Thank you so much for this very interesting video! Being an ex Swedish archaeologist (with a bit of Danish into the mix too) I was fascinated to learn how the pictures on these razors are interpreted. I remember studying them at university almost forty years ago now but never that anyone , as I recall, connected the animals and boats depicted on them with a full story about how the sun moves over the heaven. It was however always assumed they had something to do with a sun cult, as is that amazing statue with a horse drawn cart with a big sun disc from Denmark ( also Bronze Age). Thanks for sending these snippets of the exhibition and the interpretations of the finds on You Tube as so many of us cannot go and see the exhibition in London.
@@revathigoutham4709 to watch the sun from the northern edge of Europe you have to look southwards. Thus the sun rises from the sea to your left and sets into the sea to your right.
@@michellebyrom6551 Thanks. I always travel with my handbook of constellations and Europe and the gulf threw me off course. I will demonstrate your reply to learn. Be prepared for more questions. Have a good day.
@@revathigoutham4709 When you look at the sun traveling across the sky in the northern hemisphere it is usually in the southern sky and travels from left to right throughout the day.(E to W)
Obviously the sun is a supremely important figure in the Nordic countries, because we get very little of it in the winter and we really, really want it back. It's rough these days when we have electric lighting but imagine having just a few hours of sunlight for months on end, and then it's pitch black for the rest. Unless it's raining, snowing or cloudy, of course. We still worship the sun. In spring time when you get the first proper sun and a little warmth, you can see people stopping and just turning towards the sun for a bit, or standing against a wall for even better effect, just to soak up a bit of sun.
@@stocktonjoans Thats just not true! The Sun was the primary Deity for most Cultures of that period, across the World. In Egyt they had multiple Sun god, becoming the primary God in later periods, in Mesopotamia the Sumerian sun god called Utu, Helios in Greek Mythology, similar things in North and south America, Asia, etc.
@@stocktonjoans the season cycle aspect is much less pronounced in cultures more around the equator, which are often more focused on rain patterns - or egyptians with flooding related to that - rather than the day becoming longer or shorter, which nearer to the equator is barely noticiable, if at all without having some timekeeping device. Midsummer as well is a huge deal in in nordics, while say in thailand its basically not noteworthy in any way and moon cycles instead play a bigger part in placing any days of note.
So COOL. And it makes sense...birds (often) indicate land near, horse moves over the land (Scandanavia) either by air or land, into the water again and boom the sun is caught by the sea serpent and the cycle starts again. So beautifully made, too. Jennifer makes it so interesting.
binge watching all the BM curator videos!!!! learning much and loving how entertaining they are made and edited!!! kudos to everyone doing this! - from an art history student catching up on all the things we cant study in a classroom
Jennifer, you have done a super explanation of some fascinating objects. When you pop up on the map with your shiny sun, however, the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
Thanks for posting this comment. it relates to when the cutout of the sun is moved across Europe. should be going in the other direction kind of fundamental to the story.
I continue to be impressed by this channel, especially Curator's Corner. I want to watch a fancy dinner party with all the curators and have them each play show and tell. That would be an awesome movie.
Could it be that the design of the razor indicates how old the person was when they died? For example, a young adult would be buried with a razor with a fish design, or an old man buried with a razor with the serpent design?
Aww thank you. The animation was very much a labour of love, but the animals are so cool (and have so much movement built into them) it had to be done. Glad you liked it.
@@britishmuseum I've already some bronze age tattoos and this animation awakened my love for needles ^^ I hope i'll be able to see the exposition before its ending, and at least I'll buy the exhibition book.
Considering how many migrations of people there were in Europe between 3000 years ago and the viking age, I don't think they were our direct ancestors. (I mean, we're all related) Some of the culture was transferred to our ancestors though, which I can understand cause that artstyle is awesome! They remind me of those petroglyphs in Bohuslän as well, which is a really cool connection!
Yeah it's fascinating. Well, you have to remember that clothing fashion and how you wore you hair etc would have varied with the times :) Just think of how different the 80's were from the 20's in dress and style. They were probably cleanshaven in the Bronze age, but who knows.. we don't really have that many depictions
@@98Zai Of course they are our direct descendants, we haven't had any migration in Sweden and Norway at least, until the 1975. Our ancestors come from the Boat axe culture who took women from the neohilitic farmers. The men were all killed. A few women were also taken from British isles and the balkans, if you could even call them different people at the time, they were also just germanic people. They recently did a study on a bunch of people they found who weren't swedish, and turned out they hadn't reproduced, which might point to that they only k1lled the sl4ved after awhile. It def points to that sl4ves weren't allowed to have children.
