Did you ever have a project that you were SO geeked up about that you were working and working on it and waiting until you were totally finished to share it?  But then, life happens, and it still isn't done?  Well this post is about one of those projects.  I started this a year and a half ago, but it was taking so long I had to stop to do Pennsic prep and then got side tracked with life.  The project recently resurfaced because I had questions about something tangental to it, and so I am going to go ahead and talk about it here.

​Munsell's system for coding colors is a little like Pantone (something with which people are often more familiar, especially given the popular media stir created annually when they announce the Color of the Year).  Munsell's was developed nearly a decade ago to create a guide to help classify soil samples by color.  It takes into account hue (color), chroma (how intense it is) and value (how light or dark the color is).  It is used in a variety of applications, but there are specific field guides that relate to archaeology, including the aforementioned guide for soils, and one for ceramics and one for glass beads.  The last is the one that I find most interesting.

I learned about the guide when I was doing Viking Age bead research and stumbled across Matthew Delveaux's blog https://textandtrowel.wordpress.com/  He has a specific article about Viking Age glass colors (HERE) and wrote a piece housed on the Munsell site (HERE). 

So this is all super cool, right?  I personally love it, but there are some issues I have discovered:

• The book is insanely expensive.  It IS available via ILL as I mentioned, but you would need to have all of your samples ready before getting it, I would think.
• Not everyone uses this system for categorizing colors.  Delveaux did amazing work with the Viking Age beads he worked with (and also, if you want to totally freak out over an incredible data set, check this out.... https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataset.xhtml?persistentId=doi:10.7910/DVN/RODUZG ). I think his work is the only Viking Age work I have seen.  I have some English beads categorized like this and a few other papers here and there, but I really wish there were more that were relevant to my interests.
• Vision and color are funny things.  Some people have a very limited range for color vision, while others can determine different colors in a similar set more readily.  Education and understanding of color (which I fortunately have) also helps better interpret results.  I feel it still give a good base starting place for my selecting colors.
• Certain glass colors can change over time (or being buried in certain conditions), so results can sometimes be off despite best efforts unless there happens to be a more recently broken sample where the inside can be categorized.
• Glass changes depending on the temperature at which you work it, how long you work it, how it is annealed, etc.  Even buying standard glass colors can have a broad range between batches (the image to the right are all Effetre #444).

Once I do complete this project, I will most definitely be sharing the results here.  But while I am at it, I also want to recommend looking at Moa Råhlander's (Sigrid Beadmaker in the SCA) work, particularly her article Spår av tillverkningsmetoder i glas.  She is a researcher AND beadmaker and kindly shares her comparison to standard Effetre colors for the historic samples!

For whatever reason, when I was scanning through images of Viking Age beads on Unimus.no, I fell in love with this little yellow stripey one from Kaupang.  Honestly, I do not much even care for the color yellow, but this bead fascinates me
​

I was pleasantly surprised when going back over the Birka material (below left, grave 56) that I found the same style of bead depicted there as well, and again in the finds from Møre og Romsdal (below right).

Now I am looking carefully at everything in hopes of finding yet more of these!

And yes, I will be finishing my post on glass sources this week.  I also barely got to work on beads this last weekend because I was busy installing better ventilation in my workspace.  Breathing is important ;-)

A couple of weeks ago I sifted through Danish Inhumation Graves of the Viking Age to get an idea of the average number of beads in grave assemblages in that area and made a post discussing my findings.  This past week I have combed through the Birka material (both volumes of Birka I as well as the Birka Grave Catalog online).

I used the same criteria that I used for the second half of my previous review of the Danish material, that being oval brooches, as that is my real interest in this.  I covered 147 graves with oval brooches, 5 of those had some issue with provenance, exceptional fire damage or other things resulting in inconclusive data, causing me to eliminate them from my final count.  3 graves had both cremation and inhumation burials, so they were included in the total, but not in the breakdown of graves by type.

