“Mirrors for Men?” a technological and cultural comparison of European and Japanese medieval swords by Stefan Maeder.
The Japanese Sword is often praised as the apex of the swordsmith’s craft. A direct comparison between European medieval swords, treated according to the traditional Japanese method of sword-polishing, and Japanese counterpart yielded a range of new results. These encompass a better understanding of technological and cultural common points, as well as of differences between the most prestigious and symbolic weapons of pre-modern Japan and medieval Europe.
Sword tip
Stefan’s background is in prehistoric and early medieval archaeology with a specialization in arms and armour studies. This is a rare opportunity to hear about a comparative study of Japanese and European sword-making traditions and culture.
Vikings Life and Legend exhibition at the British Museum
Last Saturday Christine and I went down to London to see two museum exhibitions: the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain exhibition at the Natural History Museum and the Vikings Life and Legend exhibition at the British Museum. For obvious reasons this blog post concerns itself with the latter.
We had to book in advance to see the Vikings Life and Legend and had to choose a time slot.The BM’s bookings management system has to accommodate the large numbers of visitors who come to see their Blockbusters. However, we wondered why we bothered because when we went in, the first room was very small and the previous intake of visitors were still looking at, or rather waiting to look at, the exhibits in the cases. Even with a booking system and tight control of what time you went in, visitors still had to queue to see the exhibits. As many visitors had opted for audio tours and insisted on remaining at the display cases until they’d heard every word of the commentary, everyone else was left ‘rubber-necking’ in a largely vain attempt to peer over their shoulders to see or read something. We somehow walked past the Vale of York hoard without realisiing it was there the press of visitors around the case was so thick. Thank heavens Joyce Hill is talking to the Medieval Section on 10th May on this topic.
The choice was to wait an excessively long time to try and see what was in the cases or to pass on to something else in the hope of coming back later in the hope that the crowd would pass. But it never did because the next lot of visitors was already coming in and so we didn’t bother. This set the tone for the whole exhibition, which I regret to say is badly laid out, poorly lit and with often illegible labelling, even if you do have the luxury of being able to see the exhibits through the surrounding scrum.
The exhibits can be the best in the world – and these almost certainly were – but if you can’t see it’s a waste of time. Wasn’t this what the booking system with the time slots was supposed to avoid?
We weren’t the only visitors to feel this way. Neil Handley writing in the Museums Journal this month (May, 2014) commented that if ever a major exhibition was ruined by poor layout and a fraught visitor experience, this is it. He called it a ‘cattle crush of an exhibition’ and we agree entirely.
Sainsbury Gallery entrance
We hoped things would get better in the main viewing gallery – the specially-funded Sainsbury gallery was built precisely to help the British Museum put on these kinds of popular exhibitions. The gallery was dominated by the remnant of the longest Viking surviving longship from Roskilde (no.6) but the timbers were dwarfed by the armature which extended to show just how big the vessel had been when complete. It seemed to be the tail wagging the dog. The same effect could have been achieved by marking out the ‘footprint’ of the vessel on the floor of the gallery.
Again this set a trend for the exhibition. The size and scale of the cases seemed hopelessly out of kilter with the exhibits they were supposed to show off to best advantage. A small object was often lost in a massive case. Perversely, a large case with plenty of room for a label inside had its label outside. In one case this was in the dark and low down out-of-sight. At first we and another visitor complained bitterly that there was no label at all. It turned out the lady was standing just in front of it and we couldn’t see it in the gloom. Sometimes it was all but impossible to tell which label related to which exhibit. Personally I’m not a fan of number keys but they were badly needed here.
One of the most moving exhibits is a selection of Viking skeletons discovered at Ridgeway Hill in Dorset. The men appear to have been the crew of a Viking ship that was perhaps shipwrecked. They were beheaded one-by-one on the edge of a pit. A blood-chilling artist’s reconstruction of the massacre in the published account of the discovery ‘Given to the Ground’: A Viking Age Mass Grave on Ridgeway Hill, Weymouth by Louise Loe, Angela Boyle, Helen Webb and David Score (2014, Oxford Archaeology: £29) isn’t shown in the exhibition. Perhaps that would have brought home to visitors some of the hard realities of life at this period, hard realities that it has become fashionable in academic circles to ignore or explain away as historical hyperbole and racial stereotyping. I was left reflecting on what those men went through waiting in line to be executed, like the victims of Katyn. That the Anglo-Saxons meted out this sort of brutal treatment to their captives may say something about how Vikings treated Anglo-Saxons.
Vikings Life and Legend is open until 22nd June but a word to the wise: try to go during the week when its quieter.
We came out of the exhibition little the better in temper for our visit. I seriously considered asking for our money back but things looked up when we went to see the newly redisplayed Sutton Hoo exhibits which have been given more space in the early medieval gallery. More about that in another post.
The Bedale Hoard (courtesy of the Portable Antiquities Scheme)
If anyone is visiting York before the end of the month, you may wish to visit the Yorkshire Museum. The Bedale Hoard is on display there until the end of March. The museum is currently trying to raise the £50,000 needed for them to keep it there.
I’ve drawn the following text from the Yorkshire Museum press release but Rebecca Griffiths, the Portable Antiquities Officer who excavated the hoard, spoke to the Medieval Section in March about the work of the Portable Antiquities Scheme and talked about this discovery.
