I don’t know the scholarship either. The Nationalmuseet’s website justifies Norse origin using the spiral design (without much further detail, but the Egtved Girl had a belt plate with a spiral design so maybe that’s one of the things they’re comparing with). Some form of contact does seem plausible, especially if one accepts a Danube origin; by water it’d have been Egyptians and Hittites (i.e. powerful states that could have kept piracy down) most of the way along the Mediterranean coast with just a hop across the Black Sea to the mouth of the Danube. Fairly direct contact might have been in-principle possible. Still, explaining the transit of the sun in terms of a locally familiar vehicle doesn’t seem like a very surprising idea - perhaps it was independently invented.
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Date: 2012-10-08 06:46 pm (UTC)Some form of contact does seem plausible, especially if one accepts a Danube origin; by water it’d have been Egyptians and Hittites (i.e. powerful states that could have kept piracy down) most of the way along the Mediterranean coast with just a hop across the Black Sea to the mouth of the Danube. Fairly direct contact might have been in-principle possible.
Still, explaining the transit of the sun in terms of a locally familiar vehicle doesn’t seem like a very surprising idea - perhaps it was independently invented.