• 142 total graves with oval brooches had 3252 beads, with an average of 22.74 beads per grave.  The number of beads per grave ranged from 0-306.
• 22 cremation graves with evidence of oval brooches had 248 beads, with 14 average beads per grave, and a range of 0-72 beads.
• 120 inhumation graves with oval brooches had a total of 3004 beads, with an average of 25 per grave and a range of 0-306.  26 of the graves had no beads at all.
• EDIT 3/19/19: Per my comments below, I went back and looked at the graves and found that when I take into account location of beads in the 120 inhumation graves, and remove those that were obviously found elsewhere in the grave (such as at the feet), the average number of beads drops to 17 and the range is 0-194. Note that this still includes items that might be a separate necklace in addition to brooch swag if it was still found in the upper body area.  ​

Both of the sets of beads above were from Birka 508.  What is critical in this grave is the context.  I had a total of 306 beads but ONLY 77 of them were worn near the brooches, the remainder were found near the feet.  Photo credit to Historiska museet.  Eventually, I will recalculate the totals with that type of context in mind.

Birka 526 is another grave that has a very large number of beads, but not all of them were part of the assemblage with the oval brooches.  In that grave 194 of the beads were located near the brooches.

Something that I found interesting that I plan to address soon, is the color difference between image in Birka I, drawings from the period, and actual photos.  The first is very dull, while the other two are radiant with color.  Below are examples from Birka 550.

 
As soon as I started researching beads, people started asking me “What did they use to string them in period?”  I didn’t have an answer as I had not yet come across any evidence (though, admittedly, during the years of focusing on textiles, I would deeply read those portions and take notes, and skim through other sections of the books, making it easy to miss things).
 
Realistically, I think the answer should be “Whatever they had that worked,” but of course I always want further evidence to something less on the speculative side.
 
In the past I have tried linen string, waxed linen string, silk cord, and metal wire, as well as modern solutions (which will be mentioned more in depth below).  I can honestly say that none of those more period options impressed me.  All of them eventually gave out and had me scurrying to collect beads.
 
In her paper “How Beads come Together”, Moa Råhlander looked at burial assemblages from Townsend Farm Road in Kent (6th and 7th century), as well as Lovö in Sweden (8th and 9th century).  Several beads from the latter site have traces of corroded iron wire inside of them.  She states that it does not take much of a leap to come to the conclusion that it was the material used to string the beads.
 
Not long after having read this, David Huggins posted an image from a book about a Saxon Cemetery in Essex, England, that has well preserved bead threads that describes some as being plied pairs of threads that are plied together tightly as well as plaited techniques such as whipcord.  In one of these finds the cord was wool but the rest were linen.  As I was looking at the bead information last night in the book Buckland Anglo-Saxon Cemetery: Dover and I saw that it also references traces of linen cord that had been used to secure beads (this book also has lovely images of the beads that are printed TO SCALE!).

Additionally, Birka cremation grave 29 has traces of bronze wire in three of the beads and Grave 385 has it listed that melted beads were mounted on bronze wire.

ETA (3/26/19): I found images of a find from Kalmergården in Denmark that show beads with a twisted linen cord going through it (photos from the National Museum of Denmark).  I am unsure of the dating beyond Iron Age, but if someone has the answer to the time for this, I would love to know it!

So now I think I have a decent answer, and it also leads to further thoughts on the matter.  Wire can be fragile, especially once it gets bent or kinked.  Linen cord can easily be worn through with use, though multiple plies, tight twisting, and plaiting can help maintain strength for longer.  Beads can have sharp edges or even sharp bits inside the bead (especially if there was a bubble trapped against the mandrel) which will further wear at a cord.  These facts add to my ideas that things like beads, especially with their high value in period, were really special occasion items.  You were not working the garden in them, tending animals, or anything like that.  They were reserved for better affairs.  Yes, I can do all of my normal things at events while wearing my brooches an bling, including set up or tear down camp, but that does not mean that I think people did it that way in period.
 
Modernly, I usually use tiger tail type beading wire.  I form an end into a loop and fix it with a crimp beads, string my beads and the add crimps and a loop to the other end.  This has proven the most sturdy method so far (even though it is very modern).  When I make my next strand of Viking beads, I am going to use tightly braided linen cord (possibly even some of my hand spun) and see how well that works.  I think that if I avoid excessive labor while wearing the beads, it might be a good option.  I am also planning to test out the use of braided sinew (artificial at first) as a possible option (especially given the diameter of the hole in many of the Viking Age beads).

