People of the Iron Age, daily life in Scandinavia 2,000 years ago. Sagnlandet Lejre, Denmark

The people from the village are on their way home. They've been down to the marketplace by the fjord. In front ride the chief and his men. They all carry weapons. These are times of unrest, with many minor chiefs in conflict with each other, and everybody has to be on their guard all the time. We've moved back in time to the Iron Age, some 2,000 years ago. People live in small villages surrounded by vast forests and areas of open heath. Ringing the villagers are the fields, and further out the pastures where the villagers' animals graze. Most people in the village are peasants. They farm the land. The village consists of houses called longhouses. One end of the house is home to the peasant and his family, the other end to the animals. The people of the Iron Age wear clothes woven from wool. When it's rainy or cold weather, they put on sheepskins as overcoats. Two low doors lead into the longhouse. In the dark, the first thing you see is the open fireplace in the middle of the floor. It provides light and warmth, and it's here the mother of the house prepares food. Around the fireplace there are beds of straw where the whole family sleeps. Along the walls there are troughs and pots full of supplies for the long winter. There is no chimney over the open fireplace. The smoke finds its way slowly out through the thatched roof. These times are called the Iron Age because people learned to make use of a metal, iron. Iron was very expensive, but it could be used to make strong and efficient tools. An axe of iron could hack its way through a tree trunk in no time. In a little house at the edge of the village, the smith works. The blacksmith's assistant works the bellows that blow air onto the forge. He has to work hard to make the iron really hot. The smith hammers the iron into shape on a tiny anvil. Nobody in the village dares disturb the smith as he sits in the darkness hammering away on the iron. People are a little afraid of him because when he turns a lump of iron into a knife, it's pure witchcraft. Not all the work in the village, though, is as exciting as the smith's. Grinding corn into flour with a special stone called a cornstone is a hard and boring job. It takes many hours to make the flour for just a single loaf of bread. Finally, when there's enough flour, it's mixed with water and salt and kneaded to form a dough, then formed into nice large loaves. Meanwhile, the clay oven has been lit. When it's heated up, the glowing embers are removed and the dough put into the oven. A little later, the results of all the hard work can be seen and smelt. The Iron Age village is self-sufficient. The people have to find all their materials and food themselves. In the meadows and woods around the village, they collect berries, fruit and nuts for the lada. The people of the Iron Age have a close understanding of nature. Some plants and seeds can be used to make soup. Others can be used as spices. Large dock leaves make excellent wrapping paper for the provisions they find. The peasants of the Iron Age have a special place where they gather the best and juiciest leaves as supplies for their livestock. They chop branches off trees, gather them into bundles and carry them home to the village. Here the leaves are hung to dry and stored as winter forage. In the Iron Age, milk has many domestic uses. By keeping and treating the milk in a special way, cheese can be produced. Cow's milk can give butter. First, the milk has to stand for a while so the cream can settle out. The cream is then skimmed off and whipped in a little pot to make the most delicious butter. Sheep give good, warm wool. The wool is spun on a spindle, a tool that's turned with one hand whilst the wool is carefully pulled out into a thin thread with the other. Then the threads are wound onto the spindle. Later the threads of wool are used on the large loom inside the house. The loom is stretched over a wooden frame. The warp, that is the threads that will go along the material from one end to the other, are kept stretched by stones attached to their ends. Then other threads, the weft, are weaved across and through the hanging threads to make a piece of material. It takes weeks to weave enough material to make just a single garment. When the people of the Iron Age slaughter their animals, they use everything and nothing is allowed to go to waste. Leather, for example, can be made from the skin of a cow. Everyone in the village lends a hand, including the children. There is always something new to be learned. Many useful things can be made from leather. In the winter a piece of leather is put into shoes to help keep out the cold. Food and provisions are usually stored in clay pots. The potter is always busy. The people of the village need new pots all the time to replace old ones as they get broken. The potter rolls the clay into long sausages with which he builds the pots. The clay sausages are carefully smoothed together and slowly the pot grows in size. The finished pots must be allowed to dry out completely before they're placed in an oven. The clay pots are placed at the very back of the oven and the fire is stoked until it becomes hotter and hotter and the pots become red hot. Then they have to be cooled down slowly. Now you have a utensil that is useful both for cooking and for storing provisions in. Behind the village is the timber yard. The men are busy chopping timber for a new longhouse. First the tree trunks have to be split. This is done by hammering wedges into the trunk so that it splits open. Then planks and posts are cut. It's a demanding job requiring a great deal of practice to use the axe properly so the planks are even throughout their length. The Iron Age house is built on a framework of wood with two rows of posts running through the house. The wood is joined together with wooden nails. Metal nails are far too expensive. Some parts of the construction are tied together with leather rope. The raft is for example which the straw roof will rest on. Close by the village is the clay pit where the builders collect all the clay they need for floors and walls. The clay is mixed with chopped straw and horse manure so the clay daub on the walls will last longer. Finally the straw roof can be put on. The people of the Iron Age use nature's own materials when they build a house. Timber from the forest, clay from the earth and reeds from the bog. The builders are busy. Before the autumn months arrive with their driving rain and blizzard and a bitter cold, a house must be finished. One day a rider from the village comes across some strangers. The chief and his young warriors gallop to the spot. But the intruders have disappeared as quickly as they showed up. Were they friends or enemies? These are troubled times and the villagers must be constantly on their guard. The chief and his warriors have to train often in the use of their weapons. The warriors of this time use bows and arrows and long spears with tips of iron. But the most costly of all weapons is the iron sword. The boys of the village must make do with a practice fight with staves. Others train with the slingshot. A stone is placed in a little pouch of leather with two strings attached. The boy swings this round and round, then lets go of one of the strings. It takes a lot of practice, but the slingshot is a weapon that is both effective and cheap. There is a very special place near the village where it's best not to go alone. The sacrificial bog is the holy place of Iron Age people. This is where the gods live. Horses are sacrificed to honor them and pots of food are left out for the spirits. It's vital to stay on the good side of the gods. In fact, sometimes in the winter it's not unknown for a human to be sacrificed to make the gods grateful enough to allow spring to come early. And there is every reason to be good friends with the gods right now. For most of the summer the weather has been poor. And now, with harvest time approaching, the corn is heavy with grain that will not ripen. Perhaps it will even rot on the plant and be choked by all the weeds. If the harvest fails, the village will have to go hungry this winter. The longhouse stands like a protective shelter over the villagers. The warmth and light from the fireplace keeps the evil spirits at bay. This particular evening the people are sitting silently staring at the flames. Who were those strangers on horseback we saw today? They're gone now. Were they just traders passing through? Out in the fields the corn is once again wet through after the thunderstorm. If the harvest is not soon gathered, the corn will rot and starvation will threaten the village. The old people of the village can tell stories of the long, bitter winters when both people and livestock died of starvation. People in the Iron Age go to bed early, exhausted after a long, hard day's work. It's stopped raining. The evening sky over the village glows red. Perhaps that means the weather will improve. When the sky is red, it means there's a change in the weather on the way. The old people know that.