The Egtved Girl

Описание: The Egtved Girl was a Nordic Bronze Age girl aged 16-18 at death. Her burial has been dated by dendrochronology to 1370 BCE. She was slim, 160 cm tall, had long blonde hair and well-trimmed nails. Her treetrunk coffin was discovered in a barrow approximately 30 metres wide and 4 metres high.

She was buried fully dressed on a cowhide in the coffin. She wore a loose bodice with sleeves reaching the elbow. She had a bare waist and wore a short string skirt. She had bronze bracelets and a woolen belt with a large disc decorated with spirals and a spike. At her feet were the cremated remains of a child age 5-6. By her head there was a small birch bark box which contained an awl, bronze pins and a hair net.

Before the coffin was closed she was covered with a blanket and a cowhide. Flowering yarrow (indicating a summer burial) and a bucket of beer made of wheat, honey, bog-myrtle and cowberries were placed atop. Her distinctive outfit, which caused a sensation when it was unearthed in the 1920s, is the best preserved example of a style now known to be common in Northern Europe during the Bronze Age. The good preservation of Egtved girl is due to the acidic bog conditions of the soil, which is a common condition of this locale.

At the time of her burial, the people in Scandinavia would have been speakers of Indo-European idioms with early proto-Germanic characteristics.