Newly Discovered Viking Burial in Central Norway

Beads found at Hestnes, in Central Norway.
(Photo: Åge Hojem, NTNU University Museum)

This week, I read an article about an archaeological dig this fall by archaeologists from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology ("NTNU").  The dig was in Central Norway at Hestnes in Heim municipality.  The article appeared in partner.sciencenorway.no, and can be read here. 

The researchers were surprised to discover a grave, because no other graves have been found anywhere nearby.  Even more interestingly, the grave was nothing like any other Viking era grave finds in Central Norway.  It was a chamber grave, of which few if any have been found previously in this region.  Such graves are characteristic of more urbanized areas than Central Norway, such as Birka and Hedeby.  It was possible to tell the burial had been a chamber grave from the imprints left were the supporting poles had been, the remains of the chamber walls, and the size of the "chamber" where the remains lay.  The way chamber graves are built, the "chamber" is dug into the earth, and a lid is placed upon the top after the deceased person and her grave goods have been deposited.  This particular grave has been dated to between 850 - 950 CE.  

The article from partner.sciencenorway.no does not mention any textile remains, but there were a number of jewelry finds, including a pair of double-shelled tortoise brooches, a tri-lobed brooch, and a large number of tiny beads.  A photograph of the tiny beads that appeared in the article is reproduced with this post.  339 of the tiny beads had been located as of when the article was written, each of which is between 1-2 mm in size.  Beads in that size range are typically called "seed beads" today, and they have been, and still are, used for embroidery on clothing.  The article observes that, according to one of the NTNU researchers, a similar find at Hedeby has been interpreted as containing the remains of beaded embroidery.  

The tortoise brooches, which at other sites have been found to contain bits of textile from the dead woman's clothing, here contained fragments of bone and teeth, which have not yet been analyzed.  A spindle whorl was also found in the grave.  

It was suggested by one of the researchers that the woman had come to Hestnes from the south (e.g. closer to Hedeby or nearby areas) and had been buried with jewelry characteristic of her home region.  

I will be looking out for analyses of this grave in the hope that some textiles, or other materials giving a clue as to her costume, are eventually located.  I will also look out for articles on other Viking women's graves containing large numbers of seed beads.  Perhaps we are looking at the first hints of finds showing another distinctive fashion among some Viking women.

Brooch for Sale!

Last weekend, I drove to Michigan with my husband to attend a science fiction convention. While I was at the convention, while digging around in the tote bag I took along to hold personal items I wanted to be able to grab quickly, I found a surprising item. This item:

A very familiar looking brooch (size is 2 3/4" by 1 1/4", or 7.1 cm by 3.3 cm)

This brooch is, as best I can tell, a reproduction of one of the brooches found at Norre Sandergard Vest; a 7th-8th century Danish grave site (though I keep forgetting that the site is Danish, for some reason, so I keep referring to the project I've based upon the find as "Norwegian"). It's sold by Raymond's Quiet Press, a site that sells inexpensive copies of bronze items but doesn't try to provide provenance information for the copies. Regular readers might recall this style of brooch as the brooch which formed the foundation of my "happy frob". 

The problem is that this is not the same brooch I added beads to in order to make my "happy frob".  It's another copy, also from Raymond's Quiet Press, which I'd apparently I'd forgotten I already had when I ordered the brooch for the happy frob.  In other words, I now have two copies of this brooch; the one in my "happy frob", and this spare.  That was the surprise.

Since I don't need a second copy of this brooch (and there is another brooch I'd like to buy from Raymond for a different costume project), I've decided to make it available to an interested reader of my blog.

Raymond's Quiet Press sells this brooch now for $21.95 USD (it's item no. Z-15) plus $7.00 USD shipping within the continental U.S.  But the price used to be lower, and I probably bought the brooch at the lower price, though I can't recall when I might have done so.  However, I'm not looking to make a profit on the spare brooch; I just want to get a bit of my money back, and give it a good home.

What I propose:  I will sell this brooch to the first interested person who contacts me, either via commenting on this post or otherwise, for $10.00 USD plus whatever the shipping costs are to that person's home (and I'm willing to ship anywhere in the world once I figure out how).  I will get an estimate of shipping costs after interest is expressed and before anyone commits.  I'd prefer payment by Paypal or Paymate, but something else can be worked out if necessary.

Shipping outside the U.S. farther than to Canada or Mexico probably will cost more than $10.00, so you'll have to decide whether the total cost still makes buying my brooch worth your while.  E-mail me at cathy at thyrsus dot com if you are interested.

