SCA: Experiments In “Viking Wire Knitting”

 I learned a new thing! “Viking wire knitting” or “wire weaving” is a method of making chain out of thin metal wire that goes back to at least the 5th century as far as I’ve been able to figure out. It’s been hard to find real documentable research on the craft online; apparently it’s also called “trichinopoly” chain and there are examples of it from the 5-8th century in the British Museum as well as from the Spillings Hoard from Sweden. 

My first wire chain, made of 28ga silver coated brass wire. 

I made a piece long enough to get a bracelet and necklace out of, and finished them off with random bits from my jewelry making stash - the cone ends on the necklace are too big for the chain, but they’ll do for the time being. 

The chain is made by looping the wire around a wooden dowel, and then drawing the finished result through a draw plate, which I made out of a piece of scrap wood, until it’s the right diameter. I think I could have gotten mine thinner, but I was worried about breaking the flimsy brass wire. 

Mr. Darcy apparently thought we were making a cat toy. 

Hooray for learning new fun skills! I now have a silver bracelet and necklace to wear with my kit; and I can’t wait to try this again and try out different methods of looping the wire. My chain is a single knit, but you can do double or triple knit, and there are all kinds of colors and types of wire to play with. 

SCA: Updated 9th Century Norse "Viking" Kit (female)

I know I've been posting a LOT of tablet weaving lately - the tunic and the coat and the bag - but I thought I'd show you my full [female] "Viking" kit all decked out with the jewelry and the other tablet weaving I've been doing.  This is my nicest, and my favorite, Viking outfit at the moment: 

The entire outfit is made from linen - the serk, smokkr, and the herringbone weave cloak/shawl.  Yes, wool would be more historically accurate for some of these pieces, but it's HOT here in central Ansteorra, and wool just isn't practical in this heat unless it's the middle of January.  

The dark blue smokkr was a lighter teal color, but I dyed it to a darker indigo shade to make it look nicer and more accurate (ish).  

Tablet weaving on this outfit consists of: 

• The blue and yellow band at the top of the smokkr underneath the blue silk trim fabric
• The ivory/white woven band at the neckline of the serk, which is meant to mimic the look of a woven-on edge, though it's actually just sewn in place
• The blue and white belt
• The thin strap that hangs the metal key from the right brooch (left in the picture)

Here's a better shot of the weaving and the jewelry on the front of the dress: 

The jewelry consists of

• a pair of bronze brooches purchased online
• a silver round brooch to close the serk neckline which I made from a metal button
• three strands of glass beads suspended from the bronze brooches, which I made myself (it turns out I'm awful at making beads, but I managed to get enough made to wear with my kit at least)
• a strand of tiny blue glass beads around the neck
• a strand of amber chips around the neck
• three silver raven pendants which hang from the lowest strand of beads between the brooches - two of them are period replicas, and the third is a modern knotwork design

The only thing missing from these photos is the hair and the shoes, and I'll post more about both of those things later.  

SCA: Shiny New Viking Stuff!

Yes, I was responsible with most of my tax refund this year, but I also treated myself to a couple of new shiny things for the SCA: 

Birka Cup

I think my favorite thing in the world, at the moment, is this little glass cup in the foreground of this photo.  

It's a replica of a glass cup found at Birka (this cup was from grave 750, exc. by Hjalmar Stolpe in 1897), and it just makes my heart glad.  I love glassware, especially period glassware - and this is the first piece of period glassware I've ever owned.   

Key

I also got this lovely little bronze Viking key from Raymond's Quiet Press.  It's a replica of an extant key from Lund in Sweden, and it's a great little addition to my set of "jewelry".  I wove a very thin band to use to hang it from my brooches.  

Yay, shiny Viking stuff!  

What's Next? 

I'm working on a BUNCH of things right now, so there'll be posts a-plenty coming up soon.  This weekend is the spring Bjornsborg event, from which there will be pictures (I hope).  I'm weaving my butt off right now making trim to go on my linen Viking coat, I'm working on a new Hedeby bag, I built a new loom and am trying it out, and I'm working on a Roman outfit for the hot weather this coming season.  Whew!  More soon! 

SCA: On Making Glass Beads and New Viking Jewelry

At the beginning of March I posted about making my own glass beads at home (here).  I'm still going strong, and I'm getting better with every batch I make.  It's SO much fun, and although it's pretty fast, it takes a lot of focus to get them right. 

My work table, all set up and ready to go

Right now I'm making about 7-10 beads per session, about 2 sessions per week.  Most of the beads I've made have been in shades of blue and green, although I recently picked up some white and yellow to throw into the mix and to use to make dots and stripes on my beads.  So far I've mostly been focusing on perfecting my round and oval-shaped beads, and learning to control the glass enough to make some larger ones; my next phase I think will be getting better at making dots and stripes and other patterns.  

