The graves from Guldhøj

When Guldhøj was excavated, three oak coffins from the Bronze Age were found. One of these was an adult’s coffin which had been robbed. The second was a child’s coffin, which had been lined with black goatskin. The body of the child had decomposed into ‘a gruel-like reddish mass’, as the finder put it. In the child’s coffin lay the remains of some woven clothing, two dried apples and an arrow shaft.

The third oak coffin belonged to an adult male. He had been given the unusual folding chair. But his prosperity did not end there. In the coffin too were a bronze dagger, a bronze axe, a bronze pin, two wooden bowls (one of these displaying tin tacks), a bark box and a spoon of horn. This coffin has been dendrochronologically dated to 1389 BC. Finds of textiles reveal that the buried man was dressed in a woven garment of wool; the fragments represent two hats with round crowns, one of them piled, a woollen shoe or mitten, a leather shoe and a cloak or kilt made of textile. Both the folding chair and a turned wooden bowl decorated with tin tacks can only be described as rare objects of high prestige.