The Saga of Unn the Deep-Minded

Some sources call her Aud the Deep-Minded but that seems to be a name she adopted in old age. Her sisters were Jor-Unn Wisdom-Slope and Thor-Unn Horned and I think it fairly obvious that whoever named these girls had a plan in mind. Jor and Thor have pagan religious connotations and I suspect that Unn dropped a pagan prefix to her name after she became a devout Christian before she moved to Iceland. The father of these three was Ketil Flat-Nose who moved from Norway to the Hebrides sometime in the 9th Century. There he went a-viking from his base, probably at Barra, into Ireland, the British Isles, and back into Norway — something the Norwegians would later punish him for.

Modern reproduction of “tortoise style” brooches found in a grave on Barra Island. These attached over-the-shoulder straps to the front bodice of a woman’s outer dress. [northstararmoury.com]

South of the Hebrides is the great island of Ireland, a rich source of booty and a beautiful prize for anyone who could capture it. In the first half of the 9th Century there was at least one serious attempt to do just that but the expedition’s leader, who the Irish called Turgeis (possibly = Thorgeis or Thorgils), only lasted a few years before Irish resistance, led by the Ui Niall clan, brought him down. Then followed a period of conflict between different groups of Norse invaders complicated by the presence of a growing number of Gall-Gael — Norse/Irish métis who were struggling to find their own place in the world. But in 853, the Hebridean Norse launched a well-conceived plan to conquer Ireland.

The leaders of this invasion were, the Irish say, brothers called Ivar and Olaf the White. Ivar sailed up the Shannon river to the heart of the island and anchored a fleet on the large lakes there. Olaf set up shop at Ath Cliath on the coast, the place we now call Dublin. The country south and west of Dublin, Osraighe (now Leinster), was ruled by the Irish king Cearbhall or Kjarval, as the Norse called him. Kjarval wished to be king of all Ireland and the Norse promised to help him. So Kjarval, Olaf, and Ivar began their campaign to bring the country under their sway. [see map here]

The alliance between these three was forged, in the fashion of the time, through marriage. Kjarval married Jor-Unn Wisdom-Slope. His grandson, Helgi the Lean, married Thor-Unn Horned. Helgi’s father, who had married one of Kjarval’s daughters, was a Swede who led Kjarval’s forces. Unn the Deep-Minded married Olaf the White. The fact that Ketil’s daughters were the unifying threads of this peace-weaving is an indicator of his importance in the area.

Viking artifacts from Dublin area. Swords, spearheads, shield bosses, brooches, and gaming pieces. [Watercolor by James Plunkett, ca. 1847]

The Hebridean invasion prospered. Tribute was collected and churches raided. Local Irish clans sometimes fought the Norse, sometimes fought with them against Irish. Except, that is, the Ui Niall of the north who maintained an implacable resistance to the foreigners and fought with them constantly. In 857, Ivar won a decisive victory over the Gall-Gael and from time to time the brothers had to take out some outsider vikings who invaded their patch, but generally things went well. Kjarval’s troops took on a great deal of the fighting and the Norse brothers occasionally found things settled enough so that they could raid across the sea into Pictland or Strathclyde or Wales.

Around 863 the brothers began looting the tombs of Irish kings on the Boyne. This roused the Irish and for four years or so the battles between the Norse and the Irish grew fierce but soon the fighting settled back into a pattern of desultory skirmishes with the resistant Irish and military incursions into areas that the Norse wished to control. In 870, the brothers left Kjarval in charge and mounted a cross-sea expedition against the Britons of Strathclyde. For four months they besieged the fortress at Dumbarton before taking it and returning to Ireland with, the Annals say, “a great prey” of captives. These would be sold into slavery, a great source of wealth to viking Norse over their two centuries of depredation.

But after 871 the Hebridean venture began to unravel. Ivar died in 873. Olaf in 875. The cause of these deaths are unknown but, also around this period, King Harald Finehair of Norway ran out of patience with Hebridean vikings and sent a punitive expedition that struck at their home bases. The Sagas say that he harried as far south as the Isle of Man and, on the way home, installed one of his followers as the first Jarl of Orkney, who was meant to keep an eye on things in this part of the world.

