pst-Vik-Norse-msg - 1/10/00
Post Viking Norse. Sources.
NOTE: See also the files: TEIO-Vikings-art, Norse-food-art, amber-buying-art, Norse-games-art, V-Arts-and-A-art, Finland-msg, Finland-hist-art, Iceland-msg, Norse-msg.
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From: Thomas Ireland-Delfs <fridrikr at redsuspenders.com>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: post-Viking Norwegian sources
Date: 10 Jul 97 12:46:01 GMT
morphis at niuhep.physics.niu.edu writes: > Hello,
> I am considering a personna out of Norway from about 1200-1550
> but most of the Nordic sources are for the Viking period, with what
> appears to be a sprinkling of Danish sources. Does anybody have
> sources for this time period? How well does late Viking clothing
> translate for this time period?
>
> Robert
>
> Morphis at physics.niu.edu
Just my two cents here:
Two sources (I'm a Norse persona from ~1200 myself) that are immediately
at hand:
1) Kristen Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset. Although it's a fictional account of
early-mid 14th century Norway, the historical accuracy is pretty damned good.
It's generally available in paperback (in 3 volumes) ISBN # for Volume 1 is 0-394-75299-6
2) From Viking to Crusader: Scandanavia & Europe 800-1200. Published by Rizzoli Books. This is fairly pricey (~ $50) but beautiful. It is an expanded catalog of a museum display which traveled in Europe in 1992. Of course, you want to be careful to look at the later period pieces.
In general, the clothing styles don't seem to change drastically in the 200 years or so after Viking period ended (~1100). And most folk will call you a Viking, no matter how late in period you go, until you start into the 15th century or so.
FRIDRIKR
From: mmy at fp.co.nz (mmy)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: post-Viking Norwegian sources
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 08:16:01 GMT
On 9 Jul 1997 21:10:40 GMT, "Joe Pinegar" <pinegarj at swbell.net> wrote:
>You might have luck with sources if you orient your search towards Church
>documents, trade and commerce records (there are lots of those,
>particulary covering trade between England and Norway, and Iceland trade
>that was all going through Norway by that time), or accounts of northern
>Eurpoe that would describe the Scandinavian impact on the societies of
>other areas. Or look for stuff on the royal families - I *think* the Vasas
>were starting in Sweden by 1550, and there may be material on the Norwegian
>and Danish royal houses as well.
Gustav Vasa was an interesting character, and it's particularly
interesting to see how many elements his flight have in common with
stories about Alfred the Great and his plight. However, I digress.
For earlier stuff there are sources as well - although I'm not sure
about availability in English. Look for books about the big events of
the time: they should have some background information for you. The
Battle of Visby happened as a result of the Hansa Union's dominance in
the Baltic, and the growing strength of the Danish royal house under
Valdemar Atterdag. Speaking of whom, his daughter had a rather big
influence on the nordic countries; I haven't seen anyone mention the
Kalmar Union.
With the recent 600th anniversary of that document, the Danish
National Museum put out a special exhibition with artefacts from all
nordic countries. We're talking 1300-s here, with the background for
the event, but the exhibition covered trade, politics, dress, daily
life, church - very inclusive, very good. I was lucky enough to see it
purely by chance. They put out a multi-lingual catalogue of the
exhibition, and it was for sale in the bookshop at the museum. I
didn't have enough cash after the British Museum/Library trip, so I
didn't get it then, but the Natmus has a website, do a search for it
on the web if you're interested.
Items displayed included the golden 'kirtle' of queen Margarethe I,
brought down from Uppsala along with the replica. They had to drag me
away....
/muireann
************************************************************
* MMY * Maggie.Mulvaney at fp.co.nz *
* Maggie Mulvaney * http://www.fpnet.co.nz/users/m/maggiem *
************************************************************
From: Sharon Palmer <palmer.74 at osu.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: post-Viking Norwegian sources
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 1997 01:40:50 -0500
Organization: WOSU
morphis at niuhep.physics.niu.edu wrote:
> I am considering a personna out of Norway from about 1200-1550
> but most of the Nordic sources are for the Viking period, with what
> appears to be a sprinkling of Danish sources. Does anybody have
> sources for this time period? How well does late Viking clothing
> translate for this time period?
_Medieval Scandinavia - From Conversion to Reformation, circa 800-1500_
Birgit and Peter Sawyer, The Nordic Series, Vol. 17, Univ. of Minnesota Press
ISBN 0-8166-1739-2, 1993.
a smallish scholarly paper back, mostly dealing with political and social
issues. I don't remember much discussion of clothing or artifacts.
