Two horns of heavy gold, covered all over with puzzling figures, and on one of them a line of runes in which, for the first time in the North, a human being steps out of history by name: “I made the horn.” The Golden Horns of Gallehus are among the most famous finds of Denmark – and their story is a thriller with kings, a forger and a melted-down treasure.
On 20 July 1639, a woman named Kirstine Svendsdatter literally stumbled over the first horn at Gallehus, north of Møgeltønder in Southern Jutland. Almost a hundred years later, on 21 April 1734, the farmer Erik Lassen found the second one close by. Both horns were of gold, both dated to around 400 AD – the Germanic Iron Age, long before the Viking Age. King Christian IV gave the first horn to his son; it entered the royal cabinet of curiosities and was described by the scholar Ole Worm in a treatise of 1641.
These were not solid drinking cups but artfully built objects: an inner horn over which several golden rings were slipped, each decorated with animal and human figures. Only the outer rings had a high gold content. The long horn measured about 52 centimetres and weighed roughly 3.1 kilograms; the shorter one was actually heavier, at about 3.7 kilograms. Whether people drank from them or blew them is still uncertain.
The shorter horn carried an inscription in the Elder Futhark along its rim, 32 runes long. In transliteration it reads:
ek hlewagastiz : holtijaz : horna : tawido Inscription of the short Gallehus horn, around 400 AD (public domain)
Translated, it means: “I, Hlewagastiz, the one belonging to Holt, made the horn.” The name Hlewagastiz means roughly “he who has famous guests”; “holtijaz” is read either as “son of a man Holt” or “coming from the place Holt.” The beautiful thing about it: a craftsman sets his name into his work – perhaps the oldest proud signature in Northern Europe. Anyone engraving a name into stone or wood today stands in a very, very long tradition.
For linguistics the line is a treasure in itself. The three words hlewagastiz, holtijaz and horna begin with the same sound and form an alliteration – it is the oldest surviving example of a Germanic long-line, that is, of bound poetry. In language it shows neither clearly Norse nor clearly West Germanic features; it is assigned to the still-undivided early stage called “Northwest Germanic.” More on the rune rows and their development is in our overview of the runes.
Beyond the runes, the horns are covered with a whole world of small figures: people, animals, a three-headed being, snakes, stars. For centuries people have tried to read a meaning into them. Some wanted to recognise the gods Tyr, Odin, Thor or Freyr, others Byzantine models, still others a clever number symbolism around thirteen and the golden ratio. One scholar even argued the horns were made because of a solar eclipse in the year 413, to ward off looming disaster.
As tempting as that sounds: all of these readings are uncertain. It does not help that we know the images only from old drawings – and no one knows how accurate those drawings really were.
For the originals no longer exist. In the night before 4 May 1802, the goldsmith and counterfeiter Niels Heidenreich stole the two horns from the royal cabinet in Copenhagen – and melted them down. Denmark's greatest art treasure became bullion and forged coins. What remains are the descriptions and engravings of the 17th and 18th centuries, such as the one by Simon de Passe for Ole Worm's treatise.
Soon after the theft, replicas were made – not of solid gold, though, but of gilded silver. And as if history had a sense of irony, it was precisely these replicas that were stolen again from the museum in Jelling in September 2007. This time, however, they turned up again after two days.
The loss is what truly made the horns famous. That same year, 1802, Adam Oehlenschläger wrote his poem “Guldhornene” – a key text of Danish Romanticism that turned the theft into a lament for a lost, sacred antiquity. In 1907 memorial stones were raised at the find spots. Tellingly, the stones had to be brought in from the Harz mountains, because the flat marshland around Gallehus yields no large boulders.
Two things remain, even without the gold. First: the images we still do not fully understand – a reminder that the old world never quite belongs to us. And second, that short, clear line of runes in which a human being steps out of the dark and says: I made this. No god, no king – a craftsman, proud of his work. That is the heart of every good engraving: a mark that lasts, and a name behind it.
The two golden horns were found in 1639 and 1734 at Gallehus (Southern Jutland) and dated to around 400 AD. They consisted of an inner horn with slipped-on, figure-decorated golden rings; the long horn weighed about 3.1 kg, the short one about 3.7 kg. The short horn carried the runic inscription “ek hlewagastiz holtijaz horna tawido” in the Elder Futhark – the oldest evidence of a Germanic alliterative long-line. In 1802 the originals were stolen by Niels Heidenreich and melted down; only drawings survive (among them Ole Worm 1641). Today's replicas are of gilded silver.
All interpretations of the images – specific gods, Byzantine models, secret number codes, the solar eclipse of 413 – are hypotheses, not established facts; they also rest on drawings of unknown accuracy. Whether the horns were drinking or blowing horns is likewise open. And, importantly: what you see in museums are replicas of gilded silver – the golden originals have not existed since 1802.
Runes & their meaning · Which rune to engrave? · Norse symbols: real or invented? · The horned-helmet myth.