The daughters of Ketil Flat-Nose suddenly found themselves adrift. Sometime in the next few years, Thor-Unn and her half-Swedish husband sailed to Iceland. Once Kjarval understood how the winds of change were blowing, he repudiated the Norse and teamed up with the Irish. He probably turned Jor-Unn out, but she may have stuck around until his death in 888 before she, too, emigrated to Iceland. Unn the Deep-Minded went to see her dad, Ketil, and introduced him to her son, Thorstein the Red. Grand-dad and grandson got on well and the old pirate instructed the youth in the ways of extracting wealth from the poor and defenceless. So Thorstein set up in Scotland. His wife, Raferta (or maybe Thurid), was a grand-daughter of Kjarval’s and so a sister to Helgi the Lean. These two had a bunch of children — five or six daughters, depending on which source you read (possibly one or two were by other wives of Thorstein) and a son named Olaf, the youngest of the brood.

Excavated longhouse site at Quoygrew, Orkney. [photo: Donna Surge]

Thorstein managed very well in Scotland. He allied with the Orkney Jarls and between them, the Picts and other peoples were squeezed for everything they had. The Sagas say he was king over half of Scotland, which may be a bit of an overstatement, but he was a force in the area. Eventually, though, Thorstein was killed — via Scots treachery, the Sagas say.

Now Unn was in a tough spot. Her father was dead by this time and she had no real holdings in the Hebrides. Her grandson was very young, tweve or thirteen, and not able to take over his father’s enterprise. Nevertheless, Unn asked him for his counsel and he replied, “Whatever you think best, Grandmother.” This, in fact, was more or less what anyone who confronted Unn wound up saying. She was a formidable woman.

Unn hatched an audacious scheme. She went to the chief of her slaves, a man named Koll, and asked for his assistance. ”Koll” might be a Norse version of a fairly common name in Irish or any of the Briton languages. It may be that he was one of that “great prey” captured in Strathclyde in 870. He seems to have been fairly well on in years at this time — forty, say, at a time when boys became men at fifteen or sixteen, when they could wield a sword, and girls became women at thirteen or fourteen, when they could bear children. Unn offered Koll a deal: if he would help the other slaves to build a ship, so that they could all sail out of Scotland for Iceland, she would give him his freedom, land, and one of her grandaughters as a bride. Koll agreed.

That winter, the slaves put together a ship. It was important that they leave in the Spring, before the Picts and Scots discovered their weakness and attacked. Sources vary on the exact number of men and women on board when Unn’s group set sail, but let’s say fifteen to twenty-five people. The ship sailed around to the Orkneys, where more skilled craftsmen refurbished it for the voyage to come. There, Unn gave away one of her granddaughters in marriage “and from this line all the Jarls of Orkney descend”. Then she sailed to the Faroe Islands, where another granddaughter was married off and from her “stems the greatest family line in the Faroe Islands”. Then Unn sailed west to Iceland.

…it is generally thought that it would be hard to find another example of a woman escaping from such hazards with so much wealth and such a large retinue. From this it can be seen what a paragon among women she was.
[Laxdaela Saga]

Unn had two brothers. One, Helgi Bolan, was a Christian who lived in the southwest. The other, Bjorn, lived on the north side of Snaefellness. He was called Bjorn the Easterner because, while the rest of his family found fortune in the Hebrides, he travelled east to the Baltic where he made his fortune. When he returned west to the Hebrides, Bjorn found that the rest of the family had become Christians. He thought it “weak-minded of them to have renounced the old belief of their forefathers… so he refused to make his home there.” Bjorn sailed on to Iceland, the first of the family to do so, and remained a pagan after settling there.

Unn landed, or possibly wrecked her ship, in the south of Iceland. She sent to her brother Helgi, who invited her and nine of her group to spend the winter with him. Unn was incensed at his meanness for inviting only nine and left immediately to see her brother Bjorn. Bjorn knew that his sister was “large-minded” and sent out a large party to welcome her and everyone with her to spend the winter.

The next spring, Unn set sail to find the location she wished to settle. Various places in Iceland get their names from this voyage: Dogurdarness (= Breakfast Point) where she had a meal, Kambsness, where she lost a comb, and so forth. Finally, she took up land, a lot of land around Breidafjord in the west of Iceland. Her own home was at Hvamm. To the south was the Laxardale, one of several Salmon River valleys in Iceland. This she granted to Koll as a wedding-gift when he married her grand-daughter, Thorgerd. Her remaining granddaughters married prominent Icelanders.