Location:  Peel Castle, St. Patrick Island, Isle of Man
Date:  10th Century
Type of Find: Burial
Date of Excavation: 1984
Context: All beads were found in neck area with the exception of the two largest amber ones, which were found at the waist
Beads: 73 beads, 8 of which were broken
 
Several weeks ago in another post, I noted I would soon talk at more length about the Pagan Lady of Peel and her fabulous necklace.  Since then it has been announced that the necklace will go on display in York, and numerous people have sent me the news articles for that, so I guess now is really the time to do this one.
​

Excavations began in the Peel castle in 1982, with the Viking graves being discovered in 1984.  There are additional graves from both before the Viking Age and during the middle ages also found in this area.  The excavations produce a total of 7 pagan graves from the Viking Age, with 5 being adult and 2 for children.  Only one of them was female, and it is considered to be one of the wealthiest female graves found in the British Isles.  The lintel grave was professionally excavated and well documented so I consider it a reliable source (especially given the amount of attention this one has also received since then).

In addition to the necklace of 71 beads (glass, amber and jet), with 2 amber bead-amulets, the grave also contained three knives (one of which only a hilt remains and one is noted to likely have had some sort of specialized purpose), iron shears, an antler comb, remains of a leather pouch with metal fittings and two bronze needles, an ammonite fossil (thought by Saxons to be a fertility charm), a goose wing, herbs, a possible mortar and pestle, and feather filled pillow.  Additionally there were fragments of three textiles, one of which is believed to have been a sprang hairnet.  There was also an item initially believed to be an iron spit, but later researchers have compared it to similar items in female graves that are thought to be seiðr-staffs, indicating that the women interred might have been a seeress or sorceress of some sort.  (Price; Gardeła)
 ​

​The early reports on the grave believed that the lack of oval brooches indicated that the woman was Celtic or perhaps second generation of Norse and Celtic (with Norse immigrants marrying local women).  Later research and isotope analysis has determined that the middle-aged Pagan Lady of Peel migrated to the island herself, possibly originating from a Norse settlement in the British Isles or even Scandinavia (Symonds, et al.). 
 
Did she ever wear oval brooches?  We do know that by this time they were going out of fashion in Denmark, and if she perhaps came from a settlement in the British Isles, there already could have been adoption of local dress.  It is also possible that she wore them in life but was not sent into the next world with the jewelry for some reason.  Comparisons have also been drawn to her grave and many other status graves of the Viking age.
 
This particular grave is referenced in many other works, include the Scar boat burial in Orkney Scotland.  This grave dates to the late 9th or early 10th century, and contained an equal-arm brooch, a wooden handled sickle, textiles (included a brocaded wool cloth), a whalebone plaque, a comb, a weaving batten, shears, a box with metal fittings, whorls, and a sickle.  The wealth of this grave, as well as lack of oval brooches is the reason that comparisons are made between the two, however, the book covering the work at Scar repeatedly notes that there was an “otter disturbance” (that’s a direct quote) at the site that could have resulted in displacement or loss of the brooches.  I know that if I were an otter, I think I would very much love to have shiny brooches for myself.  Another correlation that could possibly be made is the völva grave from Fyrkat which also has no oval brooches.

​The Beads
 
71 one beads comprised the necklace, with 8 of them being broken.  Two additional amber beads (the largest in the find) were found near the waist.  The materials for the beads include glass, amber and jet and have origins in Scandinavia, Anglo-Saxon and the Mediterranean or Middle East. 

One bead is faiance, and is believe to be imported from the Mediterranean or the Middle East and may well have been an antique to the Pagan Lady.  There are amber beads, likely from the Baltic, in the strand, a long blue bead is considered to be an Irish ‘String’ bead.  Two of the glass beads incorporate millefiori, one of this is thought to be an Eastern import.
 
In her thesis, “Perler fra vikingtiden”, Hickey compares beads from Peel (and other sites) to those cataloged in the Guido’s The Glass Beads of Anglo-Saxon England.  Based on that possible origins for various beads include Rhineland, Rhenish, Frisian/Frankish, and more locally, Netherlands, and Scandinavia as well as many of local manufacture.
 
