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.

Element of Crime meets Blood Meridian

By Mark David  

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I have just finished reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. I had the thought when I finished it that this book is a book as a film is a film when made by Lars Von Trier. I was curious about the idea and expand on it in this blog, starting with that film of Trier's The Element of Crime (the Von bit was a pun made at his expense by his fellow students ....)

The Element of Crime is the first and in many ways the most difficult to place of all of Lars Von Trier's films. The only instructor I can compare the feeling this movie creates to is David Lynch. I am no expert, but Mulholland Drive springs to mind. Where the the two directors differ is in approach - Lynch makes extensive use of 'between realities' - the journey into and out of the inner world of the mind and the outside world beyond and vice versa. This can be the subject of a new blog so I'll stop here. Trier is very taken with atmosphere, technique while sharing the inner-world focus of Lynch (this is my own interpretation and entirely subjective). The bottom line is both directors reward viewing with experiences few others can match.

The Element of Crime was made in 1984. I won't go into the details of the film. You can either browse wikipedia of see an  in depth coverage of Element of Crime on Film Walrus reviews.

Blood Meridian The Evening Redness in the West was written in 1985 and is probably the most famous of the books by American author Cormac McCarthy, perhaps the greatest living author in the US. McCarthy can today be regarded as a living legend - to compare with all the greats of US fiction like Steinbeck or Hemmingway. He writes in his own ballsy style waving indifference in the face of convention.

Both use a descriptive language of places and scenes. Both render details vivid. Both are prose in motion. Both are a journey. Both enter places unhealthy for the body and soul and both embark on a journey in inhospitable terrain. Both when seen or read are journey's of the mind. Our minds.

This is an essay and an experiment

The aim of this blog is foremost though an experiment - to explore the boundaries between two mediums and two comparable projects - the book and film. The idea is to find common traits and artistic similarities. I do this to focus on what it is that makes great fiction - whatever the medium - in the hope of gaining a little insight. I want insight, but like anything else in life this has to be worked at. So lets cut to the chase:

In both and for the sake of argument there is neither storyline or recognisable plot, other than the blurred focus on a character -  Fisher in EofC and in BM the two diffuse characters of The Kid and Judge Horton. Both work on a cause-and-effect sequence of events.

As Film Walrus writes:

The Element of Crime is told in a cryptic style, full of symbols, allusions, ambiguities and contradictions. The lighting is done with high-pressure sodium bulbs [1] that lend the film an orange tone (quite a bit more intense than sepia) broken only occasionally by highlights of green or blue. The shooting was done exclusively at night, usually during the rain. The narration is in strict monotone that distances the audience from any emotional connection to the characters. The camerawork is highly experimental, with a preponderance of overhead shots. The mise-en-scene is dense and disturbing, full of abandoned buildings, pools of dripping water, dead and dying horses and, everywhere, the decrepit and broken artifacts of decaying post-war Europe. Almost every minor character is bald.

Allusions and Ambiguities

As in E of C the journey is the detective seeking to discover, entering a shadow - or literally - night world apocalyptic and full to the brim with methods to catch our own fantasy where one act leads to the next without a guidebook to show us the way. Death is all around us and made vivid in ways we have never seen before, a world populated by figures unlike any we have encountered. A world that is a hypnosis-induiced flashback, a journey of the mind, full of the mind's associative ability to couple together fragments from the most remote and obscure of libraries that reach deep down into the wells of the human psyche. Like a dream E of C is a visual journey we are a part of but also one we ourselves are the creators of - by making something that is not served on a plate and making it our own.

Similarly, BM is also a symbolic overdrive full of allusions and ambiguities. For example, in the obscure ending in Blood Meridian. McCarthy writes:

"In the dawn there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground ... he sinks fire in the hole and drains out his steel. Then they move on again."

Wikipedia says of the ending:

"The images of the epilogue seem to serve as a harbinger of the more ordered and settled civilization which will soon replace the war-torn chaos of the West, with its own rituals and codes very unlike those portrayed in the novel's setting."