The slaves that had come to Iceland with Unn were all freed. Amazingly, it turned out that every one of them was descended from kings, not just common folk swept up in a violent struggle. One such, of noble descent, was the slave Vifils who had to ask Unn for his freedom. She replied that it was of no importance, that Vifils would be a man of quality wherever he was. But she granted him land at Vifilstead. That farm did not prosper and Vifil’s sons got on by marrying rich widows. One of them was the father of Gudrid Thorbjornsdottir who was part of the Norse attempt to colonize North America and bore the first child of European descent born in North America. Unn’s ex-slaves played a great part in the settlement of Iceland and few were ever made to feel ashamed for having been enslaved. It was a matter of pride for an Icelander to be able to claim descent from someone who had sailed with Unn in the voyage from Scotland.

Everyday viking items unearthed in Dublin. [Walter Pfeiffer/National Museum of Ireland]

Now that Unn was settled there was another matter of great importance to deal with. She called her grandson, Olaf Feilan, to her and said, “It is time you were married.” “Whatever you say, Grandmother,” was his reply and Unn sent an emissary, the peg-legged Onund Tree-Foot, to the Hebrides to ask his wife’s cousin, Alfdis, to be Olaf’s bride.

Unn’s plan is clear: she tied her family to the great families of the Orkneys, the Faroes, Iceland, and now back to the Hebrides. If there was to be a renaissance of Hebridean Norse supremacy, her kin would be major actors. Of course, that was not to be. All these islands — the Faroes, the Orkneys, the Hebrides — faded into insignificance as the Scandinavian and Scottish kingdoms coalesced. Even Iceland lost its independence to Norway in the 13th Century. The great viking sea kingdom vanished.

Olaf’s wedding was a grand affair. Unn invited all her kin and most of west Iceland’s notables. Koll was a guest as were others of Unn’s freed slaves, now Icelandic grandees. Helgi the Lean and Thor-Unn attended, as did Helgi Bolan and Bjorn the Easterner. Jor-Unn Wisdom-Slope could not make it and people said What a shame! Though one wonders if this is the understated Saga way of hinting that Jor-Unn, last to leave Ireland, was a bit estranged from her sisters. The festivities were well underway when Unn announced that the house and all inside it now belonged to her grandson, Olaf. Then she said it was her bedtime.

By now, old age was weighing heavilly upon Unn; she never rose before noon and always went early to bed. …she would give an irate reply if anyone asked about her health. [Laxdaela Saga]

Unn urged her guests to enjoy themselves and then retired. Here we have the only physical description of Unn:

Unn was tall and stoutly-built. She walked briskly down the length of the hall and those present remarked how stately she still was. [Laxdaela Saga]

The next morning, when Olaf looked in on her, she sat erect in her bed, dead. Everyone remarked on Unn’s forethought, to arrange her funeral feast in conjunction with her grandson’s wedding. Unn was given a ship-burial and was interred with many valuables. Her grave is undiscovered to date.

Viking ship-burial in Orkney. [from Graham-Campbell and Batey, <em>Vikings in Scotland</em> ISBN 0-7486-0641-6]

Notes:

The primary source for Unn is Laxdaela Saga. Quotes above are from Magnus Magnusson’s translation. This saga tells the story of Koll’s descendants who also figure in other works, such as Njal’s Saga.
There is more on Unn, called Aud, in Eyrbyggja Saga, now available in Gisli Surssons Saga And The Saga Of The People Of Eyr. Translation used above was that of Hermann Palsson.
Orkneyinga Saga is the story of the Jarls of Orkney and speaks of both Unn/Aud and her son, Thorstein.
Grettir’s Saga tells of the marriage embassy of Onund Treefoot and also has a great deal to say about Eyvind the Easterner, Swedish warlord in the pay of the Irish king Kjarval.
The Vinland Sagas tell of Vifils and his granddaughter, Gudrid, who is the main character in the two sagas. The version used here was translated by Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson.
The Book of Settlements: Landnamabok is the earliest extant source for all of the people named above who made it to Iceland.
The Irish Annals may be examined at CELT, a very valuable resource.
A detailed look at the Hebrideans who invaded Ireland: “The Vikings In Scotland And Ireland In The Ninth Century” by Donnchadh Ó Corráin

Ulfberht’s Swords

Thousands of swords from Europe’s early Middle Ages have been recovered. Many of these are too corroded to show any detail but 19th Century archaeologists noticed that some had markings on the blades. Further investigation showed that many of these had the name Ulfberht on one side and geometric markings on the other.

