The lost battlefields of Scandinavia: A photographic Journey

By Mark David  

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Update: 22.05.16

The reason for this blog

Researching The Elements has taken me on a voyage of discovery to places and deeds of the past that I find increasingly fascinating. This has been a photographic journey as well, a journey to be shared. 

The Elements works on many levels. One of those levels is the Nordic-mythological perspective. Part of the researching of this context has over the last six years taken me around Scandinavia, these travels in turn providing a more detailed insight into these places and those small discoveries along the way that all add to The Elements concept, recreating history in all its glorious and often inglorious detail - to be worked and reworked into a tale if not larger than life, than at least as rich in it's portrayal how people and deeds of the past define the continuously evolving present...

This blog takes the reader on a small voyage of discovery into the lost battlefields of Scandinavia, using some of the thousands of photographs I have been taking along the way.

The lost battlefields of Scandinavia refer to battlefields in the years from the late bronze age - at the time just before the end of the Roman empire - through the dark ages to the medieval age of knights in chain mail in the 13th century. 



What makes Scandinavia unique is the climate, and the relationship with the Roman and Byzantine empires - being both influenced by yet independent of both. Iron-age tribes were heavily influenced by the arms technology coming into the south and an increase in the nature and scale of battles fought amongst tribes as travel farther and farther afield was made available by developing boat-building and arms craft technologies. Climate - wet, cold in the winter. Cool summers. A mixture of evergreen and some of the most beautiful deciduous forests in Europe.

The reality of ancient and medieval warfare

We have seen ancient and medieval warfare on the big screen, yet few films come close to capturing the intensity and emotions of what it must be like to be placed in a scene of conflict from which the losing side often suffered total oblivion. Few battlefields are known through archaeology, though many are eternalized in the Nordic sagas. The Elements does not portray medieval battles being contemporary fiction, though set in a recent historical past of the 20th century. It does, however, have a perspective that reaches far back in time, explaining the motives and passions of some of the many characters.

The shot above is a reenactment of Vendel battlefield where those involved constructing their own equipment as faithfully as possible from the few treasures unearthed. The Vendel cult has stylistic ties with the ship-burial unearthed at Sutton Hoo, in East Anglia, England.

The Bronze Age

The archaeological remains of Bronze Age battlefields are few and far between. We were a lot less people back then. Still, the nature of bronze and its corrosion resistant properties make any bronze age find a treasure trove of discovery. The following shots are taken from the bronze age section at the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen.

This sword is for me the essence of elegance in an age when survival meant warfare and warfare meant kill or be killed. 

 Bronze Age warfare was also something much closer to a spiritual proximity with the gods who decided the fates of men - and sacrifice to such gods before and after battle. The lowest of the next two shots is a gem  - a silver bowl wider than a man, decorated with animals that were not native to Scandinavia making it a relic of more southern lands. Brutal in ways we can barely conceive of today - with reference to this photo courtesy of D. Jantzem showing a severe blow to the head crushing the skull from a club-like weapon, found at the site of the battle of the Tollense River.

Landesamt für Kultur und Denkmalpflege Mecklenburg-Vorpommern/Landesarchäologie/D. Jantzen

And yet the warriors depicted in the next picture were ones bound by the same superstitions regarding the power of the gods in nature we know from Celtic Europe before and during the time of the Roman invasion – beliefs that would have found a parallels in pre-Viking Scandinavia.

The Late Iron Age

The idea of an iron-age battlefield is nothing new, but the battlefields uncovered had to the date of the beginning of the period when artifacts were made as offerings to the pagan gods such as were uncovered in the excavations at Illerup Ådal.

The photographs above and below shows the type of late iron-age weapons uncovered in Denmark at the time of the late Roman Empire 5th century: a movement of the Gladius-type sword of the Romans to longer blades and heavier, metal pommels that would see a revolution in sword-making technique of the Swedish Vendel period to early Viking in the 9th century. Taken from the collection at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen.

Neither is it a secret that Scandinavia is a treasure trove of archaeology with finds made every year. Anything from the medieval to the Viking age and back. The rich tapestry of history in this country has never ceased to inspire me and the work I seek to create weaves an intricate conspiracy-thriller line around the events of the resistance in the second world war with archaeological investigations at this time and forward to the time just prior to the end of the cold war - the period 1939 - 1989.

I am in the process of finishing my second book Naked Ground which features a fictive site of an old battlefield, the like of which had never actually been found before. I had the idea of a new excavation discovering traces of an older excavation from the war. A scene of an iron-age (pre-Viking/ late Roman) battle located at the old seat of the Kings of the North - Lethra. The place that gave birth to nothing less than the whole Beowulf legend. Yes, Beowulf was a Danish-Swedish based tale which will feature at some time in the future. 



This was all fiction, of course. Or so I thought... then in 2009 just such a battlefield was found. I just never heard about it until now! The History Blog tells more about the discovery at Alken Eng in Denmark. 

As the link to this article reveals, the site was first investigated in 1945, then only fully revealed in 2009. This just goes to prove that reality will always outdo fiction... but it's nice to have history rear it's time-honored head from time to time to tell us, there did that...

But I'm not finished yet. The article and discoveries at Alken Eng take me back to the feeling I had when visiting the museum at Visby, a preserved medieval town on the Swedish Baltic island of Gotland... 

The Viking Age

This will be developed in the future, since there is a lot on the Viking Age which isn't the subject of this blog ...

Many Viking Age finds have been found in Scandinavia uncovering the untold stories of warfare in all its gory detail. The photograph here revealing an arrow penetrating the skull through the base of the nose. (National Museum, Copenhagen Viking exhibition autumn 2013)

Battlefields of the Middle Ages

A visit to the medieval festival is a must for anyone interested in these things: Go there in the summer at the time of the medieval festival in the beginning of August each summer, an experience not to be missed - probably the best setting for any medieval festival in the world.

Gotland is an island with a rich tapestry of history from the stone, bronze, iron and Viking ages to the many battles fought between Sweden and Denmark over control of the island.

A visit to the museum at Visby revealed the full horror of medieval warfare, the likes of which have yet to be truly created on film. We have Braveheart of course - perhaps the grittiest example of what a battlefield would be like. And yet - this fails when compared to these images of the true scale of the carnage in ancient and medieval warfare. 

Some if the images are a little blurred due to the lighting conditions and having to be the ever-furtive photographer ... The museum forbid the use of cameras, but the temptation was too great, admittedly. Keeping a watchful vigil and evading the watchers proved to get the better of this author. In the end, I was discovered of course and politely acceded to their demands to refrain from more picture taking. Still, the state of these skulls is probably unique and I am a champion of Visby, wanting to promote the town and the museum.

A picture speaks louder than a thousand words, and I had to keep reminding myself these were the skulls of real people, real warriors dressed in chain mail, evading arrows, some more lucky than others whose dying thoughts only the imagination can do any justice.

Ulfberht: Is the name of one of the greatest swords of an age in the following photo. I had a shot in my folio of one of the original Uhlfbert swords. These swords were crucible-forged - meaning smelted steel from the best mix of carbon and ore, at such high temperatures that all impurities were heated out, leaving the perfect steel for sword-making, all it requiring is hammering and heating and forming for days and weeks to create the sword you see here. It was way ahead of it's time. The photo here shows the Uhlfbert inscription +UHLFBER+T - marking this as one of the originals, the style much copied in Viking times, most of which were not original.

Copyright Mark David.

This blog has been written as source material for the epic fiction project The Elements.