...ars sine scientia nihil est...

Blandede graver - blandede kulturer? En tolkning av gravskikk og etniske forhold i Nord-Norge gjennom jernalder og tidlig middelalder.
Mixed graves - mixed cultures? An interpretation of the burial traditions and ethnic factors in northern Norway through the Iron Age and the early Middle Ages.
Author:Bruun, Inga Malene

Norwegian-language masters thesis in archaeology. Focuses on the 'mixed-ethnicity' graves in Northern Norway, where you have both Saami and Norse artifacts.

http://www.ub.uit.no/munin/handle/10037/1038

It's the middle of summer in Australia, and I'm chasing information about frozen islands. It's madness when you think about it.

Arctic, the peer-reviewed journal of the Arctic Institute of North America, Études/Inuit/Studies and the ASTIS database make for research fun.

( Read more... )

Edit: See my attempted summary of what is being discussed in this post here.

I really like this webpage:
http://www.pvv.ntnu.no/~hmg/lrp/kostyme/viking/v-k-underkjole.html

And it includes an interesting pleated Birka smock interpretation I hadn't seen before.

Has anyone seen a copy of Handbook of Viking Women's Dress AD 700-1200 by D. Rushworth?
ISBN:1858183367
http://www.bokus.com/b/9781858183367.html
http://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk/jsp/id/Handbook_of_Viking_Womens_Dress_AD_700_1200/9781858183367

Is it any good? Does s/he make any interesting clothing-related arguments?

The Université de Strasbourg has digitised:

Worm, Ole (1643) Danicorum monumentorum libri sex. apud Joachimum Moltkenium. (Danish Monuments)

or, the copy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz

Worm, Ole (1643) Fasti Danici. apud Joachimum Moltkenium bibliopolam. (Danish Chronology)

Worm, Ole (1642) Regum Daniae series duplex et limitum inter Daniam & Sueciam descriptio. sumptibus Joachimi Moltkenii bibliopolae.

and Arild Hague has:
Worm, Ole Computus Runicus

Now, does anyone have the faintest idea where I could find more information about this monument?
http://imgbase-scd-ulp.u-strasbg.fr/displayimage.php?pos=-267290
It obviously has to date to before the 1640s, but it's so weird and cool!

And this http://imgbase-scd-ulp.u-strasbg.fr/displayimage.php?pos=-266591
is the picture of the runestone that has since been destroyed with a cool caftan-wearing-guy on it.

As best as I can find out (and I found it by accident), this one is in Haeggs Die Textilfunde aus dem Hafen von Haithabu, but I don't know how much of it is guesswork, and how much is extant. It has six trapezoidal panels for the skirt.

http://www.lodur-sippe.de/kleidung_real.htm
http://www.fruehes-handwerk.de/hallveig/?p=416 < with a pattern

Edit: The translation of the paragraph from Textilfunde p.50
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1. I'm surprised by the number of people who read my blog.
2. God I sound like a wanker when it comes to Viking-age textiles. People should hit me (but not too hard, since 2 year olds can put me in the emergency department at the moment.)

Oh, and person who I'm having trouble remembering if they have a livejournal or not, you were thinking of the Högom tunic. There's information about it in Thor Ewings' Viking Clothing. Hmm, that makes three things.

Fourth thing, lurextoga, there are sprang belts from Latvia, which aren't Viking but still cool. There is also the belt buckle from the Outer Hebrides, a 9th century belt buckle from Uig, and the fragment of the Heddeby gown that's interpreted to have felted-up wear marks from a belt. (see Shelagh Lewins' summary.)

Academic articles:
A Norse Viking-agegrave from Cruach Mhor, Islay
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/PSAS_2002/pdf/vol_120/120_151_160.pdf

A Viking burial from Kneep, Uig, Isle of Lewis
http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/PSAS_2002/pdf/vol_117/117_149_174.pdf

via garb_snark, a well-written article on Viking apron dresses. Frustratingly, the references aren't there where I'd want them (like from which part of the brooch bead strands are suspended from), but I vaguely recall that information being in Ewings' book.

As per my last post about wanting to be a weird little individual, I'm not so big on the fitted apron dress style myself, but the idea of doing a 50/50 fitted and pleated dress does have some appeal. (The theory being that the strange piece is from the back of a dress. Or, that it's a trouser leg.)

More links:
Finally realising why glass blobs in Viking graves are interpreted as linen smoothers: near-identical glass blobs were used until the 19th century.

The very pretty Gigha scales.

This is a really good lot of photos. Lots of Icelandic building reconstructions.

Muninn en Huginn, a re-enactment group in the Netherlands.

I don't agree with everything they made (like the embroidered belt pouch) but it does have a lot of photos and drawings all in the one place.

Highlights:
Furniature and a pewter version of the little Daugave amulet (the man in the tunic holding a ring).
Embroidery including a bunch of photos I hadn't seen in colour before.
Some more research on Lucets, that doesn't seem to be dependent on Sandys' research.

One of those things you often see at SCA events are people wearing chip-bead strands of amber. Let's face it, they're reasonably affordable for the average person playing the part, but are they really accurate?

All I've been able to find so far that looks suspiciously like chip-beads is a bracelet from a childs' grave in Lithuania. (Sorry, no picture, it's from the Exposition guide)

But, here are some worked bead images... ( Read more... )

Updated SIG Baltic pages. Mostly things I've posted here already.

Must work on tunic and overdress for William Marshall. Need one more strap for overdress, and to sew together and hem the tunic. Hmmm.

I found the link I was looking for: Viking Fashions in Art & Archeology
I should be trying to find a copy of Fentz, Mytte. "An 11th Century Linen shirt from Viborg Sonderso, Denmark." Jorgensen, Lise Bender & Elisabeth Munksgaard, (ed). Archaeological Textiles in Northern Europe: Report from the 4th NESAT Symposium. Copenhagen: 1992

( Quote from Viking Fashions in Art & Archaeology )

I wish when I'm looking up reasonably obscure things on google, that my livejournal wouldn't be one of the results. My livejournal is not very useful. It's probably not very useful for even random people looking for information let alone me.

And I've lost a website. It was generally about Norse womens' clothing, but it had an annotated bibliography with which books mentioned the "high class women didn't wear brooches" theory. I want that bibliography now. :(

( Rígsþula )

The Historical Worth of Rígsþula
Amory, Frederic (2001). "The Historical Worth of the Rígsþula".Alvíssmál 10. Freie Universität Berlin. ISBN 3861356120.

A very cool article about Egil Skallagrimsson and how he may have had Paget's Disease

Yay, yay, yay. I got a shiny, sterling silver ladies knife. It's so small, and cute, and has mother of pearl handles and is shiny.

Now I can go hunt warewolves. Or use it for SCA feasts. Both are unlikely since I found out it's from the 1920's and now I'm not sure if I should use it or keep it somewhere safe.

---

2,500 words on one essay done
3,000 1,500 1,000 on another done
one article on female norse travellers done
one article on female baltic viking clothing done
one article on viking food posioning done
one article on the eura costume

I think I have all the important stuff under control. Especially since it seems Cockatrice doesn't really want more than one article from me, I'm not so fussed in writing up the last two bits.

I've managed, somehow, to keep my hair in a 'Viking knot' hairstyle without it falling out all afternoon.
I was experimenting with a shiny hair-pin with cover arrangement, like that strange theory with how Finnish headwear might work, took it out because I wouldn't stop playing with it (it was new, so shiny and interesting for my hands... even in my chemistry lab... bad pearl), and... my hair is still staying in a knot.

Very odd.

Makes my hair only shoulder-length though, so to have it running down to my bustline, like on valkyrie pendants, I'd have to grow it past my bum.

Have to think of another essay topic for Vikings. The food one can be saved up for Cockatrice, but not for uni.
Had a good talk to the lecturer about how this whole writing an argumentative essay thing is very new to me, and I've just escaped from engineering where all I ever wrote were reports.

So, now have agreed to write an essay on something to do with settlement patterns of Vikings. I might do something on women's role in migration, and the distribution of tortoise brooches. In fact, I think I will because I can find plenty of evidence for brooches in the East (ie. Russia) and the strange-mixed-culture-jewellery graves in Staraja Ladoga, and there is a tantalising passage in Owen-Crocker about the lack of Viking brooches in the archaeological record, even though they logically must have been there... And finally the stupid statement by the BBC that "...something that is found wherever the Vikings settled is the oval brooch." That just strikes me as a little too generalised... were there brooches at Vinland sites? I want to know!

This webpage</i> however, is full of pretty Finnish pictures. And 1/2 of one page has been translated from Finnish in my quest to translate books.