Uncorking the Past

by Patrick E. McGovern

  BINGE DRINKING AND DANCING

  Despite the scarcity of sugar, northern Europe’s thirst for alcoholic beverages grew dramatically in the millennia following the Neolithic period. The most convincing evidence for a Bronze Age Nordic grog comes from the grave of an eighteen- to twenty-year-old woman who was buried sometime between 1500 and 1300 B.C. in an oak coffin under a tumulus at Egtved, Denmark. An iron-rich clay hardpan had sealed off the burial in central Jutland, so that the organic materials—including the woman’s dress, a cowskin wrapped around her, and a textile holding the burnt remains of a child—were preserved. Of greatest interest to a historian of fermented beverages was a birch-bark container, now on exhibit in the National Museum in Copenhagen, placed at the foot of the young woman’s coffin. The botanist (not evangelist) Bille Gram examined the container’s contents and identified the remains of cowberries (Vaccinium vitis-idaea) and cranberries (Vaccinium oxycoccus), wheat grains, filaments of bog myrtle (Myrica gale), and pollen from the lime tree, meadowsweet, and white clover (Trifolium repens). He concluded that the Egtved young woman clearly belonged to the upper class and had been presented with a special mixed fermented drink of mead, beer, and fruit. The bog myrtle (also known as sweet gale or pors) probably gave the brew a special flavor; it is still a popular additive to Scandinavian aquavit.

  The Egtved woman was provocatively dressed in a short-bodiced blouse and an open skirt with strings dangling from her hips. Her midriff was accented by a woolen belt, fastened with a large bronze disk that displayed a well-known entoptic design of interlocking spirals. She also sported a wide armband, bracelet, and ring of bronze. Bronze Age figurines from other sites in Denmark wear similar dress and jewelry and are shown dancing with hands on their hips, arching their backs in acrobatic positions, displaying their breasts, and presenting vessels. Dancing under the influence appears to have been as popular in Europe as it was in Asia. Scantily clad or naked dancers, amid spiral designs, are also shown on Scandinavian rock carvings executing backward flips, line dancing, and doing the ancient equivalent of a jig. Rather than being a member of the upper class, the Egtved woman might have been a celebrated dancer, buried with the container of fermented beverage that in life she had proffered to others and drunk from to stimulate her imaginative movements.

  Figure 15. Birch-bark bucket (height 13 cm), filled with a “Nordic grog”—a combination of mead, barley beer, and fermented cowberry and cranberry fruit—deposited at the foot of an oak coffin of a female “dancer” in a tumulus grave at Egtved, Denmark, ca. 1500–1300 B.C. From E. Aner and K. Kersten, Die Funde der älteren Bronzezeit des nordischen Kreises in Dänemark (Copenhagen: National Museum, 1973), plate t5. Drawing courtesy Eva Koch, National Museum of Copenhagen.

  From the same period and not far away, male warriors were interred under barrows at Nandrup on the island of Mors in Jutland and at Bregninge on Zealand. Like the Ashgrove man in Scotland, who carried a beautiful bronze dagger with a hilt of horn and a whale-tooth pommel to his grave, the men in Denmark were buried with well-crafted long swords and daggers of bronze. In each Danish tomb, a jar was placed to the side or at the foot of the body. Abundant lime-tree pollen, together with that of clover and meadowsweet, was embedded in the black residues inside the vessels, signs of a rich, spiced mead. My laboratory recently confirmed this finding using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry: characteristic beeswax hydrocarbons and acids mark the presence of honey. The Nandrup jar had been more than half full at one time, because a crust of material, or the tideline—solid matter on the surface of a liquid that was left behind after the liquid evaporated—could be seen just above the middle of the vessel. We may conclude from these tombs and many others that the macho Bronze Age European male was able to defend his interests and drink with the best of them.

