These helmets, discovered in a bog in 1942, have been dated using "a plug of birch tar on one of the horns," according to Live Science.
"...'For many years in popular culture, people associated the Viksø helmets with the Vikings,'" according to one archaeologist. "'But actually, it's nonsense. The horned theme is from the Bronze Age and is traceable back to the ancient Near East.'
"The new research ... confirms that the helmets were deposited in the bog in about 900 B.C. — almost 3,000 years ago and many centuries before the Vikings or Norse dominated the region."
"Archaeologists have revealed new X-ray scans of a Viking sword found on Scotland’s Orkney Islands in 2015, reports David Walker for the Scottish Daily Express. The ninth-century weapon was one of several Viking artifacts discovered in a hidden cemetery on the northeast coast of Papa Westray." Source: Smithsonian Magazine.
"Dubbed the Mayback sword after the site where it was found, the artifact is a Pedersen Type D sword—one of the heaviest used by the Vikings, report Ellie Forbes and Jennifer Russell for the Daily Record."
"Archaeologists in Scotland have revealed the ornate hilt of a Viking sword after scanning it with X-rays. The sword is highly corroded and covered in dirt, but the new images show the weapon in a new light and reveal its striking design." Source: Live Science.
"The sword is part of a hoard of Viking treasures unearthed in 2015 at a burial site on Papa Westray, one of the Orkney Islands located north of mainland Scotland. Archaeologists found the sword laid atop human remains. The burial also contained a buckle, arrows and a shield boss — the metal, central part of a shield. The site likely dates back to the first-generation Norwegian settlers, who came to the Orkney Islands during the 10th century, according to Historic Environment Scotland."
Next video (2014) shows a Viking site on the island of Westray, which is around 2 km away from Papa Westray.
"The Vikings are remembered as fierce fighters, but even these mighty warriors were no match for climate change. Scientists recently found that ice sheet growth and sea level rise led to massive coastal flooding that inundated Norse farms and ultimately drove the Vikings out of Greenland in the 15th century." Source: Live Science.
Note: The theory here is that advancing glaciers during the so-called Little Ice Age (16th - 19th centuries AD, maybe) and "the increased gravitational attraction between the expanding ice sheet and large masses of sea ice" led to coastal flooding in the area of the Viking settlements in Greenland. Other factors such as social unrest, resource depletion and increased storm activity may have contributed as well, leading the Vikings to abandon their settlement rather than moving it farther inland. Scenarios like this aren't exactly new, however. The next video, for example, is from 2011 (closed captions helpful).
Beowulf is a dark, violent and primordial work -- a classic example of the mythic hero archetype which forms the basis for so many popular and enduring stories. I can recommend Heaney's readable translation. The Chickering dual-language version is also highly regarded -- many think that this translation captures more of the feel of the original Old English -- but there are many other translations available, including one by the great J.R.R. Tolkien, and the differences between them can be dramatic.
Beowulf was apparently written during a transitional stage between Christianity and paganism in Scandinavia. According to the University of Cork (the original article seems to have vanished), "the heroic elegiac poem ... is a reflection of many Anglo-Saxon ideals and concepts. This work was written after the Anglo-Saxons were already Christianized, yet the pagan traditions that had dominated their lives were still present in their minds. Overall, Beowulf contains many pagan themes and concepts, but yet it also contains many clear references to Christianity. It is an Anglo Saxon work with a peculiar spiritual atmosphere."
If you ask me, Beowulf gets its power and atmosphere from its pagan element, not from Christianity.
"The last meal of Tollund Man, a bog body from Early Iron Age Denmark, has been re-examined using new analyses of plant macrofossils, pollen, non-pollen palynomorphs, steroid markers and proteins found in his gut. Some 12–24 hours before he was killed, he ate a porridge containing barley, pale persicaria and flax, and probably some fish. Proteins and eggs from intestinal worms indicate that he was infected with parasites. Although the meal may reflect ordinary Iron Age fare, the inclusion of threshing waste could possibly relate to ritual practices. This re-analysis illustrates that new techniques can throw fresh light on old questions and contribute to understanding life and death in the Danish Early Iron Age." Source: Cambridge University Press.
Bosch (1450-1516) was a Dutch painter -- one of the greatest in the world, if you ask me, and one of the strangest. Anyone who has ever taken mescaline will find something very familiar about his paintings and I've always liked to think that he was a member of an ancient secret society that used hallucinogenic plants in its rituals and had to conceal its activities from the church.
There's no evidence to support this as far as I know (other than the paintings themselves), but there has been speculation that Bosch may have been afflicted with what was then called St. Anthony's fire, now known as ergotism, an infection caused by the grain ergot fungus which was apparently rampant at the time he was alive. Ergot baked in bread can produce a kind of LSD-like substance and is known to cause delirium and hallucinations, among other things.
"There is no denying that the world Bosch shows us is a world of dreams. Can these strange visions have been due to drug-taking? Dare we assume that the painter resorted to some [phantasmagoric] drug so as to give free rein to his subconscious self and attain one of those 'abysses of the psyche' to which Henri Michaux had access under the influence of mescaline?" Source: The Alchemy Website.