Drawing by Norwegian archaeologists, published 1889.

The archaeologists believed that they had discovered the work of a master swordsmith and, since these swords were often found in Scandinavia, they were thought to be of Viking manufacture. A bit later, scholarship held that Ulfberht was a Frankish name. Later still, more rigorous dating showed that the swords were made over a period of two hundred and fifty years or more — from 850 – 1100 AD. Now the theorists held that Ulfberht was the medieval equivalent of a tradename, possibly the place where the swords were turned out. Ulfberht was the sign of quality — like Porsche, one archaeologist suggested.

An example from the Netherlands dated 950 – 1000.

Iron isn’t that easy to turn into a good finished tool or weapon. It must be heated to 1500° Celsius — difficult in Europe a thousand years ago — and that’s only the beginning. The molten iron must be cooled and worked and reheated, each time resulting in a slightly different composition of iron. The goal was steel; steel that was hard, but not brittle, steel that could strike a hard object and neither bend nor shatter, steel that could hold a sharp edge.

Bog iron isn’t that difficult to find in northern Europe and it can be melted to a stage where it can be worked, although it may only be the slag ingredients, not the iron, that is truly molten. Archaeologists do this kind of reconstruction all the time, locating bog iron and melting it and forming it a bit. Probably there were a lot of swords made this way. These were not great weapons and there are accounts of men straightening bent swords with their foot in the midst of a battle.

Somehow the Franks began turning out good swords. The Carolignian monarchs tried to forbid their export so that the weapons could not be used against Frankish troops but was unable to stop the traffic in arms.

Allen Williams has examined some forty-four Ulfberht swords and discovered that the earlier-made weapons were forged from fine crucible steel possibly from Persia or Afghanistan. In this process, iron was smelted in a sealed crucible and slowly allowed to cool. The resulting steel is of good quality with enough carbon content so that its melting point had lowered and it could be finished by local craftsman into excellent swords. Many Ulfberht swords have been found east of Frankia all the way into present-day Russia, possibly along Viking trade routes. But not all the Ulfberht swords are of good quality – many, especially the later-made weapons, are brittle and might shatter when struck by the real thing. Even so, some have very decorative hilts, finely worked with silver or other inlays, so they probably were made for wealthy customers. And they are still marked “Ulfberht”.

Imitation Ulfberht with silver wire worked into the hilt and pommel.

Mind you, the markings differ slightly. The original swords are marked “+VLFBERH+T” where the “+” is a cross. Later versions have the cross after the T, or two crosses, one quite fancy, on either side of the name. This is the equivalent of those “Rollex” watches that guys try to sell you from the trunk of their car.

An Ingelrii sword from the London Museum.

So far, only a dozen or so of forty-four examined Ulfberht swords are entirely of crucible steel, though some of the knock-offs are of pretty good quality and some have crucible steel edges. There were other swordmakers who signed their work – Ingelrii, Cerolt, and Ulen, for example – but only Ulfberht, whether he was a smith, a guy who owned a shop, or a patron of the swordmaker’s art, was famous enough to attract this kind of imitation, one of history’s great trademark thefts.

Notes:

Anne Stalsberg, “The Vlfberht Sword Blades Re-evaluated”. A hundred and sixty-six Ulfberht blades are listed with geographic distribution and considerable speculation on just who Ulfberht might have been.

Alan Williams,”A Metallurgical Study of Some Viking Swords” (PDF). Williams’ paper shows the difference between original and knock-off Ulfberht swords. There are a lot of photos at the article’s end.

NOVA is going to do a show on “Secrets of the Viking Sword” in October.

An Ulfberht auctioned by Christie’s. It realized more than $18000, even though it’s broken. Real or imitation? At this distance, it probably doesn’t affect the value.

 A swordmaker looks at Ulfberht’s work. Here and here.

Dolmen Chapel: A Repurposed Holy Place

Portugal is the site of many ancient dolmens constructed thousands of years ago. Dolmens — called anta in Portugal — are stone structures built by Neolithic peoples undergoing a megalithic phase. The  best-known megaliths include Stonehenge, but structures made of stone slabs occur all over the world and have been erected in historic times by some peoples.

