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Hi, I am a new member on this forum, this is my first post. I did a search and couldn't find anything on this subject, so I decided to post.
My question is-- who built the Trojaborgs which are scattered throughout the north coast of Europe? Why did they build them? And when were they built?
trojaborg.jpg
Any explanation for the above questions, I think, must be able to explain why the pattern corresponds exactly with the Classical Labyrinths found on Minoan coins and other Greek artifacts.
Interestingly, it also corresponds with an Etruscan pitcher, the pitcher of Tragliatella, which has been dated to the 6th or 7th century BC... and this vase is where it gets interesting. Along with the "Troy Town" inscribed upon it, there is a scene showing a woman presenting a man with some kind of orb, which has been interpreted as the "Judgement of Paris" scene. The rest of the pitcher shows a scene with seven armed men "dancing", and two men on horseback riding out of the Troy town.
etruscanpitcherlabyrinth.jpg
We also know from Roman sources that among the aristocrats there was a circle-dance done in labyrinths on horseback. Virgil and Homer also mention a connection between a dance and the Labyrinth, "Virgil adds another motif derived from Homer and elaborated-- a labyrinthine dance in which the dancers reenact the movement toward and away from the center. This is the meaning of Homer's allusion to Ariadne's dancing floor and the dance depicted at the center of Achilles' shield in Illiad 18, a dance that Virgil appears to imitate and elaborate in the cavalry maneuvers of the "Lusus Troiae" -- performed by Iulus and other youthful Trojans in Aeneid 5" (from a book called Heroic Mockery by George de Forest Lord) this labyrinth-dance ritual was re-instated by Julius Caesar himself at Rome and was noted by many Roman historians, occurring in labyrinths "out in the fields" just as can be found in the North of Europe.
Interestingly enough, some memory of this dance has still been preserved in the north, here are some good ol' Danes, performing the ancient Lusus Troiae on foot...
Final point: I think a northern origin is the best explanation for this custom, for a number of reasons. First, is the sheer number of existing Trojaborgs in the European north, compared to the south. This handy site, the Labyrinth locator, https://labyrinthlocator.com/... we can see the greatest concentration exists around the Baltic Sea, and interestingly many exist on an island in the White Sea. A few exist in Britain as well, and others farther inland in Germany... and as Ernst Krause said in his paper on this subject, "does it not sound monstrous that one should want to derive an appellation which occurs a hundred times in the North, from Italy where it could with great difficulty be documented but once? Will a land in which one lion is met escaped from a circus be regarded as the home of the lion, or not rather that in which great numbers of the animal occur?"
Another reason is that I think the symbolism of the Labyrinth & the corresponding circle dances is, in the most abstract way possible, a representation of the Sun's course in the northern latitudes. It goes in ever smaller arcs, until reaching the "underworld", and finally returning outwards in ever larger arcs across the sky, only to repeat the course again and again forever.
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