Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 21, 1910.djvu/88

 68 In Scandinavia, as in Gaul, the axe had a symbolic signification even in the Stone Age. We know this because axes made of amber and dating from this period have several times been found in our countries. Most of the axes are small, and have been worn as ornaments; some have the same shape as the ordinary one-edged stone axes with an eye for the handle, (e.g. Fig. 18, from Sweden, full size); others are double-edged and resemble those that occur in the south, (e.g. Fig. 19, from Sweden, half size). But besides these axe-shaped heads of amber, there have been found, both in Sweden and in Denmark, some axes of amber which, being too large for ornaments, must have been used as symbols, (e.g. Fig. 20, from Sweden, two-thirds size). Judging from what we know previously about such symbols, we may safely assume that these amber axes, dating from the Stone Age, have been symbols of the sun god.

Flint axes, well polished, have often been found, which are so huge that they probably could not have been used as tools or weapons. Several of these flint axes have evidently been laid down as offerings. At Ryssvik, in the south of Smaland, fifteen large flint axes were unearthed in 1821. They were lying in a half circle, with their edges towards the east.

From the Bronze Age some symbolic axes have also survived. At Skogstorp in Sōdermanland two large and magnificent bronze axes were found, adorned with round plates of gold in which pieces of amber are inlaid. Only the surface is of bronze; the interior consists of clay round which the thin bronze has been cast with an extraordinary skill (Fig. 21, quarter size). The oak handle is coated with bronze. Two quite similar axes, of thin bronze cast over a still existing clay core, have been found in Denmark.

It is probably not by accident that in both these cases,—as in many other deposits from the Bronze Age as well