@@98Zai Lmao, you don't know anything. Yes they were germanic, I just told you. We come from the waraxe culture (båtyxkulturen), which is a Scandinavian group out of the corded ware culture and neohilthic farmer women. Yeah I know about that. The purpose is that the study showed that even later people who came here from the balkans or the british isles, as sl4ves, weren't allowed to have children and hence didn't mix with us Swedes. Already 80 BC, Tacitus wrote about the Swedish germanic tribes, as very powerful with great horses, fleets and weapons plenty in the very book called "Germania". Lmao.. Read a bit kid before you talk next time.
Bronze Age Myth of the Sun Cycle from Scandinavia | Curator's Corner S7 Ep4 1848pm 15.6.22 so............................... already knackered. i know that feeling. olaf the knackered.
It's interesting that the sun moves from left to right across the sky. Was South at the top of their map? I guess it makes sense that you would be looking Southwards when observing the Sun, at least during the shorter days of the year.
When I first saw them I thought for sure they were going to be some sort of knife scabbards. Real explanation was way more fun, and the animations really helped to visualize. Awesome video!
This is amazing! Thank you for finally beginning to embrace technology so you can return all the ill gotten gains in that place while maintaining the cultural and educational significances.
They do have clear signs of wear much like a modern razor would (although they're made of softer material). We tried to show some of that wear, but many of these razors are both heavily worn, and corroded, so to the naked eye (and even a macro lens) it's hard to see. Even the details of the figures can be quite hard to make out, thus why we made laser cut versions for the video.
I had an interesting thought in regards to the possibility that the razor was used in the burial/cremation preparation. Given that we know Scandinavian men at this time had a predilection to grooming, so it's easy to imagine the he was shaved one last time in this world. Adding it to the urn is very typical because you will also find many other objects in burials that relate, like tweezers and combs.
When I started the video. I thought: "Oh my god, never imagined these razors so huge." but then i got it, they are replica😅 Very nice video by the way.
When making the replicas I did ask myself "how big is too big?" May have gone slightly overboard, and definitely not a practical size for the morning routine.
@@britishmuseum I imagine a screenshot of your video in a video of "alternative archaeologists" with the title "new proof of giants" 😄. But again, great video about great objects.
What fascinates me is that some of the symbols for the rising sun are very, very similar to those of pre-christian France (Celtic), which were adopted and woven into the symbols and symbolism of what would eventually become the fleur de lys (interested readers of French should check Anne Lombard-Jourdan's "Fleur de lys et oriflamme: Signes célestes du royaume de France")
Thanks for the video! Knowing nothing about the subject, I can only speculate, but maybe they assigned the razors to men based on the season they were born or after a certain age?
What amazing objects and interesting interpretation of them. Might they also suggest how old the individual was. If they died young then they were an earlier part of the cycle?
What a fascinating subject. I wonder what archaeologists of the future will think we believe by the objects we're buried with now. Probably that we all worship at the twin gods Samsung and Apple. Also I don't think I've ever heard an American say "knackered" before, to think the UK government said she'd been abroad too much... Jennifer has certainly earned British citizenship.
Thanks for the painstaking recreation and presenting the same in an easy to understand manner. Mythologies around the sun are fascinating the world over. I am only a bit confused by the Left to Right. Is there a better way of explaining it?
They appear to view the world from the North looking South. This confused me for a minute, then I realized it was obvious since the world was all South for them.
Everyone living north of the tropics (the majority of humans) always views the sun in a southerly direction, hence the term "southern exposure" in agriculture, real estate, etc.
Well that happened sooner than expected! As Jen points out later in the video, this is the direction of the sun travelling in the myth, and how the sun appears to move through the sky in Scandinavia. However, you're totally correct that it's going the wrong way. It was a toss up as to whether we follow the sun as it moves through the sky, or as it moves through the sky during the myth. I chose the later, but I knew it would bug someone...
@@britishmuseum Buy someone? I just happen to be very tied into the Sun's movements! The direction on the razors is looking south, unlike on a map, which I'm sure you know! Worth explaining when demonstrating!
In the northern hemisphere, if you look at the sun, you're facing south automatically. The sun rises on your left (the east) and travels to your right, where it sets (the west). The path of the sun is left-to-right, because in order to track it, you have to face it. This is the *opposite* of modern map-oriented thinking, where we always put North at the top, meaning the sun rises to our right (east on the map as we face it, aka "looking north") and sets to the left (west on the map). Ironically, this map-riented thinking is accurate if you live in the southern hemisphere, since you're facing the map orientation AND facing the sun...but we've all agreed in the modern era that the map is oriented with north at its top, so those of us who live in the northern hemisphere have this dichotomy in our modern thoughts.
Since I live in Northern Minnesota in an area that was primarily settled by Scandinavian immigrants, I misinterpreted the title of this video to mean that 'the sun' was considered a myth since it was so rarely seen
Could the scene on the razor buried with each person indicate the position of the sun in its journey at the time of death? Perhaps the next stage AFTER death, sort of a continuation of the person's journey, but into the afterlife? Who knows! Very interesting and informative video, in any case! Thanks!