The 11 page "Works Cited" might be useful.
Pg. 208 shows small B&W portraits of Ivar Axelsson and his wife
Magdalena
"These are the earliest known Scandinavian portraits and were originally
part of an altar screen. They were painted in about 1475, prob. on
Gotland which was then held by Ivar."
They are definately NOT wearing "Viking" clothing.
He wears a loose robe with fur trim and very nice all over embroidery.
The sleeves were so long that they are pushed back into folds.
His lady wears a full robe with what must be an under tunic showing
at the cuffs and what looks like a cuffed stocking hat of light cloth
with the tail draped across her neckline like a necklace.
If anyone wants me to, I will scan and Email the portraits
Ranvaig mka Sharon Palmer
palmer.74 at osu.edu
From: Mari L J Voipio <mvoipio at cc.helsinki.fi>
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: post-Viking Norwegian sources
Date: 10 Jul 1997 14:09:04 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
morphis at niuhep.physics.niu.edu wrote:
: I am considering a personna out of Norway from about 1200-1550
: but most of the Nordic sources are for the Viking period, with what
: appears to be a sprinkling of Danish sources. Does anybody have
: sources for this time period? How well does late Viking clothing
: translate for this time period?
I am myself thinking about a Norwegian pre-plague (but Christian)
persona, but alas, I'm in the very beginning of my research. I also read
Norwegian fluently, but some of the literature is surely available in
English.
If Norway 1300-1350 sounds good to you, start with Sigrid Undset's novel
in three parts about Kristin Lavransdatter (don't ask me, what it is in
English. But search for Sigrid Undset, she even got the Nobel prize
before WWII, I think). Undset did very thorough research for her books
and though we know more about medieval Norway now than then, the facts
found in her books are still valid and many of the descriptions
are very useful. You could also look for books written _about_
the novels.
Norwegian history 1200-1550 has roughly two periods:
1) 1200-1350 (before the Black Death)
2) 1350-1540 (after the Black Death, before the Reformation)
During the first period Norway was an independent kingdom which got
richer all the time towards 1350 (this is one of the reasons
I consider the same period than when Undset's novels happen). The hansa
added to the economical (and cultural) well-being with Bergen as it's
main port in Norway while Nidaros (today called Trondheim or sometimes
Trondhjem) with the relics of Saint Olav was very popular among
Scandinavian and even other European pilgrims.
The second period (and a long time after it all the way until 18th
century) was not a good time for Norway. The plague decimated the people
and was especially hard on priests and so there were very few learned
persons left afterwards. The nobles were also few and could not
defend the country which got under Danish rule before the end of the
14th century. Nominally it was a personal union (i.e. the Norwegians
chose to have the same king than Danes) but in practice Norwegians went
under Danish rule and got mostly the worse part. The plague had caused
an agricultural crisis and stopped the economical growth (and I think
the climate also got colder). Because there were few priests and
scribes, more were imported from Denmark and so Danish naturally
replaced Norwegian (the differences were not very great by that
time) as the administrative language.
Disclaimer: I am at work on the moment (and supposed to be editing a
file with several thousand Norwegian words...) and wrote this outline as
I remember things, it might be that something is wrong. I haven't done
very extensive research yet so my thinking and likings maybe a bit
biased.
A lot of this story is probably told in books about _Danish_ medieval
history, but there are also some books about Norwegian history at least
in Norwegian. The medieval history has been in during recent years, both
Oslo and Trondheim (and very probably also Bergen) have very good
museums that tell about their Middle Ages. This year the city of
Trondheim celebrates its 1000th year.
As to the garb, we are supposed to be gentles, and that garb was pretty
much like elsewhere in Northern Europe. Viking garb might just do for
the beginning of your period (you can always say that you live far from
the cities and don't follow latest fashions), but very probably not
later. If you don't find anything about Norwegian garb, search Denmark
and Germany as that's where most of the impulses (and some of the finer
fabrics) came from. If you have any chance, try to get to see Kristin
Lavransdatter's latest film version (by Liv Ullman 1995 or 1996, also on
video), it has very nice garb, which look good enought to me. I got to
see the film here sponsored by the Norwegian embassy in Finland and at
least that version had English text. You can always try...
I'm afraid I cannot help your more on the moment, but feel free to email
me and ask whatever you want and that will even spur my own research
a bit more!