The beads were possibly collected over a lifetime and may even include some brought from her homeland in addition to prized imports.  I wish that I had a better analysis of each bead in this grave, and have one more book coming to me via ILL that might have more detail.  If indeed it does, I plan to post the additional information here.

If you want to see a very large image of the necklace, please visit the link for the Isle of Man museum here:  https://tinyurl.com/y4f2pzd4

Another site that is worth looking at is that of Glonney Designs.  The artist briefly discusses the necklace and also has two images (that I wish were much larger) of the beads laying flat, rather than strung.  It better allows you to get a sense of size and same for some of the beads. I am trying to source these items in a higher resolution version, ​glonneydesigns.wordpress.com/category/studio/the-pagan-ladys-necklace-project/

Resources:
 
Gardeła, Leszek.  “Viking Death Rituals on the Isles of Man”, Viking Myths and Rituals on the Isle of Man, University of Nottingham, 2014.
 
Goodrich, Russell.  “Scandinavians and Settlement in the Eastern Irish Sea Region During the Viking Age”, PhD Dissertation, University of Missouri-Columbia, 2010.
 
Guido, Margaret.  The Glass Beads of Anglo-Saxon England: c. AD 400-700, Boydell Press, 1999.
 
Hickey, Megan.  “Perler fra vikingtiden: A study of the social and economic patters in the appearance of beads from Viking-Age sites in Britain”, Master of Arts Research, University of York, 2014.
 
Holgate, Barbara.  “The Pagan Lady of Peel”, St. Patrick’s Isle Archaeological Trust, 1987.
 
Mainman, A.J. and N.S.H. Rogers.  “Craft, Industry and Everyday Life: Finds from Anglo-Scandinavian York”, The Archaeology of York, Volume 17: The Small Finds, 2000.
 
Miller, Ben. “Child grave goods from the Isle of Man castle and Viking beach market discoveries head to Cornwall”, Culture24, 1/27/2015.
 
Morris, Carole. “An Irish ‘String’ Bead in Viking York”, Bead Society of Great Britain Newsletter, 58.
 
Owen, Olwyn and Magnar, Dalland.  “Scar: A Viking Boat Burial on Sanday, Orkney”, Tuckwell Press, 1999.
 
Price, Neil.  The Viking Way: religion and war in late Iron Age Scandinavia. Aun 31. Uppsala, 2002.
 
Richards, Julian D. “Pagans and Christians at the frontier: Viking burial in the Danelaw”, The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300-1300, 2003.
 
Ruffoni, Kirsten.  “Viking Age Queens: The Example of Oseberg”, Master’s Thesis, University of Oslo, 2011.
 
Symonds, Leigh, et. al. “Medieval Migrations: Isotope Analysis of Early Medieval Skeletons of the Isle of Man”, Medieval Archaeology, 58, 2014.
 
Vannin, Ellan.  “’Pagan sorceress’ Viking necklace on display in York,” BBC, 2/20/2019.
 

In 1937 there was a piece published in Acta Archaeologica titled "Danish Inhumation Graves of the Viking Age" by Johannes Brøndsted that surveyed, and provided summaries for, the contents of 320 graves.  This piece actually references some of the problematic work I mentioned before (especially that by Vedel), but even with the lack of detail here, there is some interesting information that can be extracted.

To take a step backwards, I want to mention that the reason I chose this direction at this time is that I once saw someone post that the average number of beads in graves in Denmark was 8. I always wondered where that figure came from (it was information that just kept getting passed around) but I suspected this was the source.  I think that I was correct in my assumptions as the book lists 48 graves with beads (most of which also have things like brooches or keys which are considered typical of female burials).  Unfortunately, 12 of those were graves covered by Vedal's work, and only list "beads" without a number.  The average number of beads per grave based on the remaining samples is 8.27 (with the lowest being 1 bead and the highest being 50).

Now, what I actually find more interesting is the number of beads in graves with evidence of oval brooches.  According to the summary of the book, there were 36 pairs of oval brooches, 22 single oval brooches and 4 unmatched pairs in the graves.  In graves containing some form of oval brooch, the average number of beads per grave goes up to 13.92 (based on those graves that have at least one bead).  There are many graves with brooches by no beads (only 21 graves had both brooches and beads).

