Today, Danish maritime archaeology stands for an internationally recognised story of success. The following newspaper article by the popular historian Palle Lauring from March 1953 demonstrates that the situation was a very different one before the excavation of the Skuldelev Ships by Olaf Olsen and Ole Crumlin-Pedersen in 1957-62. Palle Lauring’s point, that a modern land-based society easily loses its maritime past out of sight, is valid to the present day.
See also Ole Crumlin-Pedersen’s comment from March 2008. For him, the article below became the starting signal for a life’s work.
"Comment in Berlingske Aftenavis 20th March 1953
No sailing here – frogmen to the fore!
by Palle Lauring
Author Palle Lauring seeks a commitment to marine archaeology and other submarine investigations. Denmark has great potential for discovering its maritime prehistory but so far the National Museum [of Denmark] has had very few maritime finds on show.
The most recent volume of “Kuml” – the annual journal of the new and lively Jutland Archaeological Society – included among its many articles one which brought one abruptly to a halt with a sigh and a small relieved straightening of the back: Finally. The article was by Sigvard Skov and it described the finding of a medieval shipwreck in the dried-out inlet of Eltang Vig near Kolding Fjord.
Now one should not think that a complete medieval craft has been dug out from the old seabed and that it is possible to go on board the old oak deck and see the rig again raised skywards. It was only parts of a ship, stem, stern and keel, a few ribs and boards, enough to give a rough overall impression of the ship’s construction. This discovery is then not dramatic and sensational but really rather modest. It is, however, of ground-breaking importance because, we are lead to believe, the find has been taken care of and its component parts have been recovered and conserved such that, at some time, they can be re-assembled as far as possible so there is something for us to see. This is the sensation because it is here the novelty lies.
Danish archaeology is no dormant discipline. On the contrary, it is particularly awake and active and one has to look on in admiration at what is achieved despite the totally scandalous lack of money and absence of even the most basic understanding among the authorities empowered to grant financial support. The ship from Eltang was, of course, almost lost because an authority of such great scientific competence as the Ministry of Supply had to decide whether authority could be given for the use of preservation fluids. It is beyond belief.
But the Eltang vessel is a herald for other reasons. Danish archaeology is hard-working but it is blinkered. Firstly, it seems that just because it was a Dane who first came up with the idea of the tripartite division of prehistory this has committed archaeology to concentrating on prehistory for all eternity. Secondly, archaeologists are two things: specialists and landlubbers.
One must now have the right to refuse to read any more treatises on microliths. And it should be forbidden for any further splendid young people to write weighty tomes on prehistoric ploughs. Even the Jutland Society began its journal series with one of the unavoidable swarms of publications about ploughs. Denmark is an agricultural country. From the Late Stone Age onwards, the Danish soil has been cultivated. But from even earlier times the sea meandered its way between the Danish islands. If one walks through the National Museum, the impression is gained that Denmark lies somewhere in the middle of the Polish lowlands, far from sea and lakes. In the old museum there were, at least, a few hollowed-out oaks and double paddles on display. These are now in the museum stores. In an out-of-the-way place, under a table, two canoes have been placed where nobody can see them. They are no good for ploughing and therefore of no interest. In the whole of the prehistoric department there is not one single dash of sea spray, not one breath of sea breeze. Nothing. Apart from having suddenly to go head first down the stairs to the fantastic Hjortspring boat.
Even in the Viking Age there is only, when one really searches, a few rivets from the Ladby ship. No sailing here.
The Middle Ages are the same. The country is church land, farmland and army land. Sailing vessels unknown. A couple of anchors hang – or rather hung because they have gone now – in an out-of-the-way “study room”, otherwise no sailing in Denmark’s Middle Ages. Renaissance, rococo, the palmy days of Danish overseas trade, Tropical colonies, the China clippers – not one hint of the sea and ships.
One could say that we do have the museum at Kronborg, but the National Museum is the Nation’s museum, the museum whose task it is to present us with the real picture of Denmark through the ages.
The museum of the history of maritime warfare, which is to be built up around Holmen’s old collections, is said to be on the way. But when it will appear, nobody knows.
One could say that we have not found Viking ships, we have no large finds of ships from later times, there is nothing to exhibit.
This is correct. But why? Because no-one has shown an interest in the matter.
The Danish agricultural saga becomes more clearly understood for every year that passes, and that is a good thing. We have an understanding of ridge and furrow and phosphate in soils, pollen analysis shows the entry into the country of cereals and field weeds, impressions in potsherds foretell with incorruptible accuracy of crops and weeds on settlements. Bones report on when cows and horses, pigs, goats, sheep, cats and hens came to the country. Pottery vessels provide evidence of cheese, building remains draw pictures of farmers’ houses with hearth and stalls, and bogs provide us with ploughs and rakes, the arable cultivators’ sacrifices and gods. If a small wooden stick is found which could perhaps be part of the tooth of a manure fork, the result is a book with pictures, tables and analyses and scholarly reports. This is good and this is fitting. But it is not enough. The Dane from time immemorial –
On the 18th March 1658 the Danish warship “Snarensvend” stood in for Elsinore. It came from Bohuslän which, by the terms of the peace treaty, was surrendered to Sweden, and on board the craft was equipment brought back from the abandoned fortification, artillery and what could otherwise be accommodated on board. A quantity of it was unloaded in Kristiania but the ship was still carrying equipment from the surrendered territories, together with the provincial governor’s private possessions. Last summer the ship was partially emptied by aggregate dredgers using steel grabs, a very rough form of salvage of valuable materials. Cannon, pottery vessels, planks and tin plates dumped down in a chaotic heap on the deck or overboard.
