country, and maintain the old civilization; if they had been expelled by a new invading people, who first settled in Sweden and Norway, we should of course expect to find the same monuments of the iron-period in Denmark, as in Norway and Sweden, which as we have seen, is not at all the case. It is however, natural, that those people who inhabited Denmark, at the time of the invasions into Norway and Sweden, should be mixed with some fresh elements.
Under these circumstances, it cannot possibly be imagined that the inhabitants of Denmark in the bronze-period should have been Celts. If they also, as late as the sixth and seventh centuries, had mixed with the Scandinavian people, which is in the highest degree improbable, we should have reason to expect that the present Danish language would exhibit a considerable number of Celtic words and expressions, not to be found either in the Swedish, or in the Norwegian language; but this is very far from being the case. The oldest Runic inscriptions in Denmark, are as pure Scandinavian, as any other in the North. In the very place, in Norway, where Celts are supposed to have lived, tombs and antiquities of the bronze-period have never, as yet, been discovered. In fact, there does not exist any historical record of Celtic inhabitants in the North. The Roman authors say, certainly, that the Cimbri lived on the peninsula of Jutland. But the same authors speak of them as a Germanic people; and it must be remarked, too, that geographical knowledge was at that time exceedingly limited, so that accounts which refer to the northern peninsula of Holland, have sometimes been transferred to the peninsula of Jutland. The question here is not, how far a single, or small Celtic tribe, may have lived for a short time, during the bronze-period, on the peninsula of Jütland; but what people it was, who, during that period, was spread over the whole of the present Denmark, and the southern part of Sweden, and who have left behind them such a quantity of monuments.
Already, from the first centuries of the Christian era, the