Two other interesting bits of information jumped out at me as well.  One was that coins were used as pendants in 3 graves and bracelets appear in 11 graves (with two graves having multiple bracelets).

​I have some more materials coming soon and still have many things I need to go over but I hope to expand on this particular line of research as time goes on.

 htLocation: Denmark, modern day Fyn
Date: 9th/10th Century
Type of Find: Burial
Date of Excavation: 1980-1981
Context: Beads were found in neck area, oval brooches (JP51a) were present
Beads: 8 beads; 2 rock crystal and 6 glass

Grave Køstrup ACQ is perhaps most famous for its pleated aprondress.  Matthew Delvaux dates the grave to the mid-9th century based on the beads, Charlotta Lindbloom dates the grave to the 10th century.  Other grave goods include fragments of the pleated dress, a narrow wool brocaded tablet woven band, beads, an iron knife and key and a casket.  

Fairly recent excavation and reliable diagrams make this a good example of what a woman's necklace of the period might have looked like.  She had some wealth, and Delvaux suggests that her grave goods reflect a position of authority, even though she might not have had the wealth of someone in a more central location.  (I will, however, disagree that the pleated front of her garment is a sign of conspicuous consumption.  The pleats are only a few millimeters deep and do not represent a great deal of additional cloth.  Rather, I consider them a frugal option that allows one to resize a garment as needed to accommodate life's changes.)

I love that there are not enough beads to stretch between the brooches, allowing some of the stringing material to be seen when worn.  I feel that this is more common full strands (and definitiely more so than multiple strands) and makes for a wonderful impression.

I recommend looking at Delvaux's discussion on ACQ, as he also includes a great image of beads from another graveyard in the region that he dates a bit later.  This can help one form a better picture of what styles of ornament were available to the people of this time and place.


​

An interesting item I stumbled on regarding Viking Age beads is the dissertation "Perler fra vikingtiden (Beads of the Viking Age)" by Megan Hickey.  This work specifically covers beads from Viking Age Britain.  You can download it for free here.

I highly recommend taking a look at this work as it discusses bead finds in context (grave vs production sites), and also details where they were found in situ in the case of graves.  Charts detail the number of finds along with things like color and decoration.  To give a snapshot of some of the data in the piece, it notes that 76.1% of beads from non-production sites were glass (10.4% were amber and all other types were significantly less).  59% of beads at non-production sites were undecorated, 22% decorated and 19% of the finds are unknown.  The percentage of undecorated vs. decorated is even higher at production sites.

Regarding color, blue undecorated beads are the most common, followed by yellow and green. It is interesting to note that all of the gold/silver foil type beads were found at one site, Kneep (which I discussed last week here ). 

The report also has a number of interesting tables, including one that breaks down graves by age and gender.  There are also discussions of some of the issues with excavations and also other uses of beads beyond necklaces.  There is even a comparison to trends in Scandinavia.

I was hoping to track down some of the finds that had a number of beads in conjunction with oval brooches, but, unfortunately, many of them were excavated well over 100 years ago.  I am still hoping to find some of these items located in museums, but I fret that I might just be stuck with some pretty terrible descriptions such as the one below from the 1800s.  (Are you kidding me???)

But, one of the things that the dissertation did for me was lead me to research several interesting graves.  The paper had no illustrations, though it had brief descriptions of the finds, so I decided to see what images I could track down some of them online (or in books at home). 

From a double burial (excavated in 1878) there were beads, as well as oval brooches, at Ballinaby.  One source notes that there were 12 beads, though the original documents only show drawings of a few. Also interesting in this grave is a flat chain of 4 strand silver wire.

Another mentioned in the dissertation is the Pagan Lady of Peel, a grave from the first half of the 10th Century.  This necklace had 71 beads, but was not worn in conjunction with oval brooches.  I plan to take a more in depth look at this particular grave soon, but for now, here is an image of the jewelry.