Hi Jenifer, I have a very, very old Bronze Age pdf book, I think from 1900, where it shows these same artifacts. I can send it to you if you want, since I have them in PDF format. Greetings and thanks for sharing....!!!
The bird to me, seems a bald Eagle or Sé Earn in Frisian. The strongest, highest flying bird under the sun and with a direct contact with fish and the sea. But, doesn't the sun rise from east to west? Love your explanation by the way!
Indeed the sun travels east to west, however our modern view of the world is that north is up. But then the world view was different, with north being colder, it must be deeper, whilst south, generally lighter and warmer must therefore be higher up. And thereby the sides of east and west change, and Sunna, the sun travelling, or being transported, from left to right.
Thank You for sharing this ☺️💗🤘🏽 Happy Summer Soltice 2022 🐟 🐠 🌃 🐟 ⛵ 🕊️ 🌞 🐴 🌞 ⛵ 🌞 🐴 🌞 ⛵ 🐉 🌞 🌊 🐟🐠 🌃 Fascinating! Reminds me of my favorite Song by Robert Hunter; JACK OF ROSES 🌹♥️⚡💙💀 🌹 So Dead to the Core Thank You for sharing 💗
Thank you - very informative. Considering the "Trundholm Sun Chariot" do they think the horse taking the sun across the sky and the Greek Helios using a horse-drawn chariot might be linked? Perhaps this myth was Europe-wide due to trade? Or do they believe it is just a coincidence?
I don't know for sure, but two possibilities (at least): cultural dissemination--the idea arose among one group of humans and was passed along to others (in this case, possibly from an Indo-European tribe or people ancestral to both Greeks and Scandinavians); and that the human mind tends to interpret its environment, in whole or in part (in this case the sun), in similar ways, so two groups both using the horse-drawn chariot might use that artifact to describe or explain the sun's path across the sky. The Ancient Egyptians believed the sun traveled across the sky in a boat, which then moved through the underworld from west to east so the sun could rise again the next day--similar idea to the Scandinavian myth. I don't know enough about cultures in other areas of the world to know if this is a common idea. But humans had to come up with some explanation for how the sun was reborn every day!
A common Indo-European source. Slavic, Germanic, Celtic and other branches of Indo-European languages and cultures all have the same motif. In our own Slavic lore, Sun god Dazbog is drawn by horse chariots across the sky. In some similar archeological art depictions sun is depicted almost identically as above, as drawn by single horse not chariots. Earlier depictions were before the invention of chariots by Proto-Indo-Europeans, so it only make sense to see difference in depictions from different time periods. Slavic grave broches depict the same scene, sometimes with chariots, sometimes with single horse pulling the sun towards horizon. But, actually sun's journey is almost universal motif, it's either on boat across the horizon, or via chariots, but the thing is Bronze age cultures imagined this journey as cyclical and sun entering underworld or water. In Egypt night sun enters Duat or underworld, in our Slavic pagan lore, Sun enters Yriy or Navia, underworld similar to Hades.
@@iachtulhu1420 - Fascinating. Thank you for taking the time to inform me about these things. Are you aware of any good UA-cam channels or stand-alone documentaries about these topics? Either mythology or history as I'm always trying to learn more and there are also a lot of fanciful "ancient aliens" type channels out there and so finding quality academically researched channels or documentaries isn't always easy. The carved stone labyrinth petroglyphs fascinate me and I went to see the ones in Cornwall and the ones in Galicia Spain which are clearly done by the same people. I wonder what their significance was?
Many thanks. Unfortunately, I will be in the UK after the exhibition ends, but I will still come to the BM! Is there a book I can read where this is discussed?
Flemming Kaul is who you want to go to as far as further reading, however a lot of his work is published in academic publications, which aren't always so easy to get your hands on. If you can, there is a chapter in "Ships on Bronzes. A Study in Bronze Age Religion and Iconography" that is particularly good. There are also some resources on this on the National Museums Denmark website: en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-bronze-age/the-sun-chariot/the-journey-of-the-sun-across-the-sky/ And the sun myth and it's wider context is also covered in the catalogue for the World of Stonehenge exhibition (although not in as much detail as Kaul) which you can get here: bit.ly/3L3yfRL or in the shop when you visit.
I'm curious about the way these razors illustrate parts of the Sun Myth Cycle, but never the whole cycle. I wonder if the stage of the cycle depicted might relate to the age of the person interred. Maybe you only get the sea serpent if you die at a late age? I'm not sure how you would determine the maturity of cremated remains though.
I prefer them to be related to the time of birth, that was also my immediate thought when I heard that they had been used. It's clearly a personal object that has been used throughout life. Having them related to death or age would mean them belonging to someone else. That just doesn't make sense to me.
@@telebubba5527 Your theory makes more sense. Mine would require that a person change razors at key points in their life. With metal being valuable that really doesn't seem practical. Thanks.
