Audio transcript:

Oh, hello. I wasn’t expecting any visitors. But please, come closer! Do excuse the chaos… I am currently packing the objects from the collection of Nordic antiquities into crates, to safeguard them from hostile hands. 
It’s such a shame! Ten years of work on the collection. Ten years of meticulous effort, but also frustration and trouble.  
I should have seen it coming. From the moment we began to excavate the first antiquities, they all appeared, spade in hand, eyes glinting with greed. The farmers, the peat cutters – each thought to profit from what could be recovered from the soil. 
Even before my excavations, valuable antiquities could be found in the bog. None of those finds ever benefited science. Sold to traders and goldsmiths in the nearest cities, they probably vanished into the melting pot, undocumented and unrecoverable. Oh, they could hardly dig and sell these treasures fast enough! 
Treasures … as if they cared about the real value of these antiquities! For them, only the material mattered. Bronze, silver, gold … as if the value of these finds resided in that. No, I do not believe so. I believe the value lies in the stories they can tell.  
What might have happened to all these objects in the past? Who did they belong to and how did they find their way into the bog? I am already following the traces to some of these mysteries – yet it is never easy to coax the history out of antiquities. One must observe closely and consider every detail.  
Oh, how eagerly I wish to continue this work. However, now that war has come, the only option that remains is to save what I can. I hope my efforts have not been in vain and that soon I may resume my work. May the one who lifts the lid off these crates comprehend what is hidden therein. Not riches, but stories and memories. 

Helvig Conrad Christian Engelhardt 

Born 20 September 1825 in Copenhagen; died 11 November 1881 in Copenhagen 

Helvig Conrad Christian Engelhardt was a Danish teacher and archaeologist. He studied languages and art history and was a pupil of the Copenhagen archaeologist C. J. Thomsen. From 1852, he taught at the Gelehrtenschule in Flensburg, where he curated a collection of antiquities. His excavations of important bog sites made him one of the pioneers of archaeology. 

Photograph, c. 1875, by Lauritz Olsen 
© The Royal Library, Copenhagen 

Engelhardts Desk 

Conrad Engelhardt worked at this desk for many years. Here he reviewed excavation notes, catalogued his collection, and wrote letters to the ministry, on whose funding his work depended. At the same time, he prepared his publications on the Danish bog sites. This piece of furniture shows that archaeological knowledge originated not only in the field but also at the desk. 

Lender: Nydam Society 

Well Protected 

This hat covered Engelhardt’s clever head. It accompanied him on his journeys between school, museum and the excavations in the Danish bogs. 
Lender: Nydam Society