  If classical writers are to be believed, binge drinking was the rule by Iron Age times in Europe north of the Alps. The early first-century B.C. historian Diodorus Siculus, for example, wrote that the Gauls (a general Latin term for the Celtic people living in Europe) imbibed beer, “the washings of honeycombs, probably mead,” and imported wine (Library of History 5.26.2–3). The Gauls were also said to have been repulsed from the gates of Rome by a surprise attack when they lay in a drunken stupor after torching the city in 390 B.C. Celtic beverages were anathema to any cultivated Roman; they were drunk neat or undiluted only by barbarians and mountain folk, through tubes or with their moustaches serving as filters (Diodorus Siculus 5.28.3). Beer in particular was singled out for its foul smell in the late first century B.C. by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (13.11.1), who alleged that Celtic beer was made from barley rotted in water. Even if this was true, who can blame the brewers, with their limited sources of sugar, or their patrons, who had to suffer through a cold, dark winter? People in the north had every reason to prepare and enjoy a mixed fermented beverage when they had the chance: the more, the merrier, you might say.

  DOWN INTO THE BOGS

  Vessels filled with fermented beverages found their way into places other than tombs. The northern plains of continental Europe and the adjoining islands of Denmark are dotted with bogs. These areas, which were originally lakes or rivers, gradually filled up with moss and other marsh vegetation, which over time was transformed into peat. The peat was exploited as a fuel source, especially during World War II; as it was dug up, many antiquities dating back to the Neolithic period were discovered. The joke was that peat was made up of one-third flammable material, one-third ash, and one-third artifacts. Peat diggers were encouraged to turn over artifacts, sometimes for a small reward, to local museums, and the largest, most comprehensive collection was amassed at Copenhagen’s National Museum. Neolithic Funnel Beakers, presumably once filled with Nordic grog, were recovered from scores of bogs, along with axes and weapons, boats, and animal and human remains. Because bog microorganisms consume all the available oxygen, organic remains buried in peat bogs are often well preserved. Residues occur on the interiors of many of the jars but are yet to be analyzed.

  In attempting to explain how the bog artifacts ended up where they did, archaeologists have proposed that families or clans made offerings at notable natural features—an open body of water in this instance—which were believed to be imbued with the divine. A strangely shaped boulder or an old, gnarled oak tree might also be the focus of religious fervor or fancy. Based on comparisons with modern societies in parts of Africa, the Pacific, and the Americas at about the same cultural level as that of early northern European peoples, we can speculate that the offerings were made to placate evil spirits or gain the support of more beneficial beings, perhaps ancestral ghosts that dwelt in the vicinity, and ensure the group’s well-being. The human condition is a precarious one, and ceremonies involving the presentation of food and drink to the spirits are believed to prevent accidents, cure disease, help women in childbirth, and contribute to the fertility of the earth.

  It is doubtful that all the artifacts in the bogs are evidence of ancient sympathetic magic or animistic rites. The body of a man in a boat, for example, could be the result of an accident or a deliberate interment, like the Viking ship burials centuries later. Another human found with a rope around his neck might have been a sacrifice, but his death could just as well have been punishment for a crime. Still, it is difficult to explain the concentrations of numerous jars, particularly on wooden platforms which had collapsed or been deliberately submerged, unless some kind of special activity had taken place that involved Nordic grog. At Lichterfelde near Berlin, nearly one hundred pottery cups were found packed in layers of grass and stones. Pollen analysis of their contents revealed that they very likely once contained a honey and barley-beer mixture, although the excavators interpreted the results as “flower offerings.”

  Bog drinking vessels dating to later in the first millennium B.C. are more ostentatious than those of Berlin-Lichterfelde, from around 1000 B.C. At Mariesminde Mose, on the island of Funen in Denmark, a large bronze bucket and eleven gold c
ups were recovered. The cups’ handles had horse-head terminals. Each vessel was richly decorated with concentric circles and other geometric motifs characteristic of emergent Celtic art. No ancient residues were found in the bucket or cups, so we cannot be certain what beverage they contained. The bogs, however, have yielded many other buckets, a large percentage of which were imported Greek or Roman wine situlae, or cauldrons. One can imagine the odd vessel or two being thrown or falling into a creek or lake. The disposal of such large, valuable vessels made of precious metals—even entire drinking sets—can hardly have been an accident, however, and these finds call for a more compelling explanation.