Saffron Waldon, Essex, has a fascinating necklace.  This is a mid-to-late 10th century item, that is discussed in a bit more detail in Jane Kershaw's book Viking Identities: Scandinavian Jewelry in England.  Kershaw mentions that the center pendant seen below is likely to be an Anglo Saxon item, while the others had Scandinavian origins.  The grave was excavated in 1877.  There were no oval brooches found in this grave but scholars in the mid-1960s believe that this represented a pagan burial of a Scandinavian immigrant. 

​I am still trying to track down an image of Pierowall, Grave 4, though I am not sure that one exists at this time.  The description of the grave from the Journal of the British Archaeological Association (1846) is as follows:​

I plan to talk more about the graves, and additional beads from this site later this week.  Grave 2 has been labeled a female grave, and 3 is considered male, but both have beads.  2 is particularly interesting as it not only contains no oval brooches but does have evidence of a belt.  (Grave one did have oval brooches as well as a solitary bead.)

Resources

​Anderson, Joseph.  "Notes on the contents of two Viking Graves in Islay", Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Volume 14, 1878 (https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-352-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_014/14_051_094.pdf )

Crofton Crocker, T. "Antiquities discovered in Orkney and Ireland, compared", Journal of the British Archaeological Association, Volume 2, 1846.

Hickey, Megan.  "Perler fra vikingtiden (Beads of the Viking Age)", 2014. http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/8571/
​
Kershaw, Jane. Viking Identities: Scandinavian Jewelry in England, Oxford University Press, 2013. (​https://amzn.to/2FRNteC)

Parsons, Adam, et. al.  Shadows in the Sand: Excavation of a Viking-Age Cemetery at Cumwhitton, Oxford Archaeology, 2014. 

​Location: Scotland - Kneep, Uig, Isle of Lewis
Date: 900-1000AD
Type of Find: Burial
Date of Excavation: 1979
Context: Beads were found in neck area, oval brooches (P51) were present
Beads: 44 glass beads (39 segmented, five unsegmented), yellow, blue, silver, gold.  Length varies between 9 - 13 mm.

​This excavation was begun by civil authorities (not archaeologists) as a bone was protruding from the sand in a public area.  There was, however, a great bit of detail involved, and between the information presented and later interviews, there was enough to logically reconstruct the burial.
 
One of the things that fascinates me with this particular find is that all of the beads are of the same type.  They have one to four segments, and have a simple color palette.  We do not know the original arrangement, unfortunately, but know that these items at least were worn together.  One other interesting item is that this paper notes that the beads were produced in long lengths and beads were snapped off as needed along the segmentations.  Based on the text, the metal glass beads are of two types, with one just having a metal coating on the glass and the other having a layer of clear glass encasing the metal.  The description of the process in this paper is a clunky, to say the least, but might be due to the lack of glass workers as part of the process (there is more in the way of experimental archaeology in that field now).
 
Personally, I have to wonder if it is truly gold encased the beads or if the glass merely had a reaction when laid over the silver that alters the color to gold (or perhaps it was amber colored glass laid over silver).  Even glass that has silver added to it (something done with spectacular modern color-shifting glasses), can produce fuming that will alter the color of adjacent glasses. 
 
In his blog entry, “Kaupang before the Coin”, Matthew Delvaux discusses the idea that the segmented beads were imported goods from the Middle East and proposes the idea that they possibly were a form of currency in the early Viking Age.
 

​As an aside, I need to note that I will probably be talking a great deal here about segmented beads as this particular item is found all over the Viking world.
 
This necklace is very simple, and when all strung together the necklace is 465mm long.  That length would make for a long swag between brooches, and the authors of the paper suggest possibly it was multiple strands.  It is also long enough to serve as a standard necklace as well. 
 
While reading about the Kneep necklace, I remembered a similar strand of beads from Birka and had to go back to look at that material to assuage my curiosity.  In Birka I, there is an image of a strand primarily comprised of segmented beads.  The caption for the photo has it listed as Grave 958.  However (and here goes some of my issues with the Birka material that I previously have mentioned), the descriptive text for that volume shows 958 as a male grave with a purse.  Grave 959 from that book seems to better fit the image attributed in the plates as 958.  
​

​The text describes the beads as being one carnelian, 5 dark blue made of glass (one triple segment, 4 double segment), 4 green glass beads (one 4 segments, one triple), 7 yellow glass beads (one triple segment, five double segment, one single).  These beads were found in conjunction with a pair of oval brooches (and the woman was decapitated, making for a rather gruesome interment).

