- Trundholm sun chariot
The Trundholm sun chariot (Danish: "Solvognen"), is a late
Nordic Bronze Age artifact discovered inDenmark , that has been interpreted as a depiction of thesun being pulled by a mare that may have relation to laterNorse mythology attested in 13th century sources.Description
The Trundholm
sun chariot is abronze statue of amare and a large bronze disk, which are placed on a device with spoked wheels. The horse stands on a bronze rod supported by four wheels. The rod below the horse is connected to the disk, which is supported by two wheels. All of the wheels have fourspoke s. The artifact was cast in the lost wax method.The sculpture was discovered in
1902 in the Trundholm moor inWest Zealand County on the northwest coast of the island ofZealand ("Sjælland") in Denmark, in a region known asOdsherred (approximately coord|55|55|N|11|37|E|). The sculpture is in the collection of theNational Museum of Denmark inCopenhagen .The disk alone has a diameter of approximately 25 cm (9.8 inches). It is gilded on one side only, the right-hand side (relative to the horse). This has been interpreted as an indication of a belief that the
sun is drawn across the heavens from East to West during the day, presenting its bright side to the Earth and returns from West to East during the night, when the dark side is being presented to the Earth. A continuation around a globe would have the same result.Date
The sculpture has been dated to the 18th to the 16th century BC. A model of a horse-drawn vehicle on spoked wheels in Northern Europe at such an early time is astonishing; they would not be expected to appear until the end of the Late Bronze Age, which ranges from 1100 BC to 550 BC.
In Europe, the earliest known "
chariots "—rather than ox-drawn carts having solid wheels without spokes—are from theIron Age , dating from circa the6th century BC (seeEtruscan chariot ). Artifacts from the LateBronze Age , bearing single-spoked wheels, have been found in Switzerland (Corcelettes), Drenthe (Netherlands), andStade (Germany).Interpretations
Norse mythology
In Norse mythology,
Sól is the personifiedgoddess of the Sun, the correspondingOld English name is Siȝel (/ˈsɪ jel/), continuing reconstructed Proto-Germanic *Sôwilô or *Saewelô. TheOld High German Sun goddess isSunna . Every day, Sól rode through the sky on herchariot , pulled by the two horsesArvak and Alsvid . The sun chariot has been interpreted as representing a bronze age predecessor to the goddess.Fact|date=May 2008The chariot has also been interpreted as a possible Bronze Age predecessor to
Skinfaxi ,Lindow, John. (2001) "Norse Mythology: A Guide to the Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs", page 272.Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-515382-0.] the horse that pulledDagr , the personification of day, across the sky.Engraving
Professor of
Archeology at theUniversity of Copenhagen , Klaus Randsborg, has pointed out that the sum of an addition of the number of spirals in each circle of the disk, multiplied by the number of the circles in which they are found, counted from the middle (1x1 + 2x8 + 3x20 + 4x25), results in a total of 177, which comes very close to the number of days in sixsynodic months, only 44 min 2.8 s shorter each.The
synodic cycle is the time that elapses between two successive conjunctions of an object in the sky, such as a specific star, with the sun. It is the time that elapses before the object will reappear at the same point in the sky when observed from the Earth, so it is the "apparent" orbital period observed from Earth.He asserts his belief that this demonstrates that the disk was designed by a person with some measure of astronomic knowledge and that the sculpture may have functioned as a calendar.
ee also
*
Nordic Bronze Age
*Urnfield culture
*Nebra skydisk
*golden hat
*sun worship
*Phaëton
*The King's Grave
*Egtved Girl
*Håga Kurgan References
External links
* [http://web.comhem.se/vikingbronze/sunchariot.htm Reconstructing the Trundholm Sun Chariot]
* [http://www2.kah-bonn.de/1/33/0.htm "Götter und Helden in der Bronzezeit: Europa im Zeitalter des Odysseus"] , exhibition, Bonn. 1999. Catalogue introduction, wall panel information: [http://www2.kah-bonn.de/pr/33/bronzezeit-pressemappe.doc] (.doc format)
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