Salt waters began to inundate the village farms all year round, making life increasingly difficult for the villagers. The waters that had once blessed the community by providing rich soil and pasture had now become a curse. The decline was painful but inevitable and finally, around AD 450, the Saxon farmers were forced to abandon their settlement and seek a life elsewhere. The sea that had sustained them for so long was now casting their community adrift.
We cannot be sure, but it seems likely that the villagers of Feddersen Wierde and their neighbours in this low-lying region set forth to seek new lands rather than simply moving further inland. They may first have travelled along the North Sea coast towards what is now the Netherlands and, from there, across the sea to England. The Saxon traders and soldiers would have already been well informed about the possibilities of starting a new life in England. Many would have been there themselves. Their migration across the North Sea was not a desperate voyage into the unknown, but the result of a well-planned and well-informed decision.
The Well-groomed Saxon
One might have expected the Saxon inhabitants of a little marshland village to be fairly dirty and unkempt, but numerous finds at the site suggest otherwise. Among the familiar local crafts and industries – pottery making, metal working and so on – there were clearly a number of people making combs. Ornate combs made from bone are commonly found in graves at Feddersen Wierde and similar sites, showing they were important and widely used. The word kempt in modern German means 'combed', and this concern for their appearance was deeply rooted in the people's culture. It is said that when certain Germanic tribes took possession of a piece of land, they would mark the event by throwing their combs on to it to show that it belonged to them. This indicates that the comb must have been a very personal item – symbolising, as it did, its owner.
Tacitus mentions the long hair of the Germans he met, and it is perhaps not surprising that the comb was an important item to them. As Dr Schuster told me with some pleasure, the Vikings were singularly unimpressed with the hair care of the Saxons, dismissing them contemptuously as 'long-haired pansies'. Despite the impolite comments of the Norsemen, hairstyles were as important as cultural markers to the Germanic tribes as artificially deformed skulls were to the Huns.
The Suevi group of Germanic tribes had a way of showing themselves to be different from both their own slaves and other tribes – they combed their hair to the side and tied it in a knot. The so-called Suevian knot has been found on a 'bog body' found at Osterby in Schleswig-Holstein, near the German border with Denmark. This was the heart of the ancient territory of the Angles, the other half of the Anglo-Saxon equation (although we shall see below that many different ethnic units were to be described as Anglo-Saxons).
It was not only the western Germanic peoples for whom the comb was an important cultural icon. The Cernjachov sites north of the Black Sea, which mark the presence of the Gothic tribes in the region in the early centuries of our era, are full of combs made from bone. One particular site of an ancient village (Birlad-Valea Seaca) has revealed that a large number of huts there were used to make combs: examples of all stages of the comb-making process have been found. This not only shows us exactly how they were made but, even more importantly, it shows us that it was a thriving cottage industry.
The sheer number of combs that were manufactured in this small settlement made it impossible to believe they were solely for the villagers to groom themselves. It must have been a centre of bone-comb production that was supplying this essential item of Germanic kit across a much wider area. It is remarkable that almost identical styles of bone combs were made by Goths and Saxons as far apart as the shores of the Black Sea and the North Sea. We may speculate on the basis of this very wide distribution that this is a very ancient item of Germanic material culture, one that had a significance that was both practical and symbolic.
A Changing World
The decline and fall of the village of Feddersen Wierde over the centuries mirrors the wider changes that were happening throughout the Germanic world. The people who founded the village were probably the Chauci, one of a number of Germanic groups named by Roman historians such as Pliny and Tacitus. The latter describes them as next-door neighbours of the Frisians, but he also speaks highly of them, calling them the noblest of the Germanic tribes. He tells us that they maintain and secure their territories by justice rather than violence, living in peaceful seclusion, keeping themselves to themselves. Although they do not raid their neighbours or start wars, they are nevertheless perfectly willing and able to defend themselves as and when required. Tacitus remarks that it is this very preparedness that shows their moral superiority, for they do not uphold peace out of weakness of arms but in spite of their military strength.