A selection of beads I've made at home

All of this, of course, has been for the purpose of re-making my "festoon" for my 10th-century Viking kit.  Until now, the strands of beads I hang between my brooches have been made of store-bought beads - mostly glass and acrylic, in blue and amber tones.  I liked the color arrangement of my most recent iteration of the necklaces, but the beads were too perfect and modern looking; and to be honest, the more I look at the grave finds, the more this necklace just looks plastic and garish to me: 

My most recent set of necklaces, in modern store-bought beads

It's an SCA-ism, I suppose, that the more huge and ostentatious you can make your Viking jewelry, the better.  The reality is that (based on grave finds) most of these bead necklaces ranged from 18-20 beads per person, and that the beads themselves ranged from 10-16mm each.  We have no idea how exactly women wore these bead strands - whether they were worn as a single strand or multiple strands, how many beads per strand, etc., because only the loose beads have been found - whatever material the beads were strung on has disintegrated with time.  Found beads are usually glass, although some of amber, jet, quartz crystal, and carnelian have been found as well.  These were understated jewelry pieces by SCA standards - not 30 pounds of rocks and glass to impress your friends.

My first  "festoon" necklace set with about 95% homemade beads

Here's what my new set looks like for the time being.  Beads are small-medium sized, with a couple of larger ones in the center of each strand, in shades of blue and green and yellow.  (There are also 4 glass beads that I didn't make included here as well, because I loved them and wanted to re-use them).  It's simpler and plainer; and the beads themselves are more in line with what I've seen from grave finds in color and shape and size.  

A couple of smaller points, because people have asked:  

This necklace is strung on #10 cotton crochet thread.  I forgot to wax it this time for strength, so we'll see how it holds up. (The last set did just fine). 

I have three raven pendants that I hang from my beads. Two of them are historical representations based on actual finds; the third is a modern pendant I received for my birthday many years ago. The use of metal pendants may or may not be period (it's probably not); but I love my ravens.  

I no longer incorporate metal beads into my design, now that I have enough glass beads to make up the entire piece.  I read somewhere that metal beads have been found in graves/a grave, but I can't find the source anymore, and I've also read that metal beads were NOT a thing, so for the time being I'm not including them unless I can find something definitive one way or the other.   

 

Glass bead on an iron mandrel, Gotland (photo from 

Gotland Visby Museum; via text and trowel) 

So, what's next? More beads! This is my first set of necklaces; I fully intend to keep going, to get better and learn how to do more patterns and styles.  I would like to make a better set of necklaces for myself, and I'd also like to make enough beads that I can start giving them away as presents and largesse.  

I want to write for pages and pages on Viking-age bead finds, and maybe I will someday (maybe I'll turn all this into an A&S project and write a huge paper one day), but for now, here are some of my favorite online places to go to read about Viking-age beads: 

• Dr. Matthew Delvaux's FANTASTIC blog about Viking-age glass beads and trade routes, called "text and trowel": https://textandtrowel.wordpress.com/ 
• A Wandering Elf's Viking bead research blog posts: http://awanderingelf.weebly.com/blog-my-journey/category/viking-bead-research 
• Viking Age Beads, by Elin Hreitharsdottir https://www.researchgate.net/publication/273133694_Viking_age_beads_from_Iceland 
• Perler fra vikingtiden (Beads of the Viking Age) by Megan Hickey https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/8571/1/Megan%20Hickey%20MA%20Final%20Dissertation%202014.pdf

SCA: Glass Beads

 Before the pandemic, I got the awesome opportunity to learn to make glass beads with FIRE.  It's called lampworking or torchworking - it's where you melt glass rods over a very hot flame, and wrap the molten glass around a steel rod called a mandrel to form a glass bead.  It's utterly fascinating, and SO much fun - and it's historically accurate! Not only did the Vikings make beads in this way, but many other ancient cultures did as well.  

I was immediately hooked, and set about slowly amassing the supplies to set up a glass-working shop in my own garage.  In February of this year, I was afforded another opportunity to make glass beads in the same friend's workshop; and I finished collecting the supplies I needed to make beads at home.  Although it was simple enough at first, the learning curve was huge, and I'm in the process of making a LOT of beginner mistakes at the moment. 

That said, I'm coming along pretty well, I think.  I'm working on making my beads and smooth and round as possible, and beginning to work on creating enough beads to thoroughly re-work my Viking "festoon"bead strands.  I'm not nearly there yet, but I'm having a LOT of fun doing it.  

Here's a sampling of some of the beads I've made.  Most are tiny, some are messed up, but all of them have been a really awesome learning experience: