Perhaps the finest and most ingenious expression of Bronze Age metal-casting skills is to be seen in the great bronze horns and trumpets of Late Bronze Age Scandinavia and Ireland.
The Irish instruments are elegant, thin-walled horns resembling and probably inspired by the horns of the wild ox, the aurochs.
In Denmark and southern Sweden the form was extended into a sinuous curve up to 2.25m long, with a large decorative disc around the wider end and small jingles suspended from the back of the disc and next to the mouth-piece.
These so-called 'lurs' were buried deliberately, most often in pairs, tuned and therefore almost certainly played together.
In the Irish examples large mouth-pieces make conventional playing difficult. Some may instead have acted as voice-changers to be part-blown, part-sung into, perhaps like the Australian didjeridu.
The Scandinavian trumpet mouth-pieces are closer to the modern trombone in shape and size.
