Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 3.djvu/379

 KINGS OF NORWAY. 367 sile weapons. Although dates cannot be assigned to these notes. three ages, and they run into each other, yet the mass of relics of ancient times so clearly falls into these three divi- sions, that the Museum of Northern Antiquities at Copen- hagen is divided and arranged upon this principle, and with the fullest approbation of the learned antiquaries of the North. The division coincides with and confirms the re- sults of the mythological and philological researches. These epochs, however, are beyond the pale of chronology. The successions only, as in those of geological science, can be made out with considerable probability. The date cannot be affixed even to the beginning of the last inhabitation by the iron-using Caucasian race — the followers of Odin from Asia. Phrenological science, perhaps, or that branch of it called crariiology, might be applied with advantage to dis- cover if the sculls, or other human remains, found in the oldest depositaries, in which articles of stone or bone only have been found, belong to the Mongolian, viz. the Laponic or Celtic, or to the Caucasian, viz. the Gothic type. The difference would be as evident as between the sculls of the African and American races. But as burning must of neces- sity have been the general mode of disposing of the dead when iron tools for digging were rare, undoubted specimens of human skeletons of the times when stone, bone, or even bronze were only used, must be scarce. The Jettestuer (jette or giant rooms) found in Jutland, and all over the North, are by many ascribed to an age prior to the general use of metals, or at least of iron, the articles found in them being of stone, bone, or of bronze, — rarely, if ever, of iron ; and burnt bones or ashes indicating that they belong to an age when the dead were burnt before interment. These Jette- stuer appear to be identical with what are called Picts' houses in the north of Scotland ; viz. small chambers constructed of stones laid rudely together, so as to contain a small round space covered with a single flag-stone, and sufficient to hold the ashes, but not the entire bodies of the dead. They are numerous in the three northern counties of Scotland; and, from ashes and burnt earth being found in them, are supposed by the common people to have been the dwellings of a pigmy race called Pechts or Picts. They deserve the investigation of the antiquary, and a comparison with the Jettestuer of