FINDS OF WEAPON OFFERINGS FROM
ILLERUP DAL
By Jrgen Ilkjr
The river valley called Illerup dal was drained in 1950,
revealing large weapon finds from the Iron Age. Since
then the site has been excavated during two periods,
1950-56 and 1975-85, and the past decade has seen the
publication of eight of a planned series of 14
publications about the finds made.
View across Illerup dal, 20 km south-west of
Aarhus.
The current consensus of opinion is that the Illerup
finds are spoils of war offered to the gods. A local
army appears to have defeated an invading force, whose
weapons were then cast into the lake covering the site
of the finds at that time. In excess of 15,000 weapons
and pieces of equipment from the period 200-500 AD
have been excavated, making it the most comprehensive
find of its type anywhere in the world.
RESEARCHERS PAST AND PRESENT
Not that Illerup dal is the only site where such war
spoils have been found; there are in fact 50 other sites
throughout Denmark and southern Sweden. Some of
these were excavated during the 19th century and have
formed the starting point for all later attempts to
interpret similar finds. Around 1940, two different
theories were current regarding bog finds: one
interpreted the finds as being offerings made of items
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gathered together after a successful military engage-
ment; the other posited that the finds had been cast into
the bogs over many years and as such represented small
annual offerings of the local people's own equipment.
Unfortunately, it was not possible to determine which
of the theories was correct, as the early excavations
were insufficiently well documented. It was not until
new evidence was uncovered through the more recent
excavations in Illerup dal that the question could
finally be resolved.
EXCAVATIONS AND FINDS
All told, four different offerings have been identified in
Illerup dal. This article, however, deals with the oldest
and largest-scale offering, dating from the early years
of the 3rd century. Much work has been involved in
creating the following reconstruction of the course of
events leading up to the offering.
A total of 15,000 weapons and pieces of military
equipment were excavated from an area measuring
40,000 m2. It was often the case that bundles of items
were found, these having originally been wrapped in
some type of cloth. However, after 1,800 years the
material has rotted away, and only the weapons and
equipment remain.
A fleet of perhaps 50 ships and 1,000 men set sail
from the west coast of the Scandinavian peninsula and
made its way down through Kattegat to attack Jutland.
The force landed on the east coast of Jutland, but was
met by a well-organised army made up of forces from
the entire region. The defensive action proved
successful: the attackers were defeated, and their
equipment and weapons were collected and destroyed.
The remnants of the weapons and equipment were then
thrown into the lake in Illerup dal as an offering. It is
not clear exactly where the battles in this campaign
took place, but presumably not too far away from the
lake.
Part of the ceremony involved destroying the
weapons and equipment. Next, the remnants were
gathered into bundles, which were wrapped in various
forms of cloth - military cloaks, for example. The
bundles were then carried out onto the lake in boats and
thrown overboard. These bundles have been found all
over the bed of the lake, which was 250 meters wide
and 400 meters long.
During the course of 18 years (spread over two
periods), these ancient bundles and their contents of
swords, spears, lances, shields, knives, combs, Roman
silver coins, bridles, tools and much more were
recovered one by one after having spent as much 1,800
years in the sediment of the lake. The finds were
brought to the Moesgrd Museum, preserved,
described, sorted, and then compared with similar
material from as far afield as the Black Sea, Scotland,
Africa and the Arctic.
The Illerup finds are exceptional, because of both
their sheer quantity and their condition. The alkaline
nature of the soil has preserved iron so well that two
hundred Roman swords, for example, could be used
today had they not been ceremoniously broken and bent
prior to being cast into the lake.
Prior to the offering, items were deliberately spoilt.
Swords were broken across and shields smashed. The
round items are shield bosses, torn out of the wooden
shields and then deformed by cuts and blows.
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PIECING TOGETHER THE JIGSAW
One of the most important questions (i.e. whether the
weapons were offered on one particular occasion or
whether they constitute a series of small, annual
offerings) could now be solved by piecing together the
fragments of the destroyed items. If, for example, parts
of a broken sword could be found in two or more
different bundles, then clearly these bundles must have
been part of the same sacrificial ceremony.
Researchers have now succeeded in putting together
more than a thousand fragments, and consequently it is
now known that in excess of twelve thousand items
were cast into the lake on one particular occasion at the
beginning of the 3rd century AD.
The excavation teams found more than one thousand
fragments of deliberately destroyed weapons which it
has been possible to match up. If, for example,
fragments from the same sword have been found in
two different bundles, it is concluded that these were
offered on the same occasion.
It is now also clear that the Illerup find is made up of
the material from four different offerings in exactly the
same place but with as much as a hundred years
between each ceremony. It seems clear, therefore, that
it was the local population that carried out the
ceremonies. But who was the enemy?
Light has been shed on this question by studying the
personal property of the attacking warriors. 150 tinder
boxes and combs from the oldest Illerup ceremony
show that the attacking forces had sailed from the west
coast of the Scandinavian peninsula, i.e. from modern-
day Norway and the adjoining regions of western
Sweden
AN ARMY OF THE ROMAN IRON
AGE
The sacrifices appear to have consisted of all of the
army's equipment and, even though we have only
excavated 40 per cent of the oldest site, it is
nevertheless now possible to begin to describe the
makeup of this army and in the process gain an
impression of the political structure that led to its
being assembled in the first place.

A red-painted shield with a boss crafted in silver and

gold; this splendid item of equipment was the
property of the commander of an enemy army. Runic
inscriptions name several such persons.

After years of research it is now possible, in the light

of the finds from Illerup dal, to reconstruct harness
and other equipment for horses and the equipment
used and worn by the warriors of the time. In the
longer term, it will be possible to create a detailed
picture of the defeated army whose equipment made
up the offering.

Work on the shields has shown that there were three

levels in the army's hierarchy: a top tier, represented by
five shields whose bosses are fashioned of gold and
silver; a tier of about 40 with shields with bronze
bosses; and a level of around 300 who had shields with
iron bosses. Comparisons with other finds from the
same period confirm this division. The size of the
attacking force means that it must have been put These masks of gold-plated silver were crafted in
together from a significantly large geographic area, Scandinavia, and prove that as early as 200 AD
which makes it likely that it was formed as the result of smiths were able to use embossed foil techniques,
a military alliance. The existence of such an alliance gold plating, and soldering.
must in turn reflect the political conditions prevalent
on the Scandinavian peninsula during this period. As
already mentioned, Illerup is not an isolated pheno-
menon, in that we know of similar offerings made from
the same period in all the areas boundering on Kattegat.
The offering of spoils of war tells us of historical
events not mentioned in written sources.

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