found with numerous Cufic coins, as also Anglo-Saxon and German coins of the tenth century, at Falster.[1] The singular combination of debased animal forms with interlacements, as on the silver roundel of the radiated ornament of the Caenby shield, is of frequent occurrence in Scandinavian ornaments, being the "Drachenzierathen" of the northern antiquaries. These types of decorative design, it must be observed, appertain to a widely extended class of monuments, sculptured stones, and other remains, of which a large number exist in Great Britain: and the common element of that design might probably be traced to an Asiatic, rather than a Roman origin.[2]
It is much to be regretted that the shields of the "Iron-period" having been mostly of wood, sometimes, as Mr. Worsaae states, consisting of a frame covered with leather, and having an iron boss, no sufficient remains have been preserved to indicate their form and dimensions: the Danish shields were almost always painted, inlaid with gold or ornamented with figures in relief, occasionally distinctive symbols, the prototypes of heraldic charges. One of the kinds enumerated in the "Guide to Northern Archaeology" is the long buckler, of large dimensions, used for protection against arrows and javelins, or when scaling a rampart. The splendid shield of the Viking at Caenby must have been of this class, or probably a buckler of parade. It is unfortunately too much decayed to enable us to affirm that it is of the favourite material, of the period, the lime wood, as in Beowulf—"the shield, the yellow linden wood." A fragment of the bronze rim remains, once doubtless brightly burnished, in accordance with the description in the same poem of the "ample shield, yellow rimmed,"—"the very hard margins of the ample shields"—"the war rims, the bright shield wood." Some notion of the form of these defences of the larger sort may perhaps be gathered from the remarkable bronze coating of a shield, found in the river Witham, at Washingborough, near Lincoln, and deposited in the Goodrich Court Armory.[3]
- ↑ Annaler for Nordisk Oldkyndighed, 1842, tab. iii.
- ↑ Remarkable examples of the interlaced design occur on ornaments found in tumuli in Kent, Douglas's Nenia, pl xxii. Archaeological Album, Anglo-Saxon Antiquities, pl iii. These patterns are, however, more frequent upon sculptured crosses, &c., especially in the northern counties.
- ↑ Archaeologia, vol. xxiii., pl. xiii. p. 92. It measures about 3 ft. 6 in. by 16 in., and is of oblong form, with rounded angles.
