Hjortspringboot

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The Hjortspringboot ( Danish Hjortspringbåden ) is an Iron Age plank boat that dates back to 350 BC. And is therefore the oldest known from Denmark . It was discovered and excavated in 1921 near the Hjortspring manor on the island of Als ( German : Alsen ).

1:50 scale model of the Hjortspringboat.

The discovery

When cutting peat in a silted up moor measuring around 40 × 50 m in the 1880s, several pieces of wood were found near the Hjortspring farm on the then German island of Alsen, including an 8 m long plank that was burned as firewood by the peat cutters. The site is considered the oldest sacrificial (religion) site in Scandinavia . After the First World War , the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen was notified, which organized a systematic search in 1921 and 1922 and was able to find further fragments of a boat and other objects. When the excavations began a short time later under Gustav Rosenberg, only about 40% of the original victim was left. In addition to the canoe-like Hjortspringboot, which was documented in an exemplary manner despite the adverse conditions, weapons that had been found on the boat when it was sunk and must therefore be dated at the same time were found as "additional finds". These included 169 spear and lance tips (138 made of iron , 31 made of bone ), 50 humpback shields made of wood, Celtic type, 10 fragments of chain mail and about half a dozen swords . Some of the weapons had been made unusable by bending before they were dumped; they are the oldest surviving examples made of steel and the find is the oldest weapons depot in the north. The secular finds included several wooden plates and vessels as well as bronze fittings and a bronze needle and the mouthpiece of a bellows . Are assigned to the boat can also be a dozen paddle fragments , and two rudders fragments have, the different sizes and shapes. These were presumably individually adapted to the person and position on the boat.

The victim was probably made by the inhabitants of the island as thanks for a victory over invaders, possibly from the mainland (to be attached to the Celtic weapon types). Overall, due to the large number of weapons, a group of 100 men is assumed, which probably crossed with four boats.

The boat itself was largely destroyed during the dredging work, the remaining parts are now together with some of the weapons and equipment found in the permanent exhibition Danmarks Oldtid in the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen . The preserved parts of the boat are shown in the presumed original position of the boat with the help of a stainless steel frame construction.

The boat

The salvaged remains of the Hjortspringboat in the Danish National Museum.
Rift of the hot spring boat
For comparison: rock carvings from Tanum ( Sweden )

The Hjortspringboot is a clinkered plank boat. They were built in shell construction. The boat type dates back to the late Bronze Age , when the boat was also built in the early Iron Age (4th – 3rd century BC). It is believed to be a war boat for quickly crossing a warband across a larger body of water. It was built almost entirely from wood from the winter linden tree, which was less resistant than the oak wood that was mainly used, but significantly lighter, which benefited the flexibility of the boat. Since neither rudder holes or Ruderdollen are some means for receiving a boat mast, is an open canoe that a total of 20 puncturing paddles was driven, which could be confirmed by the reconstruction. Since two rudders were found, it can be assumed that one was attached to both the bow and the stern. It is 19 m long, 2.07 m wide and 0.7 m high. The length of the boat room is 13.6 m or 15.3 m. The mass was probably around 600 kg. At the bow and stern, the boat has two overlapping and widely projecting stems . The beak-like stems give the Hjortspringboot its familiar profile from Bronze Age rock carvings from Scandinavia. In earlier research, these were taken as an indication of a skin-covered boat as the origin, but this expansive wooden construction alone is no evidence with no obvious use. The ship's bottom consists of a wide keel plate with two risers attached to both sides in clinker construction . The upper risers had a thickened rail to increase the stability of the boat hull. The one-piece keel plate and the two-part railing planks merge into the freely projecting beaks at both ends of the boat. The total of five planks are made of a few centimeters thick limewood, which was around 15 mm thick in the thinnest places, using a consequent lightweight construction. All components are sewn together with bast ropes , the joints and seams are sealed with a tree resin compound . For reinforcement, the boat was stiffened inside with ten frames made of hazel branches. This boat, which is very well-engineered in construction and execution, documents the high point of the long boat-building tradition in the region, which dates back to the Bronze Age. This type of ship could not be further developed with the funds available at the time, and other types of boats replaced this type of construction. Historical rock carvings, among others from Himmelstalund , Lilla Flyhov , Litsleby or Tanum in Sweden indicate that this type of boat was very widespread.