In the Bay of Køge there are numerous wrecks resulting from several naval battles through Danish history. There is information that during World War I they were visited by private enterprise because the German weapons industry was interested in metal cannon.
There is also the story of the man around the turn of the century who fished up a long stave plank with a carved animal head from the seabed out in the Sound. He took it home, dried it, sawed it into pieces and put it in his stove.
Before the last World War, a shipwreck, apparently from the Early Middle Ages, was found at the bottom of Kolding Fjord. Nothing has been heard since. A fine steering oar was, however, brought intact ashore, but from another wreck.
The English warship “The Crescent”, which sank off the west coast of Northern Jutland, was searched by private divers but with a commendable sense for other than saleable items. The result can be seen at a local museum up there and it is worth seeing, but a systematic recovery of the items would undoubtedly have been an advantage.
Norway’s contribution is its world-famous Viking ships from Tune, Gokstad and Oseberg. Sweden has its ship burials which have provided excellent material for the study of prehistoric boat building. There are finds of ships even from Strömmen in Stockholm and, in recent years, the comprehensive finds of many wrecks from Vigen at Kalmar. Furthermore, in Kalmarsund, significant parts of the stern post have been salvaged from the carvel-built “Elefanten” which was built on the instructions of Gustav Vasa himself. Now to be seen at the Maritime Museum in Stockholm.
Denmark’s contribution is the Hjortspring boat and the boat from Nydam, which now lies in Schleswig but originates from Sundeved. And then a series of modest and insecurely dated hollowed-out oaks from prehistory and the Middle Ages. These vessels have been made right up to the present day. But they are all chance finds which have been recovered because they came of their own accord. The thought of going hunting for traces of our maritime history does not even occur. The Kronborg Museum too operates with modest means, and there is no financial basis for considering excavations, never mind investigations below open water. But Denmark does have two things: many unanswered maritime historical questions and – the potential to solve them.
In practice, we know nothing of prehistoric travel by water. We know that people must have journeyed between England and Denmark, between Denmark and Norway and between Jutland and the Swedish coast. But when? What vessels did they travel in? No-one should try to tell us that they splashed across the North Sea in a hollowed-out oak log. And leaving aside the possibility that a fanatical Danish Thor Heyerdahl one day demonstrates the possibility by doing it, no-one is going to tell us that the migration from Jutland to Götland, when new people advanced up into Jutland, and which archaeological finds and megalithic graves tell us about, took place in fleets of dug-out canoes.
We know of ship images from Bronze Age rock carvings, from small model boats of gold and from stone settings in the form of a ship. But even though we believe that some of the forms can correspond to that of the Hjortspring boat, the latter was no sea-going vessel, it is not an answer to the question of proper sea-going traffic in the Bronze Age.
We know the Nydam boat. But we do not know whether it is Nordic in a narrower sense or whether it was captured during an invasion raid – neither can we, in the latter case, clearly say where it did come from. Neither is the boat so clearly sea-going that we are completely satisfied with it as the answer to questions concerning sea voyages in the Migration period. But even though it lacks a keel, it was perhaps just as seaworthy as the partially patched-up craft that Egyptian and Cretan seafarers pottered about the Mediterranean in, even though it is inhuman to delude oneself that they were able to do this “undaunted” as our historians relate.
It is with somewhat of a wry smile that, at the above-mentioned and otherwise excellent Maritime Museum in Stockholm, one examines a large and very impressive map showing the centres of initiative for shipbuilding at various stages in the history of Europe. For the centuries prior to and during the Viking Age this centre lies, to our great amazement, in Stockholm, with clear arrows pointing to the apprenticed areas of Denmark and Norway. Said without malice, we ourselves produce just as amusing examples of national partisanship on a regular basis. Nothing is known about the site of the initiative for the amazing development that shipbuilding underwent during the Nordic Viking Age and this problem is well worth taking on because it was supremacy on the seas which was the crucial background for all Nordic expansion to the east, west and north. Or at least it can be said such that it was the technical development which made these sorties possible, even though the expansion also provided the impetus for achievement of the ships’ technical perfection.
We know very little of the transition from Viking ship to heavier Medieval craft with greater cargo carrying capacity, although the waters of the Danish sounds also saw heavy traffic at that time. Boats and ships embarked seawards from every coast after fish, plunder and goods. This is Denmark’s history, Denmark’s life, Denmark’s sustenance and existence. But Copenhagen turned its back on the sea. From Aarhus it is still possible to see out over the Kattegat. Shall we transfer the light of our hopes over there?
