Northern Europe: 06 DENMARK (Scandinavia), Pre-Roman Iron Age (500 BC-AD 43)

Iron, unlike bronze, did not need to be imported. Known as bog-ore or lake-ore, it precipitated in small clumps below the peat in marshy pools and was readily available. It had many impurities and was of poor quality but serviceable iron was extracted from the ore by smelting it in simple furnaces 

The Pre-Roman Iron Age Celtic culture (800-00-43 spread into northern Europe during the last few centuries BC, Etruscan and early Roman origin, such as bronze vessels and weapons, have been found in Denmark, southern Sweden and southern Norway.

Amber was an important material for making jewellery. During the Bronze Age and Early Pre-Roman Iron Age, amber and flint were traded with southern Europe. These trade links were broken by the advancing Celts but were restored during the Roman period.

Early Iron Age farmsteads were grouped together in villages (smaller than towns). Celtic fields – patchworks of plots of relatively small size suggesting cultivation by one person or family – emerged, reflecting the restructuring of society after the decline of the Bronze Age

Society during this period is described as egalitarian (all people being equal), an interpretation based on the absence of imported materials, weapons and signs of wealth in burials until the later part of the Pre-Roman Iron Age.

That there was conflict is testified by the weapon offering found in the boat excavated from the bog of Hjortspring Mose on the island of Als in Southern Jutland. Dating to 350 BC, the boat was made of overlapping planks of wood and was sixty feet long. It contained a huge hoard of Iron Age weaponry brought by a war party defeated after they attacked the island.

Bog bodies often retain their skin and internal organs due to the unusual conditions of the surrounding area. Many of those found in the bogs died violent deaths. It seems that most of the bodies offered human sacrifices and executed people as punishment for crimes. Tollund Man, preserved in a bog near Silkeborg, died by hanging. The normal burial custom in the pre-Roman Iron Age was cremation.