Mystery Solved?

Many of us who are interested in Viking era Scandinavian costume have heard of, or seen pictures of, the amazing Mammen find; remains of an embroidered garment that may have been a tunic; the padded cloth cuffs, adorned with metal brocaded tablet weaving; and other signs that a wealthy and powerful person/s had been buried there. 

What I hadn't known before now is that bones from this grave were originally discovered, but have been missing for over 100 years.  The bones from this find, also known to archaeologists as the Bjerringhøj find (the actual find location, which is near the village of Mammen) had gotten stored with bones from a find at Slotsbjergby, in Zeeland. 

Now, the bones have been rediscovered in the storage area of the National Museum of Denmark, where they apparently had been stored with another find.  Charlotte Rimstad, along with other researchers, wrote a report describing how the bones were lost and found.  That article was published online by Cambridge University Press, accessible free of charge:  it can be read and downloaded here.   In short, the Rimstad article notes that the newly-re-discovered bones were re-connected to the Bjerringhøj finds by analyzing the textiles that remained on them, and those textiles appear to be the remains of a set of ornamented pants cuffs similar to the ornamented wristlets associated with the "Mammen" find!

This story of mislaid bones is relevant to this blog because being able to study the bones, and not just the textiles that had been found with them, will provide (indeed, have already provided!) a greater amount of knowledge about the textiles than the textiles alone could provide.  

An Interesting Viking Fabric

Fabric found against tortoise brooches from Bryndum
Church Grave No. 12  (Photo: Sydevestjyske Museer website).  

Happy (only slightly belated) New Year!

Yesterday, I found a news article from late 2016 from the Sydevestjyske Museer website.  The article, written in Danish by museum curator Michael Alrø Jensen, was about a new archaeological dig in Denmark; it can be read in Danish here.

The dig is of a Viking age burial ground, located at Bryndum Church.  Fourteen graves were found, and although only a third of them contained artifacts, some of those artifacts were very interesting.

In particular, Grave 12 contained a pair of tortoise brooches of a new type, along with an unspecified number of beads, and the remains of a knife that appeared to have been hung from one of the brooches.  The brooches preserved several layers of fabric, a close-up photograph of which appears in the article.   Interestingly, the caption in the article refers to the stripes shown above as "diagonal stripes" ("diagonalstriber" in the original).  I'm not quite sure what is meant, as the stripes above do not appear diagonal to me (though the fabric does have the diagonal ribs of 2/1 twill).  However, this fabric fits in well with the few other Viking age clothing textiles known to have involved a pattern, in that the stripes are small and modest, and small, fine patterns rather than bold large ones seem to have been characteristic of Viking age clothing.

The article closes with a promise of "exciting studies", and I agree.  I will be on the lookout for publication of a scholarly report about these fascinating finds.  The new brooch type is very interesting, and the layered textile clump measures roughly 5 cm by 10 cm (a substantial size for a Viking textile specimen).  Just thinking about what information can be gleaned from these items is thrilling to me.  If your costume interests involve the Viking age, put Bryndum Church on your radar; you'll want to read any publication of these finds too.

EDIT:  Corrected caption on photograph above, consistent with Anna-Carin's comment, since she reads Danish much better than I do.  She says that the textile was found on the front of the brooches, not the reverse as I'd originally reported in the caption.