Though praised by Tacitus, the Chauci disappear from the history books in the second century – at least under that name. By the third and fourth centuries they seem to have been assimilated into the group of peoples who became known simply as the Saxons. The original Saxons who are mentioned in the first and second centuries appear to have had their homeland north of the river Elbe. During the two centuries that followed, the Saxons seem to have expanded into the territories across the Elbe to the south, incorporating other tribes – including the Chauci – in a peaceful fashion. Saxon now became a name that was used to describe a much larger group of Germanic peoples than it had done in earlier times.
The Angles, close neighbours of the Saxons, were the Germanic tribe that was eventually to give their name to the country of England. They came from a land known as Angeln in what is now Schleswig-Holstein. Together, the Angles and the Saxons made up at least part of the immigrant people who were to be known as the Anglo-Saxons, although other tribal groupings such as the Frisians (who may or may not be the same people as the Frisians described in written sources from the first and second centuries) also played an important part in this story of migration. The Anglo-Saxons were a group of loosely related Germanic peoples who migrated to England, yet they never called themselves by this name. Almost all the ethnic names we have for the 'barbarian' peoples of this time come either from classical writers or from nineteenth-century scholars who had their own ethnic axes to grind.
Chapter Ten
GERMANIA RULES THE WAVES
A larger fleet came quickly over with a great body of warriors, which, when joined to the original forces, constituted an invincible army.
The Venerable Bede, on the arrival of Germanic invaders in England
The comb, as we have seen, was an important practical and symbolic object for the Germanic people right across the European continent. Another even more important item of Germanic material culture that also fulfilled these dual functions was the boat. For them, it was more than just a mode of transport, a way to get from A to B: it was also a vehicle to transport the deceased to the world beyond.
Just to the south of Feddersen Wierde is another important Saxon site, Fallward, excavated during the 1990s. Marshland is particularly useful from the archaeologists' point of view because organic materials that are usually completely destroyed in most other conditions often survive. But even the optimism the archaeologists may have felt with such favourable conditions could not have prepared them for what they were about to find. Unearthed in the autumn of 1994, this was to be the most remarkable discovery they were to make: a fifth-century boat burial.
Although this was basically a farming community, the people also lived on the coast. Boats were part of their daily lives, and one such vessel was re-used for this very different purpose – as a coffin. In much the same way as the manor house of Feddersen Wierde points to the existence of a social hierarchy, the Fallward boat burial is an expression of rank: of the 150 or so burials discovered in the graveyards of this area, only one man was buried in a boat. Whoever this individual was, he was clearly an eminent local man. Evidence from his grave in the form of a particular kind of belt buckle shows that he held a high rank in the Roman army and so
to have been buried with full military honours. Very similar belt fittings have been found in England, so it is quite possible that he may have actually served there.
The boat coffin measures 5 metres long and 1.3 metres wide (16 feet by 4 feet 3 inches). The body was placed in the boat along with a number of important items, and then planks were placed across the top to seal in the body and the grave goods. It seems very likely that boat burial was an important event, reserved for the elite, and represented the symbolic voyage to the other world, the deceased being accompanied by the most cherished of his personal possessions. This was not a new custom, for boat burial was an ancient element of Scandinavian culture that has been traced back at least as far as the first century AD. The Viking ship burials of future centuries were to be the final phase in this long tradition.
Accompanying the man's body in the Fallward boat burial was an ornate wooden seat, which has been named the 'throne of the marsh' by archaeologists. It is not a throne in the real sense of the word but it was clearly the special chair of a man who was a big fish in a small sea. The 'throne' itself and a carved footstool that accompanied it in the grave have very similar ornate designs on them, including swastikas. Both also show a definite Roman influence. Roman emperors are depicted on the coins of the fourth century sitting on a throne with their feet resting on a footstool. The message from the marshland is clear: this man was trying, in his own small way, to imitate the emperor.
