Page 243 - Four Thousand Years Ago by Geoffrey Bibby

i L10-1440 B.C.J
of one of the nobles or chosen to wait upon the king himself. But
it was when the ships came in that the largest numbers of youths
left the village.
Ships were not infrequent. Perhaps three or four times a year

a galley would enter the fjord and beach below the boathouses.
Most often they were local ships, belonging to masters up and
down the coast and sailing on the shorter routes, up the Baltic or
down to Denmark or north along the Norwegian shores. But oc­
casionally they were foreign craft, captained by dark-haired
thickset masters of outlandish speech, from England or Spain or

even farther afield. Their crews were a mixed bunch, speaking
half the languages of Europe and even the Berber tongue of north
Africa. But always there would be many of their own people,
and more often than not there would be joyful reunions, when

men who had left the village several years before reappeared, to
unpack their sea chests and display the wealth they had gath­
ered by astute bargaining in foreign marts.
While the ship lay on the beach, all work by sea and land
stopped, and the whole population of the valley crowded to the

market on the open land between the village and the shore.
There were wonderful things to be seen there, rolls of cloth in
colors which the local dyes could never produce, trinkets of jet

and mother-of-pearl, blocks of flint of just the right size for axes
or daggers, and, over and above all else, ingots and finished ob­
jects of bronze, or even of gold or tin. And the merchant cap­
tains knew what they wanted for their wares. Provisions for the
ship, corn and dried meat and beer, they had to have, but that

they paid little for. Furs paid better, and for a good foxskin you
could even get a bronze pin. But for bronze in quantity you had
to pay amber in quantity, and that everyone knew. Shrewd
bargaining went on in the market and behind closed doors in

the manor house for the lumps of raw amber which had been
Illi.
III gleaned from the beaches after every winter storm, or for the
I ropes of amber beads which were the family heirlooms of the
Illi III women, but which now were to be sold for die modern jewelry

■
I of the new metal.
Illi
When the ship put out again, there was little amber left in
the village, but much display of new bronze weapons and tools