Random thought: what if the razors were kept in the family/clan and each generation just inherites it, giving it no particular meaning other than keeping the object within their circle and keeping the sun myth going. It would explain why different razors were found in different burial sites.
hey so like... a Fish, a Bird, a Horse, and a Snake. Aren't those.... all things which, in later norse myth, *Loki* either turned into, gave birth to, or both? It's definitely speculative, but I wonder if there's any kind of connection there.
i have 1 of those bronze razors here in my museum, north Estonia, paired with tweezers, but neither of them has very sophisticated pictures. simple lines, dot lines and wavy line. so, the owner maybe was not very posh? but he was big man. literally, some 2 m tall, according to bones' study. and had very big grave circle, so looks like ppl who buried hime, thought also high of him. Dr. Wexler, i am so sorry that easyjet stopt flying to Tallinn, so it is not easy for me to come to British Museum, would like to chat about bronze age razors :)
omigod, i have 1 of those in my museum, found here, in Estonia! :D dmn youtube algorithm is eerily correct. but here it was definitely not cremated burial. just burial in stone cist grave. (i do not know who coined this term, as i always feel that grave is what you dig but tomb is what you build and those here are def built.) and, you don't mention that those so-called razors were nearly always paired with tweezers. - and if those tweezers then have similar motifs? that is bc it is not possible to make bronze knife so sharp as to shave properly, like with steel razor. one has to take tuft of hair in tweezers, pull it taut and then cut hair with razor-knife.
The "serpent" or "snake" May well be a Eel. Theese days the Eel mostly is extinct due to dams killing them, but only 60 years ago in Sweden we had plenty of Eel in rivers and seas. Food for thought....
That was good, you should also do the Jesus mythological story. Whilst I'm not a mythicist, I do accept that the Jesus story was merely writing down previous verbal only stories, and then obviously dramatising it to make their own story.
I see Midgard serpent and sunny and slepnier....upon thinking about it it could be putting out the light in a person's life... Then it being a razon in a cremation, made me wonder if they slit the vein of that person upon death....
... or... the boys were given a razor for their first shave and they used that until death where they were burried with it after cremation... just my thoughts :P
Presentation is, again, top-notch. Seeing those engravings animated is something else.
Where did they looted it from?
Oh, I agree, except for getting the direction of the sun wrong in her photobomb.
UK has no shame displaying stolen artifacts.
Thank you so much for this very interesting video! Being an ex Swedish archaeologist (with a bit of Danish into the mix too) I was fascinated to learn how the pictures on these razors are interpreted. I remember studying them at university almost forty years ago now but never that anyone , as I recall, connected the animals and boats depicted on them with a full story about how the sun moves over the heaven. It was however always assumed they had something to do with a sun cult, as is that amazing statue with a horse drawn cart with a big sun disc from Denmark ( also Bronze Age). Thanks for sending these snippets of the exhibition and the interpretations of the finds on You Tube as so many of us cannot go and see the exhibition in London.
Sun cult. Seems interesting. I am still trying to understand the whole Left to Right.
@@revathigoutham4709 to watch the sun from the northern edge of Europe you have to look southwards. Thus the sun rises from the sea to your left and sets into the sea to your right.
@@michellebyrom6551 Thanks. I always travel with my handbook of constellations and Europe and the gulf threw me off course. I will demonstrate your reply to learn. Be prepared for more questions. Have a good day.
UK has no shame displaying stolen artifacts.
@@revathigoutham4709 When you look at the sun traveling across the sky in the northern hemisphere it is usually in the southern sky and travels from left to right throughout the day.(E to W)
Very few things I enjoy more than watching somebody share details of something about which they are passionate. This is really superb.
Obviously the sun is a supremely important figure in the Nordic countries, because we get very little of it in the winter and we really, really want it back. It's rough these days when we have electric lighting but imagine having just a few hours of sunlight for months on end, and then it's pitch black for the rest. Unless it's raining, snowing or cloudy, of course. We still worship the sun. In spring time when you get the first proper sun and a little warmth, you can see people stopping and just turning towards the sun for a bit, or standing against a wall for even better effect, just to soak up a bit of sun.
as opposed to all those other cultures at the time who barely even acknowledged it was there 😅
vörda solen \|T|/
@@stocktonjoans Thats just not true!
The Sun was the primary Deity for most Cultures of that period, across the World.
In Egyt they had multiple Sun god, becoming the primary God in later periods, in Mesopotamia the Sumerian sun god called Utu, Helios in Greek Mythology, similar things in North and south America, Asia, etc.
@@schnaps1790 yeah, that was kinda my whole point, ever heard of sarcasm?
@@stocktonjoans the season cycle aspect is much less pronounced in cultures more around the equator, which are often more focused on rain patterns - or egyptians with flooding related to that - rather than the day becoming longer or shorter, which nearer to the equator is barely noticiable, if at all without having some timekeeping device.