The anta at tapadao, possibly the largest in Portugal. The entrance is low and worshippers would have to crawl inside. (via ancient-wisdom.co.uk)

The Portugese anta are dolmens of the type known as passage tombs, although not all of them may have served a burial function. In fact, no one knows exactly what the purpose of these structures were and they may have served different roles in different places at different times.

The chapel of St.Denis at Pavia. (photo: John Sakura)

The chapel of St. Denis in Pavia is one of many anta that were converted for Christian use. This one was made into a chapel in 1625. Here is a late example of the practice of Christian missions in Europe repurposing an ancient holy place. Pope Gregory the Great explicitly lays out this policy in a letter of 601 AD  recorded by the venerable Bede in his History of the English Church and People:

…we have been giving careful thought to the affairs of the English, and have come to the conclusion that the temples of the idols among that people should on no account be destroyed. The idols are to be destroyed, but the temples themselves are to be aspersed with holy water, altars to be set up in them, and relics deposited there. (Bede’s History, translation by Leo Shereley-Price)

This is pretty much a reversal of an earlier letter of Gregory’s (also recorded by Bede) in which he tells King Ethelbert to “suppress the worship of idols and destroy their shrines”. But, upon careful thought, Gregory has determined that it is best to have the people worship at their customary places.

They are no longer to sacrifice beasts to the Devil, but they may kill them for food to the praise of God, and give thanks to the Giver of all gifts for the plenty they enjoy. If the people are allowed some wordly pleasures in this way, they more readily come to desire the joys of the spirit. For it is certainly impossible to eradicate all errors from obstinate minds at one stroke, and whoever wishes to climb to a mountain top climbs gradually step by step, and not in one leap.

Interior of the chapel. (photo: John Sakura)

So, a thousand years after Gregory’s letter, the chapel at Pavia became one more step toward the mountain top.

Note: good photos of the chapel may be found here.

The Mysteries of Yewden

An ancient Roman villa at Yewden in Buckinghamshire was first excavated in 1912. Recently, finds from the site, including the skeletons of a number of newborn infants, have been studied in some detail.

Main building at Yewden, artist's concept. (Buckhamshire County Council)

Ninety-seven infant skeletons were discovered in the 1912 dig, forty are still available for study, the others having disappeared over the deacades. Since all the skeletons were newborns, most analysts have suggested that they were victims of infanticide. The Romans did sometimes kill the offspring of slaves. The bodies of infants under the age of two, infanticide or not, were usually buried without ceremony. This would square with the Yewden findings where the ninety-seven infants’ remains were distributed around the property, the largest group in an adjacent field.

Still, it’s unusual to find so many small corpses on the same plot of land. The forty extant skeletons have all been dated to the period 150 – 200 AD. This concentration in time and space has suggested to Dr. Jill Eyers that Yewden was the site of a brothel and that the burials represent the unwanted byproduct of that business. Running against that notion, however, is Yewden’s distance from any population center — there wouldn’t have been many customers in the area.

Samian ware from Yewden. This was a mortar. (chilternarchaeology.com)

Another idea that has been floated is that Yewden was some kind of birthing centre, perhaps a place having to do with a mother goddess. But this conjecture also runs into the lack of population in the area: centre of what?

Woman nursing child. Goddess? (chilternarchaeology.com)

Yewden was a wealthy place and some people in the villa lived well. Valuable red Samian pottery and colored glassware are among the archaeological finds. The complex of buildings include an area that contains sixteen kilns for drying grain. Yewden would not have been an immediate market that sold grain but it might well have been a trade centre that received local produce and then shipped it down the Thames. This activity required a lot of bookkeeping and, in fact, sixty or more iron styli, used to write on wax tablets, have been unearthed. All this activity brings us back to the possibilty of prostitution — farmers bringing in the crop and the hands necessary to load it, the boatmen themselves, all potential customers.

One of the infant skeletons has a cut mark on his bones, possibly from a difficult birth. Several show signs of a rare genetic knee disorder that suggests that they were related — perhaps from the same mother. One final datum: the infants that can be DNA tested are equally divided between male and female; they represent a normal sex ratio at birth. It isn’t necessary, I think, that Yewden be a major brothel to have ninety-seven unwanted births over fifty years. These could represent the children of female slaves who worked at the place during the period.