Yet an independent spirit is undoubtedly present too in the Fallward artefacts. The footstool is adorned with runes, the early written characters of the Germanic peoples. Part of the Old Saxon inscription simply reads 'footstool'; more obscure is another runic phrase, next to a picture of a deer being pursued by a hound, which translates as 'deer killer' – perhaps a simple reference to his skill as a hunter.
The boat burial and its contents tell us something about the values of the Saxon elite at this time. Like the Goths, their Germanic cousins far to the east, they were clearly receptive to Roman civilisation and sought to mirror it after their own fashion. Yet they hung on doggedly to their own traditions (boat burial itself, for example), not just out of fear of being absorbed into the continent-wide melting pot of Roman rule but because they believed in its integral value. They were not about to give up the ways of their ancestors for anyone.
The Boat in the Bog
One of the most important of all continental discoveries from this time is undoubtedly the remarkable Nydam boat, built of oak. It was salvaged from the Nydam bog west of Sønderborg in southern Denmark, on 18 August 1863, during the course of early archaeological excavations; even after all this time, it remains the oldest and biggest seagoing vessel found anywhere in the whole of northern Europe. Today it is landlocked across the border in the Archäologisches Landesmuseum in Schleswig, Germany, under the watchful eye of its curator, Dr Michael Gebühr.
The bog did not give up its secrets quickly, and more and more has gradually emerged over the course of nearly two centuries. The first finds from Nydam were brought out of the bog by a local farmer in the 1830s. These were swords and shields, and he gave them to his children to play with. Eventually news of the 'toys' found in the bog reached an archaeologist named Conrad Engelhardt, who undertook an extensive excavation from 1859 to 1863. He found an abundance of weapons and tools along with some pieces of clothing and, most dramatically, two clinker-built boats. Most of the weaponry (consisting of spears, lances, swords, shields and bows) was discovered underneath the remnants of a third boat, which seems to have been deliberately wrecked at the time that the weapons were thrown into what was then a lake. Over the years, this lake transformed into a bog, thus preserving the boat for posterity. As mentioned before, the wonderful preservation qualities of bogs are well attested by the dramatic and grisly finds of Iron Age 'bog bodies'.
All three boats, along with the weapons and other finds, had been deliberately deposited in the lake, not all at the same time. They belonged to the defeated forces of an unknown number of conflicts in the Dark Ages. Rather than keeping the boats and arms for their own future use, the victorious warriors chose to sacrifice them to a god (most likely to Odin, or Wodan). To our way of thinking today, this seems illogical and uneconomic. An incalculable number of skilled man hours went into the making of these weapons, and it seems wasteful (not to mention reckless during times of war) not to use everything you can. But the ancient mind did not work on such principles. They probably promised their god that if he gave them victory he would receive the spoils of war. It has not been just Odin who has benefited from this oath; so too have the archaeologists who can shed some light on this obscure period of history, based on evidence gleaned from the various deposits thrown in the lake during the period from AD 200 to 450.
Unfortunately, one of the two boats Engelhardt had recovered from its watery grave has not survived to sit alongside its fellow in the museum. At 19 metres (62 feet) long, this pine boat was slightly smaller than the oak boat that has been preserved. It was chopped up for firewood in 1864 during the German—Danish war by soldiers who were completely oblivious to its great historical value. The boats are those of the losers, and it is perhaps the case that the distant ancestors of the Germans and Danes who were fighting each other in the nineteenth century may have been protagonists in the original battle that took place so many centuries earlier. The lost boat that was meant to be permanently destroyed by the victors was, despite a brief respite in the attentive custody of the archaeologists, finally consumed not by water but by fire.