Midsummer as well is a huge deal in in nordics, while say in thailand its basically not noteworthy in any way and moon cycles instead play a bigger part in placing any days of note.
So COOL. And it makes sense...birds (often) indicate land near, horse moves over the land (Scandanavia) either by air or land, into the water again and boom the sun is caught by the sea serpent and the cycle starts again. So beautifully made, too. Jennifer makes it so interesting.
An and amazing and beautiful story, thank you for posting.
binge watching all the BM curator videos!!!! learning much and loving how entertaining they are made and edited!!! kudos to everyone doing this! - from an art history student catching up on all the things we cant study in a classroom
Love this video - fascinating subject matter and really well presented (thank you Jennifer). Now I REALLY want to know more - job done!
Jennifer, you have done a super explanation of some fascinating objects. When you pop up on the map with your shiny sun, however, the sun rises in the west and sets in the east.
Thanks for posting this comment. it relates to when the cutout of the sun is moved across Europe. should be going in the other direction kind of fundamental to the story.
Great presentation Jennifer.Hope to see you soon.
Very funny and entertaining, yet informative video! Thank you!
I continue to be impressed by this channel, especially Curator's Corner. I want to watch a fancy dinner party with all the curators and have them each play show and tell. That would be an awesome movie.
I love these videos. Thank you for sharing the knowledge! It's fascinating to see how we can infer valuable information without written records.
Could it be that the design of the razor indicates how old the person was when they died? For example, a young adult would be buried with a razor with a fish design, or an old man buried with a razor with the serpent design?
My fav presentations are about everyday items with extraordinary examples of decoration. Thanks so much!!
This was presented very, very well. I loved the graphics.
the subject is fascinating, very well presented, and the animated illustrations are (chef's kiss)!
Aww thank you. The animation was very much a labour of love, but the animals are so cool (and have so much movement built into them) it had to be done. Glad you liked it.
@@britishmuseum I've already some bronze age tattoos and this animation awakened my love for needles ^^ I hope i'll be able to see the exposition before its ending, and at least I'll buy the exhibition book.
Fascinating! Shaving is not the first thing i think about when I hear about my ancestors.
Thx from 🇸🇪
Considering how many migrations of people there were in Europe between 3000 years ago and the viking age, I don't think they were our direct ancestors. (I mean, we're all related) Some of the culture was transferred to our ancestors though, which I can understand cause that artstyle is awesome! They remind me of those petroglyphs in Bohuslän as well, which is a really cool connection!
Yeah it's fascinating. Well, you have to remember that clothing fashion and how you wore you hair etc would have varied with the times :) Just think of how different the 80's were from the 20's in dress and style.
They were probably cleanshaven in the Bronze age, but who knows.. we don't really have that many depictions
@@98Zai Of course they are our direct descendants, we haven't had any migration in Sweden and Norway at least, until the 1975. Our ancestors come from the Boat axe culture who took women from the neohilitic farmers. The men were all killed. A few women were also taken from British isles and the balkans, if you could even call them different people at the time, they were also just germanic people.
They recently did a study on a bunch of people they found who weren't swedish, and turned out they hadn't reproduced, which might point to that they only k1lled the sl4ved after awhile. It def points to that sl4ves weren't allowed to have children.
@@98Zai Lmao, you don't know anything. Yes they were germanic, I just told you. We come from the waraxe culture (båtyxkulturen), which is a Scandinavian group out of the corded ware culture and neohilthic farmer women.
Yeah I know about that. The purpose is that the study showed that even later people who came here from the balkans or the british isles, as sl4ves, weren't allowed to have children and hence didn't mix with us Swedes.
Already 80 BC, Tacitus wrote about the Swedish germanic tribes, as very powerful with great horses, fleets and weapons plenty in the very book called "Germania". Lmao..
Read a bit kid before you talk next time.
@@LordOfSweden A culture vanishing so fast means they were decimated.
Glad I found this, very interesting, thank you for your presentation,.
Amazing video, very well done. That was really interesting, Thank You!
Bronze Age Myth of the Sun Cycle from Scandinavia | Curator's Corner S7 Ep4 1848pm 15.6.22 so............................... already knackered. i know that feeling. olaf the knackered.
Fascinating!! ☀️ 💙
Very interesting and educational.
A great explanation, done well.
That Zelda sound effect when the symbols become glowy blue and move, hits hard.
Facinating, and I like it when it is presentet with a passion. ;o) But beeng a skandinavian, I can ashure you, the sun goes the other way round..
What a lovely story in beautiful designs. Thanks for sharing. Love your enthusiasm for the story within the history!
This is quite interesting and pretty well presented information. It's a pity this video is unlisted.
Ahh, you caught it just before it went live! Glad you liked it.
@@britishmuseum oh I really loved it, it was presented in a very clever way and I’m glad it was that I just arrived too early XD
@@britishmuseum UK has no shame displaying stolen artifacts.
Thank you so very much for making this wonderful episode today !
