11/18/2025
On a summer day in 1370 BC, a young woman was laid to rest inside an oak coffin beneath the StorehĆøj tomb near Egtved, west of Vejle in Denmark. She would remain there, untouched and forgotten, for nearly 3,500 years. When her grave was finally uncovered in 1921, the world met her again as the Egtved Girl, one of the most remarkable Bronze Age discoveries ever made.
Though her body had mostly decayed, parts of her still survived: her hair, teeth, nails, fragments of skin and even traces of brain tissue. From these remains, scientists determined she was between sixteen and eighteen years old when she died. She was dressed in a short woolen tunic and a knee-length corded skirt, a garment unique to the Northern European Bronze Age. Over her stomach lay a large bronze belt plate decorated with spirals, a symbol likely connected to the sun, the central force of Bronze Age religion. Attached to her belt was a horn comb, while she also wore a bronze arm ring and a delicate earring.
Beside her head archaeologists found a small bark box containing a bronze awl and the remains of a hair net. At her feet stood a birch-bark bucket that once held a type of beer brewed from honey and berries. In the grave were also the cremated bones of a child about five or six years old, perhaps part of a ritual offering, with additional bones placed inside the bark box.
Her corded skirt, only 38 centimeters long, is one of the most iconic garments of prehistory. Similar skirts appear on bronze figurines from GrevensvƦnge in Zealand, depicting women performing ritual dances. It is possible that the Egtved Girl took part in such ceremonies, linked to the sun and the cycles of nature.
Today, the Egtved Girl stands as one of the clearest and most evocative windows into life, belief and ritual in the European Bronze Age ā a young woman whose story continues to illuminate a world long vanished.