Importance of Amber
If one considers the use of amber in a long term perspective in Scandinavia, its importance seems to have dwindled from the Neolithic to the end of the Viking period, when measured by finds from graves, hoards and settlements. But broadening the outlook to Britain and the European continent, a picture of a material of stable value presents itself.
Amber has been called the gold of the north, which implies that during the millennia it functioned at times in the same way as gold, that it may have been a substitute for gold, that it had a golden colour and that it was worth its weight in gold. Places where amber was most frequently found would be given sacred names. Ravlunda, ‘the amber grove’ situated on the east coast of Scania, Sweden is such a name, probably predating the Viking period.
During the Stone Age amber must have been plentiful along the west coast of Jutland. One cannot help wondering how people along this long coastline first discovered the special characteristics of amber, A ’stone’ thrown up on the shores of the North Sea by stormy weather and which both burns and floats! The softness of amber was a reason why it was fashioned quite early into large pendants to be worn on the body. The amber lumps were cut with flint tools, polished and pierced so that their lustre and transparency came to the advantage of the person wearing them. The beautiful colours and the warm feel of amber compared to other materials and the fact that it seems unaffected by a cold and windy climate are characteristics which must have been noticed already by Mesolithic foragers. The static electricity is another characteristic of amber which must have added to widespread convictions of the magic properties of the material. Amber was surely believed to be a sacred gift from a deity, maybe from the sun itself spilling its gold on the waves as it rose in the east over the Baltic or sank under the western horizon in the North Sea.