It is a question which we are scarcely able to decide, whether these large gold horns, as well as several of the bowls which have been discovered, may not have been used in the sacrifices which our heathen forefathers practised in honour of their idols; and it is probable that the cakes of incense which are occasionally found with antiquities belonging to the times of heathenism, were also intended to be used in their religious ceremonies.
In conformity with facts which we derive from Sweden and Norway, it appears highly probable that the Danes erected idols in their places of worship. It is true no figures of them have hitherto been discovered, doubtless partly because they were in a great measure destroyed at the introduction of Christianity, when it is probable that the first preachers of Christianity exerted themselves to procure the destruction of the idols of paganism, partly too because they were of wood, and have perished in the earth. These idols were frequently adorned with costly garments, and trinkets of silver and gold. Hence a large massive ring or girdle of massive gold mixed with silver, which is rivetted together in the middle of the front, is conceived to have been the ornament of an idol, for it can scarcely be supposed that any
1844. The hoops, which were in perfect preservation, occupied their position one above another as if had been there to support them. It appeared to have been about a foot high, the lower hoop was a foot in diameter, and the upper hoop exactly ten inches. The hooked feet would seem to have been intended to support the wood the wood and prevent it from slipping. A somewhat similar vessel is represented in one of the plates of Douglas's Nenia.—T.