EDIT:  (5/3/2015)  Someone has taken me up on my offer; I am sending the brooch out to her tomorrow.  

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.

More Byzantine Jewelry

Just the other day, I learned about another book on Byzantine jewelry:

Spier, Jeffrey. Byzantium and the West: Jewelry in the First Millennium. Paul Holberton Publishing; 1st edition (November 2012).

This book is an exhibition catalog from a private, high-end gallery in New York City, Les Enluminures, which is owned by Sandra Hindman.  Ms. Hindman wrote the preface to the book. Les Enluminures also displays images of the artifacts it displays on line at its website (see the link in the last sentence) and by video. Two videos narrated by Hindman which display jewelry from the exhibition may be viewed above and below.   The book itself, though expensive in hard copy, can be viewed or downloaded for free from the Les Enluminures website.  (In addition, author Jeffrey Spier has downloaded a copy of the book onto Academia.edu; if you are a member of that site, you can read or download a copy of it there.  If you seek out Spier's works on Academia.edu, do not miss his articles on later-period medieval jewelry.)

Byzantium and the West lacks the kind of in-depth scholarship found in the British Museum's publication Intelligible Beauty. However, it makes up for that fact by containing plenty of large, clear, color photographs of the jewels discussed and by clear text that gives a lay reader a better idea of the context in which the jewels were created and worn.  It is especially good at reminding the reader that "Byzantine" fashion influenced all of Europe and that it can be difficult to distinguish "Byzantine" fashion from what wealthy people living west of the lands held by that Empire were wearing during the same time periods.

The Byzantium exhibition catalogued in Byzantium and the West features pieces from approximately the 3rd through the 7th centuries C.E., with the primary emphasis placed on the 6th and 7th centuries.  With one exception (an approximately 1.5 inch or 39 mm circular gold brooch set with glass stones and covered in filigree), none of those pieces are brooches; most of them are rings.   Moreover, Spier's writings on later-period jewels concentrate on rings and amulets, not on brooches.  Perhaps that's not surprising.  For all I know, most of the brooches that would be relevant to the wealthy Middle Byzantine peasant costume I hope to recreate are in museums in Turkey that don't publish archaeological reports in English and that I will never get to visit in person.  At any rate, I will have to continue looking for information on brooches as I work on my himation.

Viking Brooch Tutorial

I haven't managed a lot of costume-related activity lately due to my search for a new job (and because I'm doing part-time work in the meantime).  However, I did learn about this interesting page on the Archaeology in Europe site which gives a nice, step-by-step, illustrated tutorial as to the process by which the Viking tortoise brooches were made.  I commend this beautifully done tutorial to your attention, while I attempt to get an opportunity to do some serious working, thinking, and writing, about costume.

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.

Intelligible Beauty

The copy of Intelligible Beauty:  Recent Research Into Byzantine Jewelry that I ordered came today.  

As advertised, it contains a number of essays on issues relating to Byzantine jewelry.  Happily, most of the essays are illustrated with a wealth of excellent, color photographs.  The articles appear mostly to be split between Early Byzantine and Middle Byzantine topics, though there is at least one that discusses Late Byzantine artifacts.

I have not had time to sit down and concentrate on reading any of the essays as yet, but I have paged through the book several times, looking for pictures of brooches.  There are surprisingly few.  There are dozens of pictures of rings (mostly gold ones, some with jewels), earrings (mostly gold, with enamel and sometimes pearls), bracelets (mostly gold, with elaborate openwork), buckles and belt ends (some gold, but others of humble copper alloys), and temple rings (a form of ornament favored by the Rus). But pictures of brooches are rare.  I have only seen pictures of a few gold brooches in the book.  On the other hand, all of the brooches are circular, with a central gem or boss and ornaments spaced symmetrically around the edge--like the image of Christ's ancestor by the Winchester scribe, or the brooch from Raymond's Quiet Press. 

I am not sorry that I purchased the book, even though it may not be as useful as I had hoped in determining suitable brooch designs for a wealthy Middle Byzantine era peasant.  It contains many lovely photographs of interesting jewels that I had never seen before, and discusses jewelry trends from different areas of the Empire:, such as Sicily, Africa, the lands of the Rus.  And as I read, I probably will discover at least a few topics interesting enough to discuss in this blog.

Byzantine Brooch Designs

Although I've been too preoccupied with domestic concerns to do a lot of sewing lately, I have been continuing to track down information relevant to the various projects I've started when I can. 