Thank you for this interesting video , I,ve never notice them before but now I will look for those razors in the museums
Fascinating, thank you! 👍
Absolutely Brilliant
It's interesting that the sun moves from left to right across the sky. Was South at the top of their map? I guess it makes sense that you would be looking Southwards when observing the Sun, at least during the shorter days of the year.
It’s fascinating, thank you!
When I first saw them I thought for sure they were going to be some sort of knife scabbards. Real explanation was way more fun, and the animations really helped to visualize. Awesome video!
Thank you, that was fascinating!
i never thought i'd be captivated by bronze age razors 😉
great animation😁
Amazing!
Also, I loved the Sun going around Scandinavia XD
This is amazing! Thank you for finally beginning to embrace technology so you can return all the ill gotten gains in that place while maintaining the cultural and educational significances.
Very Informative
I am currious. How do we know they are razors? Do they have microscopic wear patterns from shaving like modern razors get?
They do have clear signs of wear much like a modern razor would (although they're made of softer material). We tried to show some of that wear, but many of these razors are both heavily worn, and corroded, so to the naked eye (and even a macro lens) it's hard to see. Even the details of the figures can be quite hard to make out, thus why we made laser cut versions for the video.
@@britishmuseum Superb. Thank you for the clarification.
I had an interesting thought in regards to the possibility that the razor was used in the burial/cremation preparation. Given that we know Scandinavian men at this time had a predilection to grooming, so it's easy to imagine the he was shaved one last time in this world.
Adding it to the urn is very typical because you will also find many other objects in burials that relate, like tweezers and combs.
excellent...if I didn't know the planet was round, I could easily believe the sun would hide in the water
When I started the video. I thought: "Oh my god, never imagined these razors so huge." but then i got it, they are replica😅 Very nice video by the way.
When making the replicas I did ask myself "how big is too big?" May have gone slightly overboard, and definitely not a practical size for the morning routine.
@@britishmuseum I imagine a screenshot of your video in a video of "alternative archaeologists" with the title "new proof of giants" 😄. But again, great video about great objects.
@@britishmuseum Do you feel proud you looted all the artifacts?
Super interesting!
Fascinating thank you.
What fascinates me is that some of the symbols for the rising sun are very, very similar to those of pre-christian France (Celtic), which were adopted and woven into the symbols and symbolism of what would eventually become the fleur de lys (interested readers of French should check Anne Lombard-Jourdan's "Fleur de lys et oriflamme: Signes célestes du royaume de France")
Thanks for the video! Knowing nothing about the subject, I can only speculate, but maybe they assigned the razors to men based on the season they were born or after a certain age?
What amazing objects and interesting interpretation of them. Might they also suggest how old the individual was. If they died young then they were an earlier part of the cycle?
What a fascinating subject. I wonder what archaeologists of the future will think we believe by the objects we're buried with now. Probably that we all worship at the twin gods Samsung and Apple.
Also I don't think I've ever heard an American say "knackered" before, to think the UK government said she'd been abroad too much... Jennifer has certainly earned British citizenship.
Thank you.
Thanks for the painstaking recreation and presenting the same in an easy to understand manner. Mythologies around the sun are fascinating the world over. I am only a bit confused by the Left to Right. Is there a better way of explaining it?
Fascinating!
They appear to view the world from the North looking South. This confused me for a minute, then I realized it was obvious since the world was all South for them.
Everyone living north of the tropics (the majority of humans) always views the sun in a southerly direction, hence the term "southern exposure" in agriculture, real estate, etc.
When you show the rising and setting of the sun right in the beginning, you go from west to east! A bit strange!
Well that happened sooner than expected! As Jen points out later in the video, this is the direction of the sun travelling in the myth, and how the sun appears to move through the sky in Scandinavia. However, you're totally correct that it's going the wrong way. It was a toss up as to whether we follow the sun as it moves through the sky, or as it moves through the sky during the myth. I chose the later, but I knew it would bug someone...
@@britishmuseum Buy someone? I just happen to be very tied into the Sun's movements! The direction on the razors is looking south, unlike on a map, which I'm sure you know! Worth explaining when demonstrating!
In the northern hemisphere, if you look at the sun, you're facing south automatically. The sun rises on your left (the east) and travels to your right, where it sets (the west). The path of the sun is left-to-right, because in order to track it, you have to face it. This is the *opposite* of modern map-oriented thinking, where we always put North at the top, meaning the sun rises to our right (east on the map as we face it, aka "looking north") and sets to the left (west on the map). Ironically, this map-riented thinking is accurate if you live in the southern hemisphere, since you're facing the map orientation AND facing the sun...but we've all agreed in the modern era that the map is oriented with north at its top, so those of us who live in the northern hemisphere have this dichotomy in our modern thoughts.
Fascinating video. And isn't it interesting the parallel story myth of the Egyptian sun cycle?