Disadvantages of this boat are the low freeboard with the associated questionable seaworthiness and the relatively small payload for the size of the boat, but the big advantages are its low weight (the replica weighs only 530 kg at 19 m in length), its shallow draft , the good maneuverability in both directions as well as its high travel and top speed.

In 1922, the parts of the boat were preserved with glycerine , alum , wax and varnish according to the then state of science . Since the boat was then stored in a cellar, the wood gradually disintegrated due to the hygroscopic effect of the alum crystals embedded in it. In order to stop the decay, the wooden parts had to be preserved further with polyethylene glycol (PEG) between 1966 and 1979 .

During a subsequent excavation at the site in 1987, further parts of the boat were found. A 14 C-dating of three wooden objects from this subsequent excavation revealed a date of laying of 350 to 300 BC. Chr.

Reconstructions

In the 1940s, the first roadworthy reconstruction of the Hjortspringboat was made, but it has been missing since 1947. A second reconstruction was made in Germany in the 1970s on a 1: 2 scale. Between 1991 and 1999 another reconstruction was made by the specially founded association Hjortspringbådes Laug . It took about 10,000 hours for planning and construction, with 6500 hours alone for the replica of the so-called Tilia Alsie. Since no linden tree was available in a corresponding length (at least 15 m), the planks of the replica had to be built from two pieces, contrary to the original. Four linden trunks from a Gdansk forest with a total weight of 18 t were used as raw material for the replica . The finished boat has a weight of around 530 kg and, when fully loaded with 24 men and payload, a water displacement of 2500 kg, with a draft of around 35 cm. In experiments with a trained crew, a top speed of 8.2 knots (about 15.2 km / h ) was achieved in 30 seconds and a cruising speed over longer distances of about 6 knots (about 11 km / h), which means that at one day about 75 km could be covered. In addition, the boat was unexpectedly manageable even under difficult weather conditions with 1 m swell and wind speed of 10 m / s , so it can not be ruled out for seaworthiness outside the Baltic Sea area .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Taken from the information board for the boat miniature in the Deutsches Museum.
  2. ↑ Brøgger p. 57.

literature

  • Anton Wilhelm Brøgger , Haakon Shetelig : Vikingeskipene. Their forgjengere and etterfølgere . Dreyer, Oslo 1950 (Danish, Viking ships. Their predecessors and successors).
  • Ole Crumlin-Pedersen, Athena Trakadas (ed.): Hjortspring. A pre-roman Iron-Age warship in context . Vikingeskibshallen, Roskilde 2003, ISBN 87-85180-52-1 (English, Ships and boats of the North 5).
  • Niels Peter Fenger among others: The Hjortspring-Boot. A Scandinavian war canoe from the 4th century BC, from replica to test drive . Archaeological State Museum, Schleswig 2003, ISBN 978-3-88270-500-3 .
  • Richard A. Gould: Archeology and the social history of ships . Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge 2000, ISBN 978-0-521-19492-1 .
  • Kirsten Langenbach: Iron Age ship equipment in the area of ​​the North and Baltic Seas . Kabel, Bremerhaven 1998, ISBN 3-8225-0451-3 (dissertation).
  • Karsten Kjer Michaelsen: Politics bog om Danmarks oldtid . Copenhagen 2002 ISBN 87-567-6458-8 , p. 136
  • Klavs Randsborg: Hjortspring. Warfare and Sacrifice in Early Europe . Aarhus University Press, Aarhus et al. 1995, ISBN 87-7288-545-9 (English).
  • Claus von Carnap-Bornheim , Christian Radtke (Ed.): Once upon a time there was a ship: Archaeological expedition to the sea . Marebuchverlag, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-86648-053-7 .

Web links

Coordinates: 55 ° 0 '32.8 "  N , 9 ° 51' 14.3"  E