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.

New Article on an Ancient Garment

Today, I found a new article by Marianne Vedeler and Lise Bender Jørgensen, analyzing a Norwegian ancient garment find. The citation is as follows:

Vedeler, Marianne & Jørgensen, Lise Bender. Out of the Norwegian glaciers: Lendbreen—a tunic from the early first millennium AD. ANTIQUITY 87, pp. 788-801 (2013).

Professor Vedeler has uploaded a PDF copy, and is in the process of downloading a Scribd copy, to her account on academia.edu, where it can be downloaded for free to members (membership is free and members do not have to be academics). The URL for the page where the article can be downloaded is here.

This is an analysis of the wool tunic, found on land revealed by the thawing of a Norwegian glacier, that I wrote about here nearly two years ago.  According to the article, the tunic has been radiocarbon-dated to between 230 and 390 CE.  Since it was not found on a body (it was found in a pile, crumpled up instead of folded, and "bore traces of close association with horse dung"), it cannot be said with certainty whether it was made for a man or woman, though the article notes that from the measurements (the chest area measures about 1.08 meters around) it would fit a slender man.

Since the article is available for free I don't need to describe it in detail, but I will mention some interesting details about the tunic's fabric and construction.

• The neckline of the garment is boat-necked, with a slight, stand-up rim all around. (p. 792-793).
• The garment is woven of several different colors of undyed sheep's wool, including white, brown and black. (p. 790).
• The body of the garment is woven from a 2/2 diamond twill. (p. 790).
• The sleeves of the garment are woven from a different 2/2 diamond twill than the body (determined by which threads of the weave are of which colors). (p. 790-91).  The authors suggest, based on that fact and the fact that the sleeves are sewn with a different quality of thread than the body, that the sleeves may have been added at a later date to what was originally a sleeveless garment. (p. 793).
• The colors used to weave the fabric used in the body of the garment create a houndtooth-like pattern that obscures the fact that a diamond weave was used.  (p. 791; see also picture p. 793).
• The garment was well made and of good quality, but had been much used and was patched.  (p. 793).
• The armholes of the garments are rounded.  (See, e.g., sketch on p. 798).  This is a feature that sometimes is not found in garments of significantly later date.
• Other textile fragments were recovered from the same general area.  According to the article, "Currently, approximately 50 fragments await dating and analysis and, as global warming progresses, more can be expected. They promise to shed further light on dress, textile design and textile production in the first millennium AD—and earlier." (p. 799).

I commend this well-written and well-illustrated article to anyone interested in the clothing worn in Northern Europe during the first millennium CE, and I will continue to keep an eye out for further research on the Lendbreen finds.

EDIT:  (9/10/2013)  The article is no longer available for free download on academia.edu.

EDIT:  (11/20/2013)  The article is once again AVAILABLE for free download on academia.edu.  The link in my post above has been changed to correctly point to the new download link.

More Grist For The Mill

Yesterday afternoon, I stumbled over an article about a new Scandinavian grave find that may eventually yield more information about costume in the Viking era, particularly women's costume. The article may be found here. 

Researchers from the archaeological museum at Stavanger, Norway found three graves that are very well preserved and believed to date to the 8th and 9th century CE.  The location was "in Frøyland, in Time, in the shire of Rogaland, about twenty kilometres south of the city of Stavanger, and ten kilometres from the coast." 

One of the graves was that of a woman, and contained a significant amount of the characteristic kinds of women's jewelry.  The article contains some good clear photographs of some of the items in the condition recovered from the woman's grave.  The items include some glass beads with gold foil on the inside, at least one blue glass bead, a tortoise brooch big enough to completely cover a woman's palm, and a equal-armed brooch nearly as long as a woman's hand.

More importantly for costume specialists, "[s]ome of the items, when they were lifted from the ground, even had traces of textiles, from the clothing they had originally been fastened to...."  Hopefully, those "traces" will be analyzed, and will add to our slowly but steadily growing knowledge of Viking age women's costume.

More Archaeological News--Third Century Clothing Find in Norway

This seems to be a week for spectacular archaeological clothing finds. Yesterday, I stumbled across this article about the find of a nearly-complete third century C.E. find in Breheimen National Park, Norway. The article has a reasonably good color photograph of the find, which to me looks a bit like the tunic of approximately the second century C.E. found at Martres-de-Veyre (scroll about two-thirds of the way down to the bottom of this page for better pictures) in France. If I'm understanding the Google Translate version of the article correctly, this tunic, like the one at Martres-le-Veyre, is made from woven wool. Unlike the Martres-le-Veyre find, it is believed to have been worn by a man, but, like the Martres-le-Veyne find, it was worn with a belt. It is part of a number of personal items found at the same site in the mountains, including shoes, textiles, jewelry, hunting gear and tent pegs. Perhaps that type of garment was generally used during the period and was not simply regional, as the name "Gallic coat" given to the Martres-le-Veyre find implies.

Also found recently, at nearby Jotunheimen--a leather shoe, of similar vintage, which is a dead-ringer for the Armenian shoe I mentioned in yesterday's post.  Likely that means only that simple sewn leather shoes were used for a long, long time--from prehistory into the Middle Ages.  Still, the resemblance is striking.