En stendysse på Brandsø 1842

Dankvart Dreyer made this pencil sketch of a stone dolmen on the island of Brandsø some time in the 1800s. Dreyer was part of a generation of artists who turned to the Danish landscape for uniquely national subject matter. Here, he depicts a prehistoric monument – a tomb made of large stones. These dolmens captured the imagination of 19th-century Danes. Romantic nationalists saw them as evidence of a heroic past, linking the present population to the ancient inhabitants of the land. Artists like Dreyer found ways of ennobling the Danish landscape by finding in it traces of a distant, mythologized past. The image also comments on the contemporary institutions interested in preserving historical sites. In Dreyer’s time, museums and antiquarian societies were being established to study and protect these monuments for future generations. To understand this image better, look into the history of Danish nationalism and the development of archaeology as a discipline. Considering the social context will reveal how an image of a few stones carries so much cultural weight.