Iron stylus from Yewden. (chilternarchaeology.com)

One item unearthed at Yewden is a pot with the name “Siitomina” scratched into its base. This is a Romano-British woman’s name; Siitomina is the earliest named individual from the area that is known. One wonders if she was slave or free and if, perhaps, she carried a gene for a congenital knee disorder.

"Siitomina". (chilternarchaeology.com)

Wayland Flying

Earlier this year, archaeologists in Sweden discovered a fine bronze piece depicting Wayland the Smith wearing his cloak of feathers and flying. The archaeologists believe that the piece was a mounting on a small box, though there are any number of ways it might have been used in the 7th to 10th Centuries (to take the extremes of when it may have been made).

The bronze piece from Uppakra, Sweden. (via Aardvarchaeology)

Wayland, was also known as Wieland or Volland or any number of similar names which may ultimately derive from Vulcan. Like Vulcan, Wayland was a smith and inventor who fabricated fine objects and magical things, such as the sword Gram, that Sigurd used to kill Fafnir the dragon. Wayland was apprenticed to Mimir, the evil dwarf that Sigurd outwits. Wayland himself is supposed to be of elvish descent. Or the child of a sea nymph, such as the one who raised Hephaestus (aka Vulcan).

Wayland and his two brothers spend time with swan maidens but these women fly away. Wayland’s brothers leave but Wayland stays on. After all, how easy is it to move a smithy? King Nidud, a Swede perhaps, captures Wayland and, to prevent his escape, hamstrings him. The notion of a lame smith is another Wayland motif that recalls Vulcan.

Ardre stone VIII. Wayland is in the middle (detail below) Picture via Wikipedia.

But Wayland is a Germanic mythic figure and his tale will be one of vengeance. Wayland invites the King’s sons to his smithy and cuts off their heads. He fashions their skulls into drinking cups and their eyes into jewels. He gives the cups to King Nidud and the jewels to the queen, mother of the murdered boys. Then, when Bodvild, the king’s daughter asks him to repair her ring, he gives her drugged beer and, when she passes out, ravishes her. Wayland’s brother, a great archer, gives him feathers from birds that he has brought down and Wayland fashions a cloak, a flying suit, that will allow him to escape. He flies over the head of King Nidud and obtains a pledge that the King will never harm Wayland’s offspring. Then he reveals that the King has been drinking from his children’s skulls and the Queen wears their eyes around her neck. The final vengeance is that the King’s daughter now is pregnant with Wayland’s child — he has extinguished Nidud’s line and substituted his own!

 

Detail from Ardre stone VIII. The smithy is in the center, headless bodies to the right, the princess leaves at left, Wayland flies behind her.

Wayland’s story is found all through Northern European myth. He is said to have forged Beowulf’s chain mail; his story is included in the Prose Edda; Mimir and Gram are part of the Sigurd legend (though Sigurd later gives up Gram for another magic sword); and he is depicted on numerous relics of the heroic age. One of the Ardre rune stones shows Bodvild leaving Wayland’s smithy, he is flying right behind her, leaving the headless corpses of Nidud’s sons near the forge. A similar scene is on the Franks casket (below): Wayland holds a skull in his tongs on the anvil with one hand, a cup of beer in the other. Bodvild reaches for the cup, the elf-woman who supplied the drugged beer behind her. On the right, Wayland’s brother gathers feathers from birds he has brought down.

Franks casket. See article for explanation.

Wayland is mentioned in the early English poems, Waldere and Deor, which cites Wayland’s captivity as one of many difficulties that heroes and heroines overcome, moral fables about vanquishing misfortune.

Some say that Wayland forged Excalibur at his forge near Uffington. If you leave an unshod horse there overnight, in the morning he will be found shoed! Actually the site is much older than the myth and probably once a chambered tomb.

Wayland's Smithy near Uffington

The Uppakra find illustrates one of Europe’s great mythic motifs, whether Wayland or Vulcan, and is a fascinating object.

(Note: several links above have been Google-lated into English. But if you have German or Swedish, as the case may be, then you can easilly de-Google.)

via Aardvarchaeology

A Dress of Beetle Wings

In 1888, when Ellen Terry played Lady Macbeth, she appeared on stage in a dress made of beetle wings. That dress has now been restored.

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth by John Singer Sargent

 

Terry was a famous actress in her day and a favored subject of pre-Raphaelite painters including her first husband, George Frederic Watts. Sir John Gielgud is her nephew.