Around the 1:48 mark... Are those depictions of the Moon, or Venus in various phases?
what were typically the dimensions of these sun razors?I I'm doing an essay for art history and i'm having a hard time finding this information.
They vary somewhat, but as a general example, the razor with the sun horse on it is 89 mm in length and 29mm wide. Good luck with the essay!
Much more interesting than planetary objects turning around and gliding through space 😜
Even the shape of the razors look like half a boat, pretty neat.
maybe which section of the cycle you got was dependant on when you were born, kind of like a zodiac
Since I live in Northern Minnesota in an area that was primarily settled by Scandinavian immigrants, I misinterpreted the title of this video to mean that 'the sun' was considered a myth since it was so rarely seen
In the summers in northern Scandinavia the sun barley sets. During solstice the sun is up day and night
Could the scene on the razor buried with each person indicate the position of the sun in its journey at the time of death? Perhaps the next stage AFTER death, sort of a continuation of the person's journey, but into the afterlife? Who knows! Very interesting and informative video, in any case! Thanks!
Are the razors engraved on only one side?
The BotW sound tho when the animated figures left the razors lul
That was really interesting, thank you. Do the razor images cover polar night and polar day?
very noice graphics tbh
Hi Jenifer, I have a very, very old Bronze Age pdf book, I think from 1900, where it shows these same artifacts. I can send it to you if you want, since I have them in PDF format. Greetings and thanks for sharing....!!!
The bird to me, seems a bald Eagle or Sé Earn in Frisian. The strongest, highest flying bird under the sun and with a direct contact with fish and the sea.
But, doesn't the sun rise from east to west? Love your explanation by the way!
Indeed the sun travels east to west, however our modern view of the world is that north is up. But then the world view was different, with north being colder, it must be deeper, whilst south, generally lighter and warmer must therefore be higher up. And thereby the sides of east and west change, and Sunna, the sun travelling, or being transported, from left to right.
Thank You for sharing this ☺️💗🤘🏽
Happy Summer Soltice 2022 🐟 🐠 🌃 🐟 ⛵ 🕊️ 🌞 🐴 🌞 ⛵ 🌞 🐴 🌞 ⛵ 🐉 🌞 🌊 🐟🐠 🌃 Fascinating! Reminds me of my favorite Song by Robert Hunter; JACK OF ROSES 🌹♥️⚡💙💀 🌹
So Dead to the Core
Thank You for sharing 💗
Thank you - very informative.
Considering the "Trundholm Sun Chariot" do they think the horse taking the sun across the sky and the Greek Helios using a horse-drawn chariot might be linked? Perhaps this myth was Europe-wide due to trade? Or do they believe it is just a coincidence?
I don't know for sure, but two possibilities (at least): cultural dissemination--the idea arose among one group of humans and was passed along to others (in this case, possibly from an Indo-European tribe or people ancestral to both Greeks and Scandinavians); and that the human mind tends to interpret its environment, in whole or in part (in this case the sun), in similar ways, so two groups both using the horse-drawn chariot might use that artifact to describe or explain the sun's path across the sky. The Ancient Egyptians believed the sun traveled across the sky in a boat, which then moved through the underworld from west to east so the sun could rise again the next day--similar idea to the Scandinavian myth. I don't know enough about cultures in other areas of the world to know if this is a common idea. But humans had to come up with some explanation for how the sun was reborn every day!
A common Indo-European source. Slavic, Germanic, Celtic and other branches of Indo-European languages and cultures all have the same motif. In our own Slavic lore, Sun god Dazbog is drawn by horse chariots across the sky. In some similar archeological art depictions sun is depicted almost identically as above, as drawn by single horse not chariots. Earlier depictions were before the invention of chariots by Proto-Indo-Europeans, so it only make sense to see difference in depictions from different time periods. Slavic grave broches depict the same scene, sometimes with chariots, sometimes with single horse pulling the sun towards horizon. But, actually sun's journey is almost universal motif, it's either on boat across the horizon, or via chariots, but the thing is Bronze age cultures imagined this journey as cyclical and sun entering underworld or water. In Egypt night sun enters Duat or underworld, in our Slavic pagan lore, Sun enters Yriy or Navia, underworld similar to Hades.
@@iachtulhu1420 - Fascinating. Thank you for taking the time to inform me about these things. Are you aware of any good UA-cam channels or stand-alone documentaries about these topics? Either mythology or history as I'm always trying to learn more and there are also a lot of fanciful "ancient aliens" type channels out there and so finding quality academically researched channels or documentaries isn't always easy.
The carved stone labyrinth petroglyphs fascinate me and I went to see the ones in Cornwall and the ones in Galicia Spain which are clearly done by the same people. I wonder what their significance was?
Many thanks. Unfortunately, I will be in the UK after the exhibition ends, but I will still come to the BM! Is there a book I can read where this is discussed?
