Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 3.djvu/378

 366 CHRONICLE OF THE NOTES, have mythological analogies and connection of some obscure kind; but it is not the connection of the one mythology- being derived from the other, but that of both springing from a common root in the mind of man, and which makes them therefore necessarily alike. The philological researches give more distinct results. When we find words significant in the Laponic or Celtic languages used as names of places, or of natural objects, in situations far removed from the known seats of those races, we may reasonably infer that at some unknown period those races have been the original occupants of the country. Thus the word " trask " is used in the island of Gotland in the Baltic, as well as in Lapland itself, to denote a small lake ; and the word belongs to the Laponic, not to the Gothic or Celtic languages. The words " Ben," *^ Tind," and others, applied to mountains of peculiar size or shape in the district of Bergen, as well as in Wales or in the Highlands of Scotland, where the words are signifi- cant of the peculiar feature of country, are of some weight in proving a former occupancy by a Celtic race, who have given names to localities adopted by their successors. The word " tarn," used for a small mountain lake in Cumberland and Northumberland, is used in the same sense in Norway; and would have some weight, if historical proof were wanting, in showing that, at some period, people speaking the Norwegian tongue occupied the land. The archasological antiquaries, without reference to any theory derived from mythology or from languages, have found that their subjects of study, the relics of antiquity, naturally fall into three divisions : — that of an age prior to the use of metals in arms or utensils, when bone and stone were the materials used ; and in that age burn- ing appears to have been the way of disposing of the dead, less perhaps from any observance connected with religion, than from the want of metal tools to dig the soil with so as to inter the dead ; — that of an ao^e when bronze was used in arms and utensils, that is, a mixture of metals to give hard- ness to copper or other soft metals ; and in which age the use of stone for hammers, arrow-points, or spear-heads, was still mixed with the use of metals ; — and lastly, an age when iron was appUed to these purposes, although bronze, and even stone and bone, were still in use, from the want, no doubt, of a suffi- cient supply of iron, and from the great consumpt of it in mis-