 

The famous dress was decorated with more than a thousand iridescent jewel beetle wings. The jewel beetle sheds them naturally.

Terry wore the dress on many public occasions and it was considerably worn when the restoration team began their work two years ago.

 

Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth

 

 

View the restored dress here.

 

 

Queen Asa’s Tomb

Above the Oslofjord, in the Vestfold of Norway, is a hill known locally as Oseberghaugen, which is to say: “Asa’s burial mound”.  This, they say, is where the legendary Queen Asa was buried.

Sightseers at the Oseberg excavation 1904

Early in the 20th Century, archaeologists dug into Oseberg and discovered the remains of a magnificent Viking ship. Inside the ship were the skeletal remains of two women, one young, the other about 60 or so. The grave had been looted and no gold or silver remained. The old woman’s arm was broken, possibly by a thief removing a bracelet.

The old woman, most assumed, was Asa, Queen of Agder, and the younger was a slave sacrificed to join her mistress in death. Nay-sayers appeared immediately, saying that Asa was legend or that folk memory of Oseberg’s meaning was faulty. These have been joined recently by those saying that there was no queen in the mound, but rather a volva or seeress and that perhaps it was the young woman and not the old whose grave this is. These last are ageist or sexist or some other variety of romantic. The evidence, as we will see, all goes to the idea that The old woman was Asa and this is her grave.

Oseberg ship at Oslo Ship Museum

There was no Norway in the 8th Century, only a bunch of ill-defined kingdoms. A “king” at this time and place was probably no more than a great patriarch, a clan chieftain. Many of these were Danes, who were the dominant group in the area. One of these was Guthroth the Hunting-King, whose father was named Halfdan, which is to say “half Dane”. Guthroth’s wife died and he decided that he wished to marry Asa, daughter of the king of Agder. (maps of Norwegian kingdoms)

Guthroth had built a large kingdom in the Westfold, around Oslofjord. A large chunk of his territory had been brought to him as dowry by his deceased wife. Now Guthroth looked south to Agder. King Harald of Agder refused to marry his daughter to Guthroth. So the king of the Westfold decided to take by force what he could not have through marriage ties. He invaded Agder, killed Harald, and took Asa to wife.

Asa soon became pregnant. She bore a son, Halfdan, later called Halfdan the Black. When Halfdan was a year old, Guthroth was attending a royal event. He was very drunk when a man leapt from the crowd and thrust a spear through him. In the morning light, the killer was recognized as one of Asa’s slaves. Asa admitted that she had persuaded one of her slaves to murder Guthroth. Then she returned to Agder and took up rule of her father’s kingdom. This was, perhaps, around 790.

Paleolithic Swiss Army Knife

via Nag On The Lake

The Mummies of Cladh Hallan

In 2001, archaeologists working on the island of South Uist in the Hebrides discovered several curious skeletons. They were flexed in an unusual manner and buried, rather than cremated, which was the fashion during the period that produced them. The first body was that of a man who died around 1600 BC but who had been buried some 600 years later. The second body was identified as that of a woman who died around 1300 BC and was buried at the same time as the man. Analysis showed that both bodies had been submerged in a peat bog to mummify them.

Cladh Hallan "woman".

 Things began to get weird when it was discovered that the first corpse had a jaw and a legbone  that belonged to people other than the rest of the body. These three individuals had died at different periods of time, centuries apart.

The second skeleton seemed at first to be from only one individual but DNA analysis showed that, just as in the first mummy, parts of three different corpses were assembled into one. Oh, and the skull belonged to a male. The man’s canine teeth had been removed from his head after death and placed in the mummy’s hands.

These bodies were mummified for reasons we can only guess. Perhaps they were on display, perhaps kept in some kind of case, perhaps they were brought out for ceremonial display once in a while. Current thinking is that they are part of an ancestor-worship concept, maybe being made up of cadavers from the same kinship line. On the other hand, maybe when something fell off the corpse, the priests just replaced it with whatever they could find. “Mummy’s lost a jaw, Jim.” “Damn! Well, stick another in the bog and we’ll soon have him right!”

So, after all the work entailed in putting these things together and hanging onto to them for centuries, why suddenly bury them? Here it should be noted that these two mummies were not the only corpses interred under the floors of the buildings of Cladh Hallan.