New Source of Information About Early Textiles

This week, courtesy of Katrin Kania, I learned about a free, searchable database of scholarly publications.  It's called Digital Vetenskapliga Arkivet, or DiVA, and it allows one to search for books, dissertations, and articles published by scholars at nearly 50 different universities in Scandinavia. (The above link goes to the English language version of the home page; for the Swedish version of the home page, go here.) Best of all, DiVA is absolutely free to use.  You can go directly to the DiVA search page from here. 

Naturally, DiVA includes dissertations, articles, and other works that are not related to textiles, clothing or the Vendel and Viking Ages.  In addition, many of the works findable via DiVA are not in English.  However, I still found an excellent work relevant to textile-related Vendel period studies with my first search:  

Malmius, Anita.  Burial textiles: Textile bits and pieces in central Sweden, AD 500–800 Doctoral Dissertation, Stockholm University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies (2020 (English))

I am really looking forward to reading this volume of Anita Malmius's work, which on first glance appears very comprehensive.  I look forward to further searching on DiVA for other useful papers when I have more time (and brain energy!) to invest.  In the meantime, by means of this post I hope to make DiVA available to more costume researchers, and perhaps to people with different reenactment-related interests as well.

A Happy Frob

The brooch and beads, on the white wool for the shift.

I'd meant to spend January making the "foundation" garment for my early Norwegian and völva outfits--a long, white wool tunic.  January started busy, but I figured that I'd have plenty of time to start the project on Martin Luther King Day weekend (i.e., the weekend of the third Monday of January, which this year was January 17-19; MLK Day is a national holiday in the U.S.).

Unfortunately, I got sick on the evening of January 17, with chills and fever, and my improvement was very slow.  Part of the problem for my doctor was figuring out what illness I had.  Was it influenza, or strep throat, or both?   I ended up taking antiviral medication until the strep throat culture test came back, finally, on Friday.  It was positive, so now I'm finally taking antibiotics. The net result is that I've gotten very little done over the past week, and am rapidly running out of January time in which to start (let alone complete) the tunic.

So I'll work on the tunic later (possibly for the Historical Sew Monthly challenge "Re-Do"). Yesterday, I cheered myself up by finishing a small frob that is to be part of the Norwegian costume. As the photograph shows, this consists of a large brooch that is a reproduction of one of the Bornholm grave brooches, with a swag of beads to hang from it.  It was surprisingly hard to figure out how to determine the length of the swag so it would lie flat, and probably I'll have to redo it at some point.  However, I managed to obtain a good combination of generic glass pony beads and pre-Viking age reproduction beads appropriate to the 8th century CE (the period of my planned costume), and just looking at the result makes me happy.

Note:  The reconstruction drawings show the original brooch as carrying five strands of beads, but that struck me as too cumbersome to wear (although, in retrospect, it might have been easier to string).  I still have plenty of pony beads left, so I might reconfigure the set to have five strands when I find an appropriate bead spreader.

Washing the White Wool

Today, I washed the white wool fabric that I am going to use for my Vendel period shift.  I washed it in the washing machine, on cold water on the "delicate" (i.e., slowest agitator setting).  Now it is hanging as best as I could manage in my basement to dry.

The fabric feels nearly dry to the touch already, and does not seem to have shrunk noticeably in size. Unfortunately, due to the geography and condition of my basement, I cannot stretch the fabric out fully to dry, so I will probably have to iron it when it is nearly dry to smooth it out for cutting my shift.  But so far the experiment seems to have been a success.  It would be great if the washing also has the effect of making the fabric less itchy against my skin; I'll find that out as I progress.

EDIT:  (3/3/2014)  After I wrote my post, I got a brainstorm.  I set up the ironing board and spread the fabric out carefully across it.  As a result, it is now quite dry and also almost as smooth as if I *had* ironed it.   I haven't made any measurements, but I don't detect any significant shrinkage and although the fabric feels a bit thicker, the weave is still visible. Success!  Next, I have to find a few moments to cut my pattern pieces out; then, I'll be able to work on the stitching whenever I have a spare moment.

The Vendel Brooch

After carefully reviewing the information I've obtained about disc-on-bow brooches available from vendors, I've decided that I can't afford to pay $40 for the brooch AND nearly $40 for shipping (the best offer I've found to date).

So my new plan is to use the photographs I've found on line to make a brooch for myself from Sculpey. It's possible to buy Sculpey in metallic colors, such as bronze, and that's what I plan to do. I'll buy enough bronze Sculpey to make a suitably-sized brooch (I already have glaze to paint it with to make the piece look more metallic), and a long stickpin to embed in the back for a fastener. Perhaps I can find small glass chips in a craft store to add to the brooch in place of enamel or garnet inlay.

I also need to determine whether the overdress during the Vendel period was likely to be a peplos or some form of strapped apron-dress during the Vendel period. I have an e-mail contact I need to write to on this issue.

Meanwhile, here's a website with gorgeous, detailed color pictures of brooches and other jewelry, ranging from the La Tene culture to the Viking period, many of which are Migration Period. There's a few disc-on-bow brooches, too, of which I had not previously found pictures. Enjoy!

EDIT: I misremembered. The site I was thinking about is charging 29 Euros for the brooch, and 35 Euros to ship it to the USA! At current exchange rates that works out to a total cost of over $92 USD. While I sympathize with the difficulties in dealing with overseas, international shipping, that's no deal for me.

Pre-Viking Bling Question

Today, I stumbled upon a PDF which contains reproductions of good quality photographs of a number of different specimens of Viking age jewelry, along with bibliographical information as to the books in which the photographs were found. Thinking that this would be useful information, I made a copy of the PDF to read later.

In reading it, I notice that the author of the PDF has also included his own summary of what is known about Viking jewelry. Among those I noticed this intriguing statement:

An odd characteristic of Viking jewelry was its nearly total lack of set stones. Gem-setting had been an extremely popular form of ornament in pre-Viking Scandinavia, during which times it was carried out with great skill. It apparently had stopped appealing to Viking tastes in jewelry, and was abandoned.

The author of the PDF attributes this statement to James Graham-Campbell's book The Vikings (1980 ed.), without a specific page reference. I am wondering what archaeological finds support Graham-Campbell's statement. To be sure, the Vendel (i.e., pre-Viking age Scandinavian) brooches from Gotland of which I've seen pictures are more colorful than the gold, silver, or bronze Viking era jewelry I've seen, but that's primarily due to enameling (though there are a number of such brooches with garnet inlay). Other than those pieces, however, I am unaware of any Vendel period jewelry that uses gemstones at all, much less "set" gemstones.  Moreover, I have a copy of Graham-Campbell's book, but I can't find a reference in it to use of gemstones in the Vendel period.

If any of my readers are aware of examples of Vendel period gemstone jewelry, or can pin down a page reference in the Graham-Campbell book, please comment! 

Article on Early Tortoise Brooches

Every once in a while, I cruise through Aardvarchaeology, Martin Rundkvist's blog, to see whether he's written lately about a Viking-era discovery. 

Sometimes I get lucky.  Today, I found a post of his from several months ago, giving a pointer to a long research article he had written, discussing and analyzing tortoise brooches from the Vendel period, i.e., the two hundred or so years immediately before the Viking age.  You can download the article from here and read his blog post talking about the article here.

I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, but I'm looking forward to doing so.  Just knowing that there is a significant body of pre-Viking-age tortoise brooches is interesting, as it undoubtedly has information relevant to female costume just before the Viking age.