The Gundestrup Cauldron

On 28 May 1891 men cutting peat in Rævemose, a small bog beside the larger Borremose in Himmerland, northern Jutland, came on sheets of embossed silver. Lifted out, they proved to be the parts of a single great cauldron, taken to pieces in antiquity and packed neatly into its own rounded base. Reassembled, it measures 69 centimetres across and 42 high and weighs just under 9 kilograms, the largest piece of silverwork known from Iron Age Europe.

As a hoard it is unusual: one object, deliberately dismantled. The rim and the twelve decorated plates had been taken off and stacked inside the bowl before it was laid down. Botanists who studied the bog at the time of the find thought the spot was dry ground when the cauldron was deposited and that peat later grew over it, which would make the careful stacking look like concealment. A new investigation in 2002 concluded that the bog may already have existed, which fits better with the many other offerings that Iron Age people in Denmark made in lakes and bogs. The National Museum of Denmark treats it as a sacrifice to the powers above.

Whatever the intent, the cauldron had come a long way. Its seven outer plates each carry a huge bearded or female head; the five inner plates show more crowded scenes. The best known shows a seated figure with antlers, holding a torc in one hand and a serpent in the other, among stags and other animals. Another has a line of foot soldiers and horsemen, with carnyx war-trumpets, moving past a large figure who holds a man head-down over a vessel. There are elephants and lions, creatures no one in Jutland would have seen.

The technique of high relief hammered from behind, finished with punches and partly gilded, belongs to the Thracian silversmithing tradition of the lower Danube, while helmets, shields and trumpets on the plates are Celtic. The National Museum suggests it was made between about 150 BC and the birth of Christ, where Celtic and Thracian peoples lived side by side, probably in south-west Romania or north-west Bulgaria. Lead-isotope studies point to silver from several sources and tin solder consistent with Cornish ore; glass for the inlaid eyes is of an eastern Mediterranean type. At least three silversmiths worked on it, and later repairs are cruder than the original work.

How it reached Denmark is unknown. One theory ties it to the Cimbri, a people from Jutland who campaigned in central and southern Europe at the end of the 2nd century BC and might have brought it home as booty; others favour a diplomatic gift or trade. Scholars also disagree on how to read the scenes and on the right order of the plates. That uncertainty is part of its fascination: a Danish bog find that holds the richest narrative imagery surviving from the Celtic world.