Sporadic excavations at the site continued until the beginning of the Second World War. Modern archaeological work at Nydam was undertaken from 1984 until 1997, and revealed a great deal of information about both the boat itself and the wealth of other finds. Based on the annual growth rings of the timber, the boat has been dated to around AD 320 – half a millennium older than its much more famous descendant, the Viking ship. It was built in a boatyard somewhere in the western or middle region of the Baltic and is thus unequivocally Scandinavian in both origin and design. It was sunk rather later, probably around the middle of the fourth century. Although it is generally considered that the Nydam boat itself was of Swedish workmanship, vessels of this type were made and used widely by the Jutes, Angles and Saxons. With its undoubted importance for the archaeologists of today and its remarkable state of preservation, this particular boat is unique to us – but to the people of the time it was one of many, a simple fact of life.
This type of long and narrow boat was designed more for warfare than for transporting goods, so high speed and manoeuvrability were its key features. It could have been used on the open sea, but was also useful for journeys along the coastline as well as estuaries and penetrating the inland rivers. What made it an optimal warship was the fact that it could be rowed in both directions. This was a feature of northern European boats since at least the time of Tacitus in the first century. He writes about a Germanic people called the Suiones who live on 'islands' out in the sea (he is probably referring to what is now Sweden), and describes their vessels thus: 'The shape of their ships differs from the normal in having a prow at each end, so that they are always facing the right way to put in to shore. They do not propel them with sails, nor do they fasten a row of oars to the sides. The rowlocks are movable, as one finds them on some river craft, and can be reversed, as circumstances require, for rowing in either direction.'
Such boats must have been the ancestors of the Nydam boat which, in turn, is an ancestor of the Viking vessels of later centuries. It embodies considerable woodworking skills, and its specifications demonstrate just how impressive it still is: approximate length 23 metres (75 feet 6 inches); width 3.5 metres (11 feet 6 inches); midship height 1 metre (just over 3 feet); water displacement 8.8 tons (including 1 ton ballast). It is clinker-built, with five oak strakes (lengths of planking) per side, joined together by iron clench-nails. Since the boat was salvaged from its watery grave, the wood has shrunk by approximately
15 per cent, so it would originally have been wider and therefore more seaworthy.
The oars measure between 2.2 and 3.4 metres (7 feet 3 inches to just over 11 feet); a steering oar (also called a quarter or side rudder) measuring 1.8 metres (nearly 6 feet) was discovered during the 1993 excavation season. The boat was built for fifteen pairs of oars, so a crew of about forty-five including thirty oarsmen seems like a reasonable estimate. There are no signs that the boat had a mast foot, and so it is almost certain that it had neither mast nor sail. Two recent and unprecedented finds were carved human heads on wooden posts nearly 1.5 metres (5 feet) long. It is thought that they were mooring posts attached to the bow. The Nydam boat that is on show in the museum today is, remarkably, 70 per cent original, the rest being a bold but successfully accomplished nineteenth-century reconstruction.
The boats were not the only find of interest. A great number of weapons have been pulled up out of the bog, including 100 swords, 370 lances and 40 longbows (ancestors of the English longbow). Estimates place the number of warriors whose weapons ended up in the lake to be about 500. That number would require a minimum of ten boats to transport them. Evidence from the weapons themselves shows that they were not only made to be offered as sacrifices but were made to be used. Many of the swords bear witness to the last battle of a defeated army – hack marks that have damaged the side of the blade. They are the only signs we have of the desperate struggle that took place. Archaeologists believe that the various weapon caches dumped in the lake would have belonged to the losers of battles with the local tribe of Angles.
There are a number of other major deposits of weapons that have been found in the bogs of southern Denmark dating from the latter part of the second century onwards. Like the Nydam example, these deposits of arms and other military paraphernalia represent the equipment of entire armies and not just a few soldiers. Again, like the Nydam deposit, many of them seem to have been deliberately damaged or disabled before they were thrown in as sacrifices to their god.
Barbarians- Secrets of the Dark Ages Page 12