The above is very insightful and certainly resonates with meaning that renders words into something more - a comment on the essence of a time as chaotic and lawless as any other in the diverse histories of human affairs. I feel therefore a deep resonance between both works both my masters and seek to compare. 

A key

I prefer however for my own subjective reasons to think of the above epilogue in BM as a key - a key to unlocking the experience of reading the text. This for me is the journey - a figurative journey. The reading of the epilogue in BM is not the track of holes but the moment of making one and moving on to the next. This suggests the moment-by-moment state of existence that in the story - a gang of renegade scalp hunters paid by the authorities of the land to cut scalps from natives - each moment of violence degrading the group to a more primitive state.

I have read a handful of reviews on Blood Meridian and I am appreciative of it. I believe the book is like good music - the greater the submersion the greater the appreciation. But and this is a big but. This is not a book of entertainment. Not for me at least. All books are read subjectively so I'm not interested if someone disagrees with me on this one. 

Let's look at the book as a coin with an upside and a downside. Starting with the downside I see the reading of the book as a wander in the desert of existence as much as it is for the diffusely sketched characters. I find the running descriptions of setting page after page of verbal exploration tedious and long for something else - the zooming into an important macro detail foreshadowing a meaningful event for example. The book procrastinates to the extreme in the wandering descriptive. I do not therefore, elevate Blood Meridian to the gods but nevertheless curse the day when there are no more Cormac McCarthy's around to whom we can only aspire.

Many critics agree that there are Gnostic elements present in Blood Meridian, but they disagree on the precise meaning and implication of those elements. One of the most detailed of these arguments is made by Leo Daugherty in his 1992 article, "Blood Meridian as Gnostic Tragedy." Daugherty argues "gnostic thought is central to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian" (Daugherty, 122); specifically, the Zoroastrian branch of Gnosticism. He describes the novel as a "rare coupling of Gnostic 'ideology' with the 'affect' of Hellenic tragedy by means of depicting how power works in the making and erasing of culture, and of what the human condition amounts to when a person opposes that power and thence gets introduced to fate.


The point of this blog

What would Blood Meridian be like if it was made into a film visualised by the likes of Trier? Let's face it, Von Trier's films do not grip. But they are at time subliminal. The world would be a boring place without the funding for people like Von Trier.

I would vouch that the enjoyment is not in the entertainment value but in the appreciation of the ascetic and aesthetic of the setting - the raw west with raw people sunken to a level of depravity that sinks below any contemplation concerning the meaning of life. This is man here and now at his most primeval, acting according to one the genetic encoded need to kill arisen from a need to survive. To exist at all. Like the holes in the epilogue, the random movement from event to event, place to place, act to act, follow a law devoid of laws other than the law that is all laws and that law is survival. And yes, I wish to establish a resonance akin to The Element of Crime ...

McCarthy and Von Trier are artists extraordinaire - each in their respective mediums. In an age when half of the stars are wearing stupid superhero costumes and losing a certain artistic credibility into the bargain (Gwinneth Paltrow in Iron Man for example. Skycaptain I can buy - but Iron Man ... christ money really shouts out loud in Hollywood for people who already have plenty of it. Now half the movies are the local cinema are for kids past the age of eighteen...) 

I fear if Von Trier took Blood Meridian he would take something and make it more extreme than it already is - away into his own inner worlds mortals like us probably don't really want to go and see. I would therefore voucher for Clint Eastwood or even Paul Greengrass (The Bourne trilogy). Greengrass could take something silent and breath life into it as Eastwood would lavish in the poetic setting of the West that vanished for ever with the making of those holes in the grounds for the poles of the border and segregation and the permanence of nations.

If Von Trier would for once cater for others than his self then perhaps he could create something sublime. Perhaps. He would need a bloody good cinemaphotographer as in Antichrist with a passion for detail and stop masturbating.