Flemming Kaul is who you want to go to as far as further reading, however a lot of his work is published in academic publications, which aren't always so easy to get your hands on. If you can, there is a chapter in "Ships on Bronzes. A Study in Bronze Age Religion and Iconography" that is particularly good.
There are also some resources on this on the National Museums Denmark website: en.natmus.dk/historical-knowledge/denmark/prehistoric-period-until-1050-ad/the-bronze-age/the-sun-chariot/the-journey-of-the-sun-across-the-sky/
And the sun myth and it's wider context is also covered in the catalogue for the World of Stonehenge exhibition (although not in as much detail as Kaul) which you can get here: bit.ly/3L3yfRL or in the shop when you visit.
@@britishmuseum Thank you.
@@peternakitch4167 If you want to see some of the razors IRL, Moesgaard Museum has a few in their bronze age exhibition.
@@nannalange6696 Thank you for the information.
God I find this stuff so interesting
I'm curious about the way these razors illustrate parts of the Sun Myth Cycle, but never the whole cycle. I wonder if the stage of the cycle depicted might relate to the age of the person interred. Maybe you only get the sea serpent if you die at a late age? I'm not sure how you would determine the maturity of cremated remains though.
I prefer them to be related to the time of birth, that was also my immediate thought when I heard that they had been used. It's clearly a personal object that has been used throughout life. Having them related to death or age would mean them belonging to someone else. That just doesn't make sense to me.
@@telebubba5527 Your theory makes more sense. Mine would require that a person change razors at key points in their life. With metal being valuable that really doesn't seem practical. Thanks.
In some cultures the birds sing to make the sun rise. People noticed that birds sang before sunrise. In this myth the birds and sunrise are connected.
If anyone associated with this channel sees this, I just want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart.
It has been seen. And thanks for taking the time to reach out, I and the rest of the UA-cam team really appreciate it.
Random thought: what if the razors were kept in the family/clan and each generation just inherites it, giving it no particular meaning other than keeping the object within their circle and keeping the sun myth going. It would explain why different razors were found in different burial sites.
The serpent taking the sun to the underworld to be reborn again the next day.
While traveling with a good wind they may have found themselves in yesterday or tomorrow and recognised it.
hey so like... a Fish, a Bird, a Horse, and a Snake.
Aren't those.... all things which, in later norse myth, *Loki* either turned into, gave birth to, or both? It's definitely speculative, but I wonder if there's any kind of connection there.
It would be nice to see the originals?
i have 1 of those bronze razors here in my museum, north Estonia, paired with tweezers, but neither of them has very sophisticated pictures. simple lines, dot lines and wavy line. so, the owner maybe was not very posh? but he was big man. literally, some 2 m tall, according to bones' study. and had very big grave circle, so looks like ppl who buried hime, thought also high of him.
Dr. Wexler, i am so sorry that easyjet stopt flying to Tallinn, so it is not easy for me to come to British Museum, would like to chat about bronze age razors :)
omigod, i have 1 of those in my museum, found here, in Estonia! :D dmn youtube algorithm is eerily correct. but here it was definitely not cremated burial. just burial in stone cist grave. (i do not know who coined this term, as i always feel that grave is what you dig but tomb is what you build and those here are def built.) and, you don't mention that those so-called razors were nearly always paired with tweezers. - and if those tweezers then have similar motifs? that is bc it is not possible to make bronze knife so sharp as to shave properly, like with steel razor. one has to take tuft of hair in tweezers, pull it taut and then cut hair with razor-knife.
Facinating. California?
The sun was everything.
The "serpent" or "snake" May well be a Eel. Theese days the Eel mostly is extinct due to dams killing them, but only 60 years ago in Sweden we had plenty of Eel in rivers and seas. Food for thought....
That was good, you should also do the Jesus mythological story. Whilst I'm not a mythicist, I do accept that the Jesus story was merely writing down previous verbal only stories, and then obviously dramatising it to make their own story.
I think it is pretty reasonable to assume the Bronze Age people knew the sun appeared to move from east to west, unlike the depiction at 1:02.
I didn't know that the sun rises in the west and sets in the east in Scandinavia (1:03), because it's the opposite in the rest of the world.
I see Midgard serpent and sunny and slepnier....upon thinking about it it could be putting out the light in a person's life...
Then it being a razon in a cremation, made me wonder if they slit the vein of that person upon death....
Beard growth also follows the march of time. Wake up, violà, beard.
cool
Maybe each man got a razor that depicted the time of day he was born.
Maybe the time of year ?
im sorry but the first figure she pointed to was Trogdor
So I should have snuck a burninate in the video...
@@britishmuseum well, if you could it would be more accurate.
First thing I saw.
They 100% skipped over talking about Trogdoor
Perhaps the serpent is actually an oar fish?
Give us our things back
... or... the boys were given a razor for their first shave and they used that until death where they were burried with it after cremation... just my thoughts :P
if the sun travels left to right, point of view is facing south