The Bedale Hoard represents a Viking’s life savings containing unique styles of jewellery which have never been seen before. It was found by a metal detectorist in May 2012 and includes a gold sword pommel and a silver neck ring and neck collar, the likes of which have never been recorded. The detectorist informed the North Yorkshire finds liaison officer of the Portable Antiquities Scheme, Rebecca Griffiths, based at the Yorkshire Museum. She and her colleague from the museum then went to the site and unearthed the rest of the hidden treasures.
It was discovered in a part of Yorkshire which very little is known about in the Viking period, so the very fact it exists sheds new light on the region one thousand years ago.
This discovery proves that there was wealth here. It is hoped that the Yorkshire Museum can buy the hoard to enable them to conduct research to help us get a better understanding of the people who lived in Yorkshire at that time.
The full hoard consists of a gold sword pommel, the unique silver neck ring and neck collar, a silver armlet, 29 silver ingots, two other silver neck rings, gold rivets and half a silver brooch.
Archaeologists believe it is from the late ninth or early tenth century. The large gold sword pommel is believed to be from an Anglo-Saxon sword. This is made from iron and is inlaid with plaques of gold foil. These plaques bear Trewhiddle style decoration (named after a hoard found in Trewhiddle, Cornwall), consisting of animals, which was a common style all over England in the ninth century. This decoration is usually applied to silver and copper alloy and its use on gold is rare: its use on large foils, like those found here, is otherwise unknown. With the pommel were four oval ring mounts from the grip of a sword. These are made from gold and they bear incised Trewhiddle style animal interlace. Six, tiny, dome headed, gold rivets may also have been used on a sword hilt.
The unique neck collar is made up of four ropes of twisted silver strands joined together at each end. They terminate in hooks which would have been linked together when the collar was worn.
There are three other twisted neck rings, one of which has been cut in two as ‘hack silver’.
The two halves of this piece are also unique in several respects and together with the neck collar represent an unusual west Viking variant.
Like most of the hoards of the period the Bedale find is dominated by silver ingots of which there were twenty nine.
The hoard also contained a piece of a ‘Permian’ ring, cut as hack-silver – a design of Russian origin.
A broad, flat arm-ring of Hiberno-Scandinavian type, made by Vikings in Ireland, is also represented in the hoard. This is decorated with a pattern of stamp impressed grooves. Also from Ireland are the hack-silver remains of a bossed penannular brooch.
Christine and I have been talking about the current popularity of what’s been called Nordic or Scandi-Noir, the detective story thrillers that are the high spot of our Saturday nights’ TV schedules – otherwise utterly devoid of viewing interest – in which gritty, unconventional cops track down bio or eco-terrorist serial killers in Sweden or Denmark and sometimes both countries at the same time. Wallender may have blazed the trail but The Killing and most recently The Bridge are sublime.
So unlike the native offerings that talk the story half to death (if you think I’m exaggerating compare the scripts of Casualty with ER), The Bridge is fast moving, intelligent and utterly compelling. Before you ask “But where’s he going with this? What’s this got to do with the Medieval Section?” isn’t the solution to the question as to why we should find Nordic or Scandi-Noir so fascinating that, in this part of the world at least, you could argue that we are genetically predisposed to be receptive to the whole Scandi-Noir approach – the long winters, the washed-out colours from the low levels of light at northerly latitudes, the dour characters, the long saga of well, Saga – because of our Viking heritage?
The Danelaw was the name given to those parts of England settled by the Scandinavians. The Norse may have started off as raiders but they came to see the British Isles as a place for colonisation rather than simply as a source of plunder. A large army came to East Yorkshire and captured York in 1867. At the time this was one of the two major cities of Anglo-Saxon England. The evidence is all around us: the place names for starters but also genetically. It would be interesting to compare the popularity of The Bridge in different parts of the UK…
For some of the most colourful lecture notes ever seen about research on the Viking genetic heritage in the North West see Prof Steve Harding’s ‘Genetic Legacy of the Vikings’.
A very Happy New Year 2014 to all members of the Medieval Section and other readers of this blog. I have just received word of a ‘World of the Vikings’ conference on 21-23rd March, at the Department of Archaeology, University of York and York Archaeological Trust.
The ‘World of the Vikings’ Conference, celebrates 40 years of Viking Archaeology in York, in memory of Dr Richard Hall. Dagfinn Skre has agreed to give the keynote lecture, several of Richard’s colleagues from York Archaeological Trust will present papers, and other contributors will include Gareth Williams, Neil Price, David Griffiths, John Sheehan, Hannah Cobb, Nela Schola-Mason, James Barrett, Soren Sindbaek and Steve Ashby.
The conference will be based at The King’s Manor, University of York, in the centre of the historic city and YAT will host a reception at JORVIK.
Also as part of the IPUP Public Lecture Series taking place January to March 2014 there is a lecture by Dr Janina Ramirez about Cultural Triumphs in 8th century Anglo-Saxon Northumbria at 6pm on Tuesday 11th February in the Berrick Saul Building (Bowland Lecture Theatre BS/005).
This series of public lectures, run by the Institute for the Public understanding of the Past, University of York, originates from the Department of History’s new MA in Public History – all the speakers, who are among the leading practitioners of public history in their fields, are also teaching on the MA. The series will highlight recent developments in history by, with and for the pubic, in archives, museums, country houses, popular festivals and the media.
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 