My take on these finds is that sometimes smaller, and simpler, can be perfectly appropriate for a period impression.  Hopefully I can experiment further with crafting segmented beads myself!

Resources:
 
Arbman, Holger.  Birka I: Die Gräber, Tafeln, 1940.
 
Arbman, Holger.  Birka I: Die Gräber, Text, 1940.
 
Delvaux, Matthew.  “Kaupang before the Coin”, Text and Trowel, 2017.  https://textandtrowel.wordpress.com/2017/05/11/kaupang-before-the-coin/
 
Welander, R. D. E., et. al.  “A Viking Burial from Kneep, Uig, Isle of Lewis”, Proceedings of the Scoiety of Antiquaries of Scotland, Volume 117, 1987.
https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-352-1/dissemination/pdf/vol_117/117_149_174.pdf
 
National Museum of Scotland: https://www.nms.ac.uk/explore-our-collections/collection-search-results/?item_id=369355
 
Unimus.no Fotoportal: http://www.unimus.no/foto/imageviewer.html#/?id=12462897&type=jpeg

​As you have seen, I am learning to work glass and make glass beads.  I am still relatively new, and have a great deal of work ahead of me to advance this skill and I will be sharing some of my continued experiments on this blog under the heading of Glass Experiments.
 
I also am starting another category for my posts titled Viking Bead Research.  I am reading anything I can find on period bead production, but even of more interest to me is the context of the bead finds that we do have.  Anyone who has looked at Viking Age costume research for any amount of time comes to understand some of the flaws inherent in this particular field of science.  The foremost of which is that textiles quite often rarely survive in the grave, and what does is frequently fragmented.  Further, many of the graves that we reference were excavated during a time when textiles were not of interest to the archaeologists.  Typically they were not well treated, or merely scraped off the far more interesting (to them) metal weapons or jewelry.  Other practices were not as scientific as they are today, which can result in mislabeling of items from graves (meaning that at this point in time we are not be completely sure what items really do belong to what graves in some cases, and this can particularly come into play with older excavation sites like Birka).
 
In many cases, even solid, decorative items such as beads, were not as well regarded as impressive weapon burials.  This is a case made very clear by archaeologist Matthew Delvaux  In his blog “Text and Trowel”.  After describing how a cemetery in Bornholm, Denmark was excavated at a pace of 156 graves in 13 days, he then states “Beads in particular suffered from Vedel’s treatment. He recorded colors and numbers for each grave but then threw all the beads that he thought were worth keeping into containers for shipment to the National Museum of Denmark. The curators in Copenhagen resorted the monochrome beads into strings for each grave—although it’s unlikely that many of these beads actually came from the graves that they’re now associated with—and then they strung  all the mixed polychrome and mosaic beads onto strings of their own .”
 
Quite simply, this means that the beads we see hanging in some museums, or that are attributed to some graves, were not likely worn like that during the Viking Age.  They might not clearly represent something one individual owned.  And this also makes me wonder how many cases are there where the large, impressive beads make the displays, while the smaller items were lost to inept scientific practices, causing us to think that it was most common to have a string of large, multicolored beads?
 
Another thing that we often see out of context in reenactment are strings of beads from hoards.  Were these items really all strung together, and worn by one person, in life?  Or are those beads an accumulation of wealth just like the varied bits of silver in the same cache.  Do these collection of beads in a hoard relate in any way to beads in graves from the nearest settlement?

My plan is to poke through a variety of finds and look at the beads in context of not only the practices of the period, but also comparing that to more recent finds, finds from settlements and workshops (which might have different types of beads than those we sometimes see on display), and to look at the beads in context.  Are they from a settlement, hoard or grave? Where were they in the grave (at the neck, laying loose in the grave, contained in a pouch)? Were they found in conjunction with other items of dress such as oval brooches?  What do the more recent finds (with better scientific practices) show us?
 
I hope to share some of my finds, as well as my thoughts, as I wind my way along this trail.  Hopefully others will find it as interesting as I do!