  Sacrificial offerings are undoubtedly part of the explanation. Mead was intimately associated with Odin, the high god of Norse mythology. He is said to have discovered the beverage by a circuitous route. After the gods and the people known as the Vans had made a particularly wise creature named Kvasir by spitting into a large jar, their protégé was murdered by two dwarfs, who then drained his blood into three huge vessels containing honey. The result was a mixed beverage that conferred the gift of wisdom and poetry on the drinker. The intermingling of blood and mead in the Norse tale recalls many ancient Near Eastern, Egyptian, and Greek myths equating wine with blood, and similar claims were made for the renowned chocolate beverages of ancient America (see chapter 7).

  Following various machinations in the Norse tale, the drink of blood, spittle, and mead fell into the hands of giants, from whom the gods eventually recovered it by subterfuge. Odin took a job as an ordinary field laborer with the giants and asked that he be paid only by a sip of the special mead. When that was not forthcoming, he took the form of a snake to slip into the cave where the vessels were kept. He prevailed on one of the giants’ daughters to give him a portion of the beverage each night that he slept with her. He downed everything from the three vessels, transformed himself into an eagle, and flew back to Valhalla, where he spat out the special beverage into waiting jars. Another Germanic myth describes a well of mead situated next to the “world tree,” the connecting link between heaven and earth. Odin drowned by throwing himself into the well and imbibing the beverage—and gaining wisdom, however briefly, in the process.

  In the real world, the bog pots probably belonged to members of the society identified as elite, whether socially, religiously, or politically. In many cultures, consuming an alcoholic beverage was a means of exercising authority over others. The highest respect went to those who could afford to drink in the most ostentatious fashion and to throw the biggest parties and feasts. In the American Northwest, this redistribution of fermented beverages, food, and other gifts was known as potlatch; in the anthropological literature and modern America, it is called conspicuous consumption. The Azande people of the Congo have a saying that “a chief must know how to drink; he must get drunk often and thoroughly.” Public ceremonies and religious festivals were designed to draw attention to a leader’s wealth and gain allegiance from the rank and file in exchange for largesse. At the conclusion of an impressive rite or lavish banquet in northern Europe, the ultimate gesture of a chief might well have been to present the valuable drinking vessels, filled with the Nordic grog, to the gods of the life-giving waters and bogs. We might also imagine that some vessels were thrown into the deep when the feast or celebration got out of hand.

  TRULY STUPENDOUS DRINKING

  The rulers of the northernmost habitable region of Europe—Proxima Thule to the Greeks—sought to enhance their status in the eyes of their subjects and the gods when they imported drinking sets from south of the Alps. Every skill of the classical artisan was brought to bear in producing these quintessential drinking vessels, which fill the galleries of our modern museums. The northern rulers further set themselves apart, as much as any host of a Greek symposion or Roman convivium, when they served a more potent and distinctive version of Nordic grog, which might contain more of the valuable honey or imported wine than usual. The competition between Celtic chiefs to purchase only the best food and drink for their feasts and ceremonies was so intense that J. M. de Navarro claimed that Celtic art “owed its existence to Celtic thirst.”

  The drinking cultures of the wild north and the urbane south were initially worlds apart. The visual signs of wealth and prestige were most readily transferred from south to north as fancy drinking sets and vessels. A shift away from grog to wine, especially wine diluted with water, a trend toward more moderate alcohol consumption, and the adoption of new beliefs and customs came more slowly. The inroads of the wine trade into northern Europe over the centuries can be traced by assessing the number of amphoras that were shipped to Gaul largely for native consumption. More than fifty shipwrecks loaded down with Roman wine have been found along the coasts of Liguria and the French Riviera. According to André Tchernia, a French wine historian and archaeologist, as many as 40 million amphoras were imported in a single century at the end of the Iron Age, culminating with Julius Caesar’s subjugation of Gaul in 58 B.C. At 25 liters per amphora, that comes to 10 million liters per year. Combined with the native beverages of mead, barley and wheat beer, and fermented fruit juices, the average barbarian appears to have been well supplied, even if a certain percentage of the inventory was consigned to the bogs.

