It is just over twenty years since Professor Ernst Sprockhoff published his classic study of bronze swords in Northern Europe, and a review of the situation as it presents itself today, surveyed from a point well outside the limits of the Nordic area, may not be out of place.The ground covered in this fine work had already in part been traversed by Sophus Müller and Gustav Kossinna; but in the process it had become a field of battle where the bitterest partisan spirit had all too recently been displayed, and might all too easily have been re-aroused. It is not the least part of our debt to Sprockhoff that he refused to treat his material on controversial lines, and confined himself to a presentation so objective that it immediately became possible, for the first time for many years, once more to discuss the subject in a sane and cool manner. Thus, adding much that was new and solely his own, he set down in plain, precise terms the whole of the evidence relating to the history, development, and chronology of the flange-hilted bronze swords of the North.Of this structure the main fabric, without any doubt, stands firm. The central theme, based on a large number of closed finds, and supported by an intimate knowledge of the material, need fear no criticism. Yet some aspects at least of the relations between the Nordic world and other parts of Europe call for re-examination, and the work of the past two decades enables some adjustments to be made. In fairness to Sprockhoff it should be stated quite clearly, at the outset, that the most important of these adjustments have been either made possible, or actually anticipated, by his own work in related fields since 1931.
Influence of cosmological expansion in local experiments
