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The 'sun chariot of Trundholm', called ''Solvogn'' in Danish, is a late Nordic Bronze Age artefact. It is a bronze statue of a horse and a big bronze disk, placed on two spoked wheels. It was cast in the lost wax method. The horse stands on a bronze rod connecting it to the disk and runs on four wheels, the disk itself on two. All wheels have four spokes. The "chariot" consist solely of the disk, the axle, and the wheels.

Contents

Site

Interpretation

Date

See also

External links

Site

It was discovered in 1902 in the Trundholm moor in West Zealand County on the northwest coast of the island of Zealand (''Sjælland'') in Denmark, in a region known as Odsherred (approx. ).

Interpretation

The disk is interpreted as a depiction of the sun. It is unclear if the sun is imagined as being itself a chariot, or as riding in a chariot. A model of a horse-drawn vehicle on spoked wheels in Northern Europe at such an early time is astonishing, the earliest known actual chariots (as opposed to ox-drawn carts on solid wheels without spokes) in Europe are from the Iron Age, dating from ca. the 6th century BC (see Etruscan chariot). But Bronze Age single spoked wheels have been found in Switzerland (Corcelettes), Drenthe (Netherlands) and Stade (Germany).
The disk has a diameter of ca. 25 cm, and is gilded on only one side, the right-hand one relative to the horse. This has been interpreted as an indication of the belief that the sun is drawn across the heavens from East to West during the day, showing its bright side, and back from West to East during the night, showing its dark side.
Professor of Archeology at the University of Copenhagen, Klaus Randsborg has shown that you can add the number of spirals in each circle of the disk, timed by the number of the circle in which they are found, counted from the middle (1x1 + 2x8 + 3x20 + 4x25). The result is 177, which comes very close to the number of days in 6 synodic months, only 44 min 2.8 s shorter each. This shows that the disk was designed by a person with some measure of astronomic knowledge and that it may have functioned as a calendar.

Date

The chariot has been dated to the 14th and the 15th centuries BC.

See also

★ Nordic Bronze Age

★ sun chariot

★ Sowilo

★ Arvak and Alsvid

★ Skínfaxi and Hrímfaxi

★ Urnfield culture

★ Nebra skydisk

★ golden hat

★ sun worship

★ Phaëton

★ The King's Grave

★ Egtved Girl

★ Håga Kurgan

External links

★ Reconstructing the Trundholm Sun Chariot