The Alchemy Website suggests that Bosch may have used a "stimulant named 'witches' pomatum,' the recipe for which was apparently discovered in a "16th century book' by Professor Will Erich Peuckert of Gottingen University, who "made some, and tested it on several persons. All, after a deep sleep of twenty hours, had the same tale to tell; all had dreamed of flying, of orgies in the company of satanic creatures, of visits to the netherworld."
Bosch's paintings strongly suggest that he had personal experience with hallucinogens of some kind. Ergot is a good candidate, but so are the gruit beers of the time (1). Before hops came along, these beverages were made with a variety of herbs, some of which had psychoactive properties. Just looking at Bosch's work, I'd guess that he had tried mescaline at some point, but peyote and the other cacti containing mescaline are apparently only native to Mexico, South America and parts of North America. A more likely candidate is the amanita muscaria mushroom (2), but this is all speculation. It's possible that Bosch just had a particularly strange imagination.
(1) I'm not sure if gruit beer was still common during Bosch's lifetime (1450-1516 AD). According to Wikipedia, "The exclusive use of gruit was gradually phased out in favor of the use of hops alone in a slow sweep across Europe occurring between the 11th century (in the south and east of the Holy Roman Empire) and the late 16th century (Great Britain)."
In "The Secret Heresy of Heironymus Bosch" (1995), author Lynda Harris argues that the bizarre symbolism in Bosch's paintings reveals that he was a member of the heretical Cathar sect which was persecuted and driven underground by the Catholic Church. I'm no expert on any of this, naturally, but her argument makes a lot of sense in some regards. Bosch's religious paintings have something demonic about them which fits in with the Catharist's (apparent) belief that the Catholic Church in particular and the material world in general were totally evil.
Harris' theory has been criticized for various reasons -- including the fact that very little is actually known about the Cathars -- but even if she's right, it still doesn't explain the strangely organic and hallucinatory nature of Bosch's symbolism. As far as I'm concerned, his paintings are all the evidence I need. Even if his paintings do contain hidden Catharist and anti-Catholic meanings, the guy was definitely tripping on something. You can see it in every detail of the Garden of Earthly Delights.
"In 2009 a fragment of the skull of the first Neanderthal in the Netherlands was presented at the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden (National Museum of Antiquities). That Neanderthal now has a face. The Kennis brothers, world-famous palaeo-artists [next video], interpreted the characteristics of the fossil and other Neanderthal skulls to arrive at the reconstructed face of ‘Krijn’, a young man with a conspicuous lump over his right eyebrow. This lump is the result of a small tumour." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"...Krijn lived in the prehistoric landscape that is now under the North Sea, more than 50,000 years ago. The sea level was then 50 metres lower than it is today. Mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer, horses, and Neanderthals roamed this steppe, which was cold but offered food in abundance. This region, Doggerland, and its inhabitants form the subject of the exhibition of the same name in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden."
Comment: It's hard to know how seriously we should take this facial reconstruction since it's based on a single skull fragment. The tumor over the eye is apparently real -- researchers believe that the tumor was benign and probably present from birth. Interestingly enough in light of current "gender theory," the sex of the fossil was determined by the shape of the orbital bone. So much for the idea that sex is just a social construct. The shape of the skull is based on digital matches with other Neanderthal skulls and the eye, hair and skin color are supposedly based on the "latest findings" about Neanderthals. I have no idea what these "latest findings" could be, but it's safe to assume that these details are pure speculation.
Note: A dolmen is a megalithic passage tomb. I haven't been able to find much of anything in English about Sprove Dolmen, but I think it's more commonly referred to as Sprovedyssen or Sprove Runddysse. According to a site called Hunebed Nieuwscafe, "the passage grave of Sprovedyssen lies very close to the famous tomb of Kong Asgers Høj on the island of Mon in Denmark. The tomb was built by the Funnel Beaker Culture [4300 - 2800 BC] during the New Stone Age and is surrounded by a circle of 35 stones (ring stones)."
Kong Asgers Hoj in Denmark.
The Kong Asgers Hoj tomb, also dating back to the Beaker Funnel Culture, "consists of a chamber (10 m long by 2 m wide) with a long passage (7.5 m long). This type of grave is found primarily in Denmark, Germany and Scandinavia, and occasionally in France and the Netherlands." (Wikipedia) The tomb was used for secondary burials (reburials) during the later Corded Ware Culture period (2900 - 2350 BC).
"Archaeologists discovered the man's skull, as well as the remains of at least 10 other Stone Age adults and an infant, in 2012 at the bottom of what used to be a small lake in what is now Motala, a municipality in eastern-central Sweden. However, only one of the adults had a jaw; the rest were jawless, and two of the skulls had been placed on stakes sticking out from the lake's surface.
"Now, a 3D facial reconstruction reveals the likeness of one of those jawless skulls. Oscar Nilsson, a forensic artist based in Sweden, used this skull as well as genetic and anatomical information gleaned from it to create a bust of the man — a blue-eyed, brown-haired and pale-skinned individual in his 50s."