It is of course immaterial whether the initiative comes from the National Museum, from the Fisheries Museum, which actually exists – do you know where it lies? – from Kronborg or Aarhus or Rønne (which is presently modernising the maritime department at its excellent museum). The main point is that a great, rich and fascinating field of study lies open and waiting.
When it is said that we do not have great chances of discovering finds corresponding to the Norwegian ships, enclosed in mounds together with such lavishly sumptuous equipment – at least in the case of the Oseberg ship – that it is reasonable to speak of a Nordic Tutankhamun discovery, the response must be that the ship at Ladby, the Danish Viking ship enclosed in a mound, has already been discovered. Another point is that, apart from a couple of small popular reports, this unique discovery, made in 1935, is not as yet in 1953, published. Almost twenty years to write an appropriate report on the site. The war cannot be the explanation for everything under the sun.
We have no marine archaeologists. No-one is looking, it is no-one’s “duty”. But in reality we have a hundred times the chance of both Sweden and Norway, all we lack is to make a start.
We have Denmark’s shallow marine waters, whereas Norway measures the depth of her seas in kilometres. We have the hundreds of already reclaimed inlets and fjord bottoms lying now as wet grassland and bogs, good for keeping the wood moist and in shape, easy to dig in. And we have hundreds of half silted-up inlets with the soft brown mud where wood is excellently preserved many times longer than the millennia that Denmark has been free of ice. We have overgrown lakes, we have rivers and river mouths, we have innumerable possibilities. But we cannot be sure that the puzzle concerning the sea-going vessels of the Stone Age will never be solved. It cannot be said that we will never find a really suitable ship from the Bronze Age or the Iron Age. Naturally not undamaged and seaworthy but preserved to such an extent as to provide answers. It cannot be said that we will never be able to stroke the flanks of Viking crafts like the Norwegians. But it can be said with certainty that it depends on one thing only: whether we want to.
The evidence is there, that is all that is guaranteed. We lack archaeologists who like the feel of saltwater on their faces. On inquiry it was once discovered that all Danish archaeologists are farmers’ sons. Are there not among the young one or two who dare to go to sea and make Danish archaeology greater and – forgive the presumption as it is well-intended – a little more entertaining?
There is one drawback: Marine archaeology, whether it recovers its material from waterlogged pastures or the shining summer-blue fjords, is an expensive sport. Large excavations are required if the finds are there. It is difficult to work with large, wet and soft pieces of wood which must be recovered from water and mud. Conservation of these big things is neither easy nor cheap but the task is not insurmountable. It is the obvious thing to do and the problem just needs solving. Presently, there are enough wrecks in Danish waters and then there are those which lie hidden.
But the matter has financially extenuating circumstances. Even the tragedy of “Snarensvend” prompted the idea that our trainee divers could be allowed to train a little by going on an archaeological treasure hunt in promising wrecks. And further to this that the training of frogmen who now have military tasks could very easily include a few exercises on old wrecks and searches of shallow inlets because with the term frogman itself a completely new possibility has been created in searching for the seabed’s historical souvenirs. Even though one is unlikely on the first dive to find the silver treasure which “Esbern Snare” lost in the Great Belt or the gold chain Christian II lost south of Sønderborg, there are wonderful and fascinating opportunities.
The legislative authorities who, at the present time, expend billions on the defence of our culture will hopefully grasp that it is also sensible to expend funds such that we have a culture to defend.
Our ship-owners shrink down in their chairs, blushing deeply from bottomless shame when reminded that Denmark’s best collection of figureheads from Skagen’s Hotel were hijacked to Sweden by a rich Swede, without a Danish rescue being in place at the right time. The loss is today totally irreversible and, furthermore, now “Mathilde”, the finest figurehead in Denmark, has left Christiansø and has in a strange way shifted residence to the museum in Kalmar. The ship-owners break into tears when we praise the stoical calm with which they saw the last brig in the world “Tjalfe” – the world’s last brig – sail to Elsinore shipyard and be made into kindling wood. But faced with a newly created Danish marine archaeology’s fully scientifically competent efforts they will know to demonstrate that the Dane has, after all, not forgotten that water is something one sails upon. Something one drowns in. Something by which money can be made. Something which makes us dream and laugh. Something of relevance to us in addition to the rich Danish earth, because soil and water were the prescription for our elixir of life from the time when the land way back in the Boreal period sank a couple of metres so the Danish sounds shot out arms in all directions and tickled the Danish forest hunters at the back of their necks, enticing, with a fresh salt spray in their face. Denmark’s archaeology is only half the investigation of Denmark’s history as long as it knows only of plough and harrow, grain and earth.
Young archaeologists don’t need to tread on each other’s toes because marine archaeology is only one of several uncultivated fields, but it is the most pressing and the most enticing. A frogman’s course is part of the training. Entertaining years are the wages. For us others, entertaining reports and many things to see."