The famous Trundholm Sun Chariot is a bronze and gold artifact pulled from a bog in Denmark in 1902. Thought to belong to the Nordic Bronze Age (c. 1700 to 500 BC) , the so-called chariot consisted of a bronze horse, a bronze horse. The bronze disc had a thin sheet of gold pressed to one side and the six four-spoked wheels were also made of bronze.
Archaeologists returned to the Zealand peat bogs in 1998 and found additional parts of the famous Trundholm Sun Chariot. (National Museum of Denmark)
The surprising discovery of the Trundholm Sun Chariot
The Norse artifact was first discovered on the south coast of the Danish island of Zealand (Sjælland) in 1902. A farmer found it in mud while plowing a peat bog called Trundholm Mose . He initially believed it was a toy, but he ended up contacting the National Museum of Denmark. And that’s also a blessing! The Trundholm Sun carriage is now a Danish national treasure and is even featured on the 1,000 krone banknote.
Believed to have been created around 1400 BC, this artifact is over 3,400 years old and according to the National Museum of Denmark, it is “one of the earliest examples in southern Scandinavia of a horse being used as a towing object. Experts have concluded that the Trundholm Sun Carriage was created using a method known as the lost-wax method or cire perdue.
The Sun Disc is decorated with spirals, a common motif in authentic Nordic craftsmanship. One side is gilded to give the impression of the sun during the day, while the other side is left dark to depict the sun’s journey during the night.
In 1998, nearly 100 years after the artifact was first discovered in a peat bog, experts returned to the site where the famous Trundholm Sun Carriage was found using metal detectors. During this archaeological dig, they unearthed 21 additional parts, allowing conservators to piece together a more complete picture of the object’s original appearance.
Trundholm Sun carriage on the 2013 Danish 1,000 krone banknote. ( Prachaya / Adobe Stock)
Trundholm sun chariot as a ritual performance
World Archeology argues that the significance of the Trundholm Sun Chariot lies in the fact that it is “perhaps the best example of an important aspect of Scandinavian Bronze Age religion: cosmic locomotion of the sun through the light of heaven and the darkness of the underworld.” In other examples discovered in Scandinavia, horses were replaced by ships or fish, among other creatures.
In this prehistoric Norse Bronze Age belief, the horse was said to be able to pull the sun into the sky during the day and through the darkness of the underworld at night. Historians believe that this artifact was used by priests of the time when performing their rituals to illustrate the journey of the sun.
Despite the fact that this Northern European Early Bronze Age artifact has been called a chariot since its discovery, it may not have actually been a chariot at all. The wheels themselves were probably used to allow the sun and horses to be pulled along in a procession or ritual performance, rather than as the wheels of a chariot.
This is inferred based on later depictions of the Sun on rocks and small metal devices in Northern Europe. In these images, the Sun is represented as a disc or a wheel pulled by an animal or a bird, rather than moving across the sky in a cart or chariot.
However, the approximate dimensions of the entire object are 54 cm long, 35 cm high and 29 cm deep, which seems quite small for an object used in ceremonial processions or ritual performance. Perhaps the wheels had a practical function of keeping the horse and disc upright.
Detail of the Sun’s disk. (Public domain)
Is the Trundholm Sun Chariot really a calendar?
In addition to being a ceremonial object, it is also thought that the Trundholm Sun Chariot may have functioned as a calendar. This theory was proposed by Klaus Randsborg, professor of archeology at the University of Copenhagen, who explained that the golden dayside of the Trundholm Sun Chariot had dimensions related to one-third of the solar year.
Meanwhile, Ransborg argued that the night side of the large concentric circle in the center had dimensions related to the six lunar months. He therefore concluded that “referring to the solar calendar on the day side and the lunar calendar on the night side of the Solar Chariot, this appears to be a perfect calculation”.
According to Amelia Carolina Sparavigna, assistant professor at the physics department of the Polytechnic University of Turin, the two sides of the solar disk represent the sun as it is drawn across the sky from East to West during the day, showing the bright side its with Earth. and then return from West to East during the night, when the dark side faces the Earth.
The other side of the Trundholm Sun Chariot has no trace of gilding. Experts believe that this is a symbolic image of the Sun at night. ( CC BY-SA 3.0 )
Mythical sun chariot
Comparing the Trundholm Sun Chariot to the actual mythological sun chariots of other cultures is not entirely accurate, as the former were not chariots at all. However, it can be said that there was a common belief in ancient cultures that the Sun moved across the sky.
In addition to Norse, Celtic and Hindu mythology, “The Traveling Sun” also appears in ancient Egyptian and Greek mythology. For example, in Egyptian mythology, the Sun is represented as being transported across the sky by Ra’s solar barge, or pushed by Khepri, a god depicted as a scarab. Given the importance of the Sun as a life-giving force, it is not too difficult to understand why the ancients considered the Sun divine.
The Trundholm Sun Chariot is an amazing artifact. Whether it was a calendar or not is probably something we will never know. However, its similarity to the solar images of other cultures suggests a certain common feeling, although expressed differently, by human societies.
