Als in the Celtic Iron Age

The history group defined its task as answering the following questions:
Where did they (the boat crew) come from?
Who were they?
Why did they come?
Who did they meet?
What happened?
The group started primarily with literature studies, followed by landscape studies on Als, visits to museums and contacts with museums and universities.
Let's start with the results from the analysis of Als in the Celtic Iron Age (500 BC - AD):
The island of Als has an area of 317 square kilometres with a soil of glacial clay and some sandy areas as well as some bogs and strong tunnel valley landscapes on Nordals. A pollen analysis from Bundsø (1) on Als shows the following distribution of vegetation in the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age:
LandscapeDistribution
Open land57 %
Scrub forest31 %
High forest12 %
This left 187 square kilometres or 18,700 hectares available for settlements and agriculture. The pollen analysis shows only a small amount of linden, while beech, oak, elm, hazel and alder were common.
Before juggling back and forth in the following sections, we will briefly mention the ages into which the Nordic Antiquity is divided:
PeriodYear
Palaeolithic period-> 3,000 BC.
Neolithic period3,000 - 1,800 BC
Bronze Age1800 - 500 BC
Celtic (pre-Roman) Iron Age500 BC - BC
Roman Iron AgeBC - 400 AD.
Germanic Iron Age400 - 800 AD
Viking Age800 - 1.050 AD
In the Celtic Iron Age, the settlement consisted of small villages with 5-6 farms, each with 7-8 people.
Each farm consisted of an oblong house, approximately 5 x 12 metres, oriented east-west with the dwelling at the west end and the stable at the east end. The livestock consisted of cows, sheep, pigs and a few horses. While in the Bronze Age cattle were kept outside all year round, in the Iron Age they needed to be stabled in winter for climatic reasons (2).
Based on ‘Danes from birth to baptism’ (3) , which claims that it took 50 hectares to give birth to one person in the Celtic Iron Age, the population of Als totalled around 350 people, of which 80-90 were probably armed.

The history group also made walks in the area around Hjortspring Mose and realised that the boat must have been towed up to the bog from Stevning Vig on the west coast of Als via Stolbro Bæk, which originates just 200 metres from the bog. The creek is marked on the Als map shown in the article Nature and culture.
On a field trip to the bog, we found a core axe from the Early Stone Age and some potsherds from the Bronze Age in the neighbouring fields. Yes, people had always travelled here. At the edge of the bog we found a heavy, highly ferrous stone, probably a precursor to ant ore. Ant ore was used as a raw material for iron production in Denmark during the Iron Age.

The work of the history group is recorded in the book: Tanker om Hjortspringfundet og Als i keltisk jernalder.

Hjortspring Mose has sprung up again.

Sources

1: Åby, B. Triangle pollen diagram from Bundsø.
2: Hvass, L.
2: Engelhart, P.
Hvad Haanden former er Aandens Spor.
Tanker om Hjortspringfundet og Als i keltisk jernalder.

Language

The text in this article has been translated from Danish to English using the free DeepL translation programme.