One of those projects is my Middle Byzantine outfit.  I have completed the headdress, shift, and cloak.  Right now, I'm trying to find out what types of brooches a respectable lower class woman might wear to fasten her cloak.  I didn't find much useful information about this subject on the Internet.  This page was the most useful page I found; it shows two different examples of bronze enameled brooches which look as though they might have been purchased and worn by ordinary people.  However, without more information about where these brooches were found it's hard to say how appropriate it might be to use brooches of these shapes and appearance in my lower-class costume. 

Birka Traders used to sell a Byzantine brooch of the correct time period that is based on a Danish find.  It might have served, (even though it was smaller than I expected) but I wasn't prepared to pay $60 AUS for a brooch I would only be wearing with one costume.  It was a very attractive piece, though; you can see it here.

Qui Fuit Her

My other Internet searches for such items unearthed designs in gold and precious stones--clearly not suitable.  In the hopes of finding a broader variety of jewelry finds to examine, I recently purchased a copy of the museum catalog from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's exhibition of Middle Byzantine art, called "The Glory of Byzantium--A.D. 843-1261." 

The Glory of Byzantium" includes a lot of examples of jewelry, icons, ivory carvings, miniature paintings, mosaics and textiles.  Unfortunately for me, most of the jewelry items are not only gold, but they are either earrings or temple rings--nothing to fasten a cloak with!  I have found a painting with an interesting image.  That painting is one of three "Ancestors of Christ" found in a convent in Spain (the Convent of Santa Maria, in Sigena), and attributed to the same English artist who did the Winchester Psalter, and it is called "Her" (because the inscription below it reads "Qui Fuit Her").  A scan of the image appears to the left of this paragraph.  As you can see, it shows a figure wearing a cloak, clasped at the neck with a small brooch.  That brooch features a central pearl, with a ring of red enamel around it, and eight other pearls of equal size around the edge. (See image on the left, below.)

Norman brooch from RQP

"Her", portion showing brooch

This brooch looks a bit like a bronze brooch with a modest amount of enameling that is sold by Raymond's Quiet Press as a "Norman" brooch (see right; thanks to Raymond for permission to use the photograph here).  Unfortunately, the RQP web site doesn't say what the provenance of this design might be, and I have not  seen an artifact that resembles it.

If the Norman attribution of the RQP design is correct, it is at least contemporaneous with the Middle Byzantine period.   I probably will purchase the RQP brooch, but in the meantime I am still hoping to obtain more information about Byzantine brooches to see whether I can confirm the appropriateness of the design with a costume that would have been worn in the Near East of the period.  To that end, I have succeeded in locating a copy of "Intelligible Beauty" (a recent work of essays about Byzantine jewelry) in my price range, and have ordered it.  Perhaps that that work will provide me with additional examples of typical period designs that were used by people other than society's elite.

Minor Mystery 2

While re-reading Thor Ewing's Viking Clothing last night, I came across a passage discussing a couple of the Birka grave finds that I had never focused upon before.  The passage, which I will quote here, discusses large penannular brooches found in a few of the female graves--specifically, graves that contained tortoise brooches.

Larger [i.e., than 2.5 cm or 1 inch in diameter, such as those found at the neck in certain graves] penannular brooches can be worn on the side of the body and always below the height of the twin brooches. Perhaps the most typical position was at the elbow on the outside of the arm, in such a way that the cloak would have constricted movement in the upper part of both arms; this is most clearly the case in [graves] Bj.605A and Bj.860A.  It seems that the larger form of penannular brooch might not have been worn without tortoise brooches; if the brooched dress is worn only by married women, then perhaps the typically male penannular brooch might have a special value in women's costume, either symbolic or sentimental, representing the woman's husband. In Bj. 981A a penannular brooch is apparently used in the place of one of the oval brooches. (p. 62) (emphasis mine).

 I cannot imagine why anyone would wear a largish penannular brooch on the *outside* of the elbow, since there are warm ways to wear any kind of cloak that do not constrict the arms that much, but I can think of several reasons why a gravefind might contain a brooch at that location:

1. The brooch was used to fasten a blanket or shroud around the body, and was not part of the dress worn while the woman was living. 
2. The brooch fastened a rectangular cloak at the shoulder, and slipped down to land near the elbow while the body decayed.  This might not be very likely if the woman was buried lying on her back, but there were Viking burials of people sitting up; in that case, such an outcome might be very likely.  This possibility strikes me as the most interesting, since it suggests that women--or at least some women--wore rectangular cloaks on occasion instead of shawls or coatlike garments.  Ewing's speculation that such brooches were worn by married women as "symbolic" of their husbands is interesting.  Perhaps rectangular cloaks were worn by widows who were, in effect, the head of house? 
3. The brooch was not part of the woman's clothing at all, but was simply laid in the grave at her side, for reasons either "symbolic or sentimental", as Ewing remarks.  It would be useful to know whether textile remains were found around the pins of the penannular brooches in Bj. 605A and 860A; if that was the case, it would tend to rule out this possibility.