In Your Service and in Service of the Dream,
Johanna (no more names yet!),
in the canton of Hucca in the Barony of Aarnimetsa (Finland)
in the Kindom of Drachenwald
mundanely: Mari Voipio, Mari.Voipio at helsinki.fi
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
From: bq676 at torfree.net (Kristine E. Maitland)
Subject: Re: post-Viking Norwegian sources
Organization: Toronto Free-Net
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 1997 21:44:08 GMT
morphis at niuhep.physics.niu.edu writes:
> I am considering a personna out of Norway from about 1200-1550
> but most of the Nordic sources are for the Viking period, with what
> appears to be a sprinkling of Danish sources. Does anybody have
> sources for this time period? How well does late Viking clothing
> translate for this time period?
I can't help you with primary sources but I can recommend a
pretty good journal that you may want to take a look at. It's called:
_Scandinavian Studies: the journal for the Society for the Advancement of
Scandinavian Study_
Communications about subscriptions should be addressed to the
Secretary-Treasurer, SASS, 3005 JKHB, Brigham Young University, Provo,
UT, 84602. (it's quarterly and costs $35 a year)
Hope this is useful (I don't do Nordic personae but I am currently doing
some research on the portrayal of blacks in norse literature due to an
article I saw in SS -- way cool).
sinceremente
Inez Rosanera Kristine Maitland
Greater York Toronto, ON, Canada
Barony of Septentria
Principality of Ealdormere
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 22:17:22 -0500
From: "I. Marc Carlson" <LIB_IMC at centum.utulsa.edu>
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: RE: Post-Viking Costume
<Grace Morris <gmorris at cs14.pds.charlotte.nc.us>>
>Now that I have moved back to a kingdom that actually has a winter, I
>want to return to this long abandonded search. Does anyone have sources for
>Scandinavian costume, post-Viking? English preferred, but not necessary.
>Art sources greatly appreciated.
How are you defining "post-Viking"? If you are interested in, say 1200-1400
era clothes, you might take a look at
"www.geocities.com/Athens/Parthenon/5923/cloth/bockhome.html"
It's not perfect, but it may be of a little use.
Marc/Diarmaid
From: mmy at iconz.co.nz (Maggie Forest)
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: Re: persona documents could you give me a good site to make a viking persona
Date: Wed, 29 Sep 1999 20:00:20 GMT
Organization: ICONZ - The Internet Company of New Zealand
On 29 Sep 1999 14:55:12 GMT, Mari L J Voipio <mvoipio at cc.helsinki.fi>
wrote:
>Actually, it is very easy if you are sitting here, near Scandinavia, but
>I can sympathise with you - can't be easy to find if you are on the
>other side of the Atlantic and don't read the Scandinavian languages.
One really useful book I've found was the museum catalogue for the
Nordic exhibition about Margrethe I that ran a couple of years ago.
It's a big sucker, was published in an English edition, and consists
of a number of essays (fairly brief, but a very good starting point)
on topics ranging from coins to clothes to the extent of the plague,
all written by people who are experts in their particular area. The
rest of the book is the actual catalogue, liberally peppered with
pictures. If you can still get hold of it (and I acknowledge that it
may be hard now) you should be able to get it from the Danish National
Museum, www.natmus.dk
Although I read the Scandinavian languages, I bought this one in
English, since our household members don't and it's a great book to
give them an idea of what they need to know.
Johanna - I'd really appreciate some more ideas in Scandinavian
languages if you have them? I do Danish, around 1365 or so. Although I
read the languages, just finding the literature from this far away can
be challenging!
/marienna jensdatter
Date: Thu, 23 Dec 1999 09:24:36 -0500 (EST)
From: Grace Morris <gmorris at cs14.pds.charlotte.nc.us>
To: sca-arts at raven.cc.ukans.edu
Subject: was Merovingian/now Swedish nuns
For anyone following this who likes the "strange and unusual" I found my
picture of the "skunk nuns". The picture is entitled "The Translation of
St. Birgitta from Rome to Vadstena" and is a fresco or ceiling painting
(not clear) for the Village Church of Tensta, Uppland. The date is 1437
(later than I remembered) so it is possible that the dress was
regularized before then. I have a xerox, but I believe that it was black
and white in the book. The veil is black (?) with either a white lining or
a white veil underneath; the stripe is more like 3-4 inches. Also worn
is a black cloak lined in white, and a darker than white (beige? gray?)
gown underneath. Oh, and a white veil around the neck and face.
If you like things Scandinavian, but POST VIKING (a period usually
neglected in the SCA!) this is a good source:
Kusch, Eugen. "Ancient Art in Scandinavia". Nurnberg: Hans Carl, 1964
also look at:
Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities. " Medieval
Wooden Sculpture in Sweden". Stockholm: Almquits and Wiskell, 1964
Jessamyn
<the end>