Free Vikings by Neil Oliver Page B

husbands for one another’s sons and daughters. In this way bronze, the foundation and mortar of everything else that was going on, acquired a value far in excess of the sum of its chemical parts.
    Increasingly it was the trappings of the warrior that were being manufactured by the smiths. Bronze swords, axes, shields and helmets were required in ever-increasing volumes as men sought to show off their prowess and bravery. A chief would demonstrate his power by acquiring the weapons to equip his fighting men, as well as gifts with which to flatter his bravest and most loyal warriors. Rather than just wholesale warfare by massed armies, it seems the Bronze Age was also the time of the hero, and of single combat between champions. Weapons would accompany such men in life and in death. Whenever it was deemed necessary or appropriate, some swords and shields would be set apart from the world of men and placed into rivers, lakes and bogs where they became the exclusive property of gods, goddesses and spirits.
    The heavily armed warrior was also depicted in rock art – and in Scandinavia it makes for a heady mix. In the Bohuslän district of southern Sweden the artists used outcrops of granite as the canvases for thousands of images including animals, cup marks, circles, wheeled vehicles, trees, ploughs and mazes. Butpredominant among them are depictions of armed men, and the ships to carry them. Always these are recurrent symbols – and not just in Bohuslän – so that as early as the Bronze Age the quintessential hero of the most northerly lands on Earth was the warrior who travelled far overseas and returned home laden with riches obtained from violent raids.
    Having held sway for thousands of years, bronze ultimately fell from grace. A system that had bound society together for longer than the reach of memory, in a complicated web of relationships and obligations spread over thousands of miles, began to unravel. Later in the first millennium BC , people turned away from bronze and sought out other ways, other media for the expression of their ideas about themselves and others.
    As well as abandoning bronze, they apparently changed the way they thought about death. After centuries and millennia of inhumation – the burial in the ground of the intact body – by the end of the Bronze Age the journey from the world of the living to the world of the dead was completed with fire. Once the bodies of the dead, together with their most precious possessions, had been burnt on great pyres, the crumbled bones and melted treasures were collected into pottery vessels and buried. It was a change of rite that spread all across Europe and by the first millennium BC the fashion for cremation was well established in Scandinavia as well.
    Some archaeologists have suggested bronze was ultimately vulnerable to the vagaries of fickle human nature – that in time, and for reasons unknown, there was a loss of confidence in the bronze market not unlike that which afflicted the financial markets of the twenty-first century. Most people understand that we have somehow moved beyond money now, or at least beyond the real value of gold, property, oil or any other tradable commodity you care to mention. What matters – all that matters, in fact – is that we believe something has value. If everyoneinvolved maintains their confidence in the system and holds their nerve, then everything will be all right. But if enough people begin to have doubts that their wealth and well-being are safe in the system, then it might all come down like a house of cards.
    The suggestion that bronze was undone by a Europe-wide collapse of public confidence is quite appealing at first glance. Most experts agree, however, that it is also just a bit too glib – and not nearly enough to explain the complexities of all that was going on.
    As the Bronze Age approached its climax, the situation grew more and more complicated. In the latter part of the period it was not enough