The grave find where a penannular brooch was found as an apparent substitute for a tortoise brooch strikes me as a reminder that even the wealthy folk of Viking times were not as wealthy in possessions as most of us today.   Ewing also takes note of this.  He mentions a wealthy Viking age burial of a woman in Orkney whose grave included paired tortoise brooches "and a very fine Celtic cross, among other jewelry."  But her spine showed that "she had spent her life carrying heavy loads on her back," something wealthy women do not typically do today.  (p. 43)  It seems to me important to keep this type of fact in mind when we attempt to recreate any aspect of life in the Viking age.

Article on Eleventh Century Brooches

During a somewhat random search, I turned up the following article about 11th century cloisonné brooches found in England: Buckton, David. "Late 10th- and 11th-century cloisonné enamel brooches," Medieval Archaeology, vol. 30, pp. 8-18 (1986). A copy is available for free download here.

The brooches Mr. Buckton discusses and describes in the article are all very similar. They are small round copper brooches, each about 1 inch (25 mm) in diameter, and they are decorated with enamel in a number of variations of quadrefoil and cross designs, done primarily in dark blue, light blue, light green, and white translucent enamels.   One of Mr. Buckton's sketches, showing several of the designs found on the English brooches is reproduced to the right of this paragraph. His conclusion about the origin of the designs and the design style in particular caught my attention:

The upsurge of enamelling represented by the English finds, unless it is to be regarded as an isolated phenomenon, has to be seen in the context of what was happening elsewhere. There was a hiatus in enamel production in continental Europe between the 860s and the 960s or 970s, and the subsequent renascence in the reigns of the first two German emperors, with their dynastic ties to Byzantium (and, incidentally, to England), saw the production of a great quantity of high-quality cloisonné enamel, under strong Byzantine influence and, probably, using Byzantine raw materials--imported gold solidi and glass mosaic tesserae. (Page 15) (emphasis mine).

Mr. Buckton goes on to suggest that not only were the material of the brooches suggestive of Byzantine influence--the motifs on the brooches were as well:

While rosette and other flower patterns are notoriously difficult to pin down, the double step motif found in the cloisonné enamel [brooch] from Dunstable and, in a less precise form, in the centrepiece of the brooch from Kent and in the fragment from Billingsgate* is practically a Leitmotiv of Middle Byzantine or Ottonian cloisonné enamel, starting with the reliquary of the True Cross made in Constantinople, probably between 973 and 982, the cathedral treasury at Essen.** Even though the motif had a longer tradition in other media, its appearance in English cloisonné enamel is difficult to relate to anything other than Byzantine or Ottonian enamel of the last third of the 10th century and the first half of the 11th. (Page 16) (emphasis mine)

These comments caught my eye because they suggest that similar brooches, bearing similar enameled motifs, were also available in Byzantium during the late 10th-early 11th centuries. Granted, that fact would not answer my question about the most appropriate brooch style to wear with my mantion (since the English enameled brooches are all too small to hold a heavy cloak). But it does suggest possible design motifs for such a brooch. And it makes me more interested in obtaining a copy of Intelligible Beauty and see whether it references similar brooch motifs.

EDIT (Feb. 5, 2012):  I have learned from a reader that the Archaeology Data Service link above to the article no longer works.  If I can find a new link to the article that is free I will replace the link above.

EDIT:  It is still possible to get the article online from Archaeology Data Service. Follow this link; it will take you to a page where they will ask you to accept their terms of use. After you do, it will take you to their index page, where you can select the volume of Medieval Archaeology from 1-50 that you want, and ultimately the article.


* The Dunstable and Billingsgate designs referred to in this quote are, I believe, numbers 13 and 14 in the illustration that appears with this post.

** I think this is a picture of the True Cross reliquary to which Buckton referred. Unfortunately, the photograph does not show the enameled panel near the foot of the cross (which has a similar color scheme to the one Buckton describes in the English brooch finds) very well.