  Figure 16. The tumulus burial of a Celtic prince at Hochdorf, Germany, ca. 525 B.C., is uncannily reminiscent of the Midas tumulus royal burial at Gordion, Turkey, of two centuries earlier. The burial chamber is enclosed in a double wall of logs, and a single male is laid out in his finery, accompanied by a massive “cauldron” and vessels for drinking and eating at a final funerary feast. Instead of “Phrygian grog,” the 500-liter cauldron had originally been filled with a beverage dominated by honey mead. Courtesy of J. Biel and Dr. Simone Stork/Keltenmuseum, Hochdorf.

  The progress of wine into the hinterlands of Europe took centuries. Sites in southern France, stretching from Marseille to Toulouse, are littered with thousands of Roman and Etruscan amphora sherds as early as the sixth century B.C. The wealthy elite there reputedly traded a slave for a single amphora of wine. By contrast, farther north in Europe—in the so-called Western Hallstatt Zone, the area where Germany, Switzerland, and France come together—finds of amphoras are infrequent, and traditional beverages, including mead, beer and Nordic grog, apparently remained the norm. An especially rich grave at Hochdorf, near Stuttgart, highlights the differences in lifestyles between north and south.

  The tomb at Hochdorf, which dates to about 525 B.C., comprised a burial chamber made of a double wall of timbers, with the intervening space filled with stones, which was covered with four layers of logs and a tumulus mound ten meters high. Tumuli to mark and protect burials are wide-spread across Europe and Asia in many periods. The construction methods of this double-wall burial chamber, however, were like those employed in the Midas tumulus. Once the tomb at Hochdorf was opened and the occupant and his burial goods were brought to light in 1977, archaeologists were astounded by the parallels between the grave in the Baden-Württemburg area of Bavaria and that at the capital city of the Phrygians in central Anatolia.

  In the Hochdorf tomb, a forty-year-old male was laid out on a long bronze couch, whose back was decorated with a scene of dancers with swords and a wagon. A full-scale four-wheeled wagon stood opposite, laid out with bronze table settings for nine people, perhaps close associates of the man in life. Rugs covered the floor of the chamber, and finer textiles lined its walls. A peaked birch-bark cap and leather shoes with pointed toes and decorated gold coverings resembled earlier styles in Phrygia. The most remarkable correspondence between the two tombs, however, was in the drinking paraphernalia. A cauldron with a 500-liter capacity lay at the foot of the deceased. It was of mainland Greek design, with three heavy ring handles and three recumbent lions attached to its shoulder. The tide-line inside the vessel showed that it had been three-quarters full when it was placed in the tomb. Mead accounted for most if not all of the 350 liters of liquid in the cauldron, according to a pal
ynological analysis of the black residue by Udelgard Körber-Grohne. The honey contained the pollen of sixty different plants, ranging from wild thyme to field and pasture plants and trees such as linden and willow. A gold bowl with a ringand-dot motif running around its rim had fallen into the cauldron. Eight bronze-studded drinking horns with gold and bronze fittings and a ninth one of iron, over one meter long and 5.5 liters in capacity, had been hung from the south wall of the chamber. These artifacts, as well as the residue inside the cauldron, were strong indicators that a communal funeral feast had been held in honor of the departed, and that drinking played an important part in the proceedings.

  Huge drinking cauldrons appear to have been all the rage in central Europe during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. At Vix in Burgundy, the largest Greek mixing krater ever found, with a height of 1.6 meters and a capacity of 1,200 liters, was deposited in a tumulus burial for a Celtic woman at approximately the same time as the one at Hochdorf. The stunning piece, which I had the opportunity of seeing close up, has rampant lion figures beneath huge volute handles, and a frieze showing a warrior and chariot procession around its neck. The woman, like the Hochdorf lord, had her own four-wheeled wagon. She was adorned with a stunning massive gold torque or choker whose finials consisted of intricately filigreed and granulated flying horses.

  One of the largest European tumuli was excavated at Hohmichele, close to the hilltop fort of Heuneburg, overlooking the Danube River south of Stuttgart. Inside the main chamber, constructed of oak beams, a man and a woman were buried with jewelry, weapons, and a wagon on which a large bronze cauldron had been set. A bronze ladle for serving the beverage it contained—which included honey, according to a palynological study—was found inside the vessel.