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