28 (491)

Womiwood

Ri>ck-roi<r

Sca

buckthom

Figurę 11 Standard pollen diagram for (present day) eastem Denmark. Dates m " uncalibrated C¹⁴-ycars. (After lversen)

							-		“5
«c	~ł	i ; i i i = a	i 5 a	a 5 ? o o N • —	V c £ JC V		g* ' 7 i i =	7 _ i * o ~	Ł 1
X	i	J 5	2 = w ^—	- v- x Ł	c£	'i	> <5 łL	< &	5= * —
jiikv uv*ans		ivjyo«-9 ns	*>i±nvu.v	lV3>IOa-3yd ivov 3V3UOH				iO*3Jlv 1

important reconstructions of the Danish landscape. In particular, the pollen of plants has proved a critical source for these studies.

B. Landscape and cultwatión

In the Iron and Viking Ages the presence of man in the pollen picture of naturę is clearer than in the previous periods.¹¹ The colder and morę humid climate of the Iron Age, hclpcd by forest clearance and animal grazing, led slowly to poorer soil. On the morę acid and humid ground, beech was doing better than oak and other types of trees, which were dominant during the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. The open land became commoner, for instance, on the poor soils of west Jylland and east Skane, and heather spread, especially on sandy soils. Bogs also became morę frequent. In short, man accclerated the interglacial climatic-botanical cycle through his clearings and farming, but the development was not without fluctuations, including crises for both naturę and human culture.

In the pollen diagrams of south Scandinavia the expansion during the warmer centuries at about the turn of the first millennium B.C. is clearly marked by the promotion of grasses and other plants which do not tolerate shade (Fig. 11). In the second quarter of the first millennium A.D. this phase discontinues and is foliowed by a forest regeneration during the cold, and possibly also humid, third quarter of the millennium which precedes the warmer Viking Age. Parallel to these trends, the pollen curvc for the cereals - especially barley and wheat - first shows an inerease (compared with the Bronze Age) folio wed by a recession, in the forest regeneration phase, and is terminated by a sharp inerease in the last quartcr of the first millennium. This, however, is partly due to the morę common use of rye, very rich in pollen, from the Viking Age onwards. Oats, like rye is a morę appropriate cereal for cold periods and poorer soils, and yet it is less common; it had an important bearing on the feeding of the many Viking horses.

Apart from the pastures, che animals may have been fed from leaves and from hay. Alder, for instance, growing on moist soils, shows a decline, in spite ot the rather damp weather conditions in the Iron Age, which probably means that alder swamps were being converted into hay meadows. The first broad scythcs are accordingly dated to the second half of the first millennium B.C.; the leafknife dates to morę or less the same time.¹² In the coldest phases of the Iron Age it was especially important to gather winter fodder for the stalled animals. The longer scythe, however, seems to occur later — in the first half of the first millennium A.D.¹³ If this scythe (along with the short scythe) is used for harvesting grain, instead of the older sickle, a reason may be the use of straw for feeding animals.