upon a Greek and Roman origin, led them to adopt animal forms, bar- barous and grotesque indeed, in almost all their decorations. There are, however, archaeologists of distinguished reputa- tion who do not take the same view of the subject as is here represented, and are of opinion that the ornaments were of northern manufacture, and that they may as probably have been deposited on their way towards the east as from it ; if such however had been the case, it would be reasonable to expect that such things would be found not unfrequently in the interior of those northern countries where they are supposed to have been made, and also in countries Avith