Leather from Borgund and Waauu-feelings

I have done this job because I am interested in the demographic composition of the people in Borgund, and the social identity of crafts people who worked here during the lifetime of Borgund. These are themes I’ll dive into in collaboration with Sigrid S. Mygland who is part of the Borgund team as well.

I documented the size of shoes, the general type of shoe and not least divided the debris from leather working into categories, which reflect the use of ‘fresh’ leather as well as the re-use of leather objects, see the photo of leather production debris below. Most of the objects and fragments were documented by photo and data on such as type, size and weight were entered in the university Museum of Bergen’s Borgund Kaupang Project database. For many objects hair follicle data was collected and documented by dino microscope, to supplement the studies already published by Heidi Haugene et al. in 2023.

Hardly any of the leather finds have been conserved, so the objects are mostly deformed and of course are stiff and fragile. They cannot be manipulated or ‘unfolded’ when taking the wanted measures. I used a string with a knot and wound it along the parts of the shoe that I wanted to measure. This way I got measurements from even difficult crumbled places. I hope I will have enough data to say something qualified about the share of men, women and small children in Borgund. The small children are those of 6 years and younger, which were probably not part of the workforce.

THE WAAUU-FEELING!

There are always new things that come up when diving into archaeological finds! Two kinds of details among the leather finds gave me a ‘WAAUU’ -feeling.

One detail was the many leather strings with knots that are found among the leather working debris. Perhaps most of these are strings of left-over leather scraps used to tie around something here and now, to ensure a tidy workshop environment?

The other detail was toothmarks impressed in the leather working debris. The toothmarks were on debris from ‘fresh’ leather and I imagine that the leatherworker used teeth as a ‘third hand’.

Why did the knots and toothmarks give me a waauu-feeling? Perhaps the novelty (for me) of the finds is a reason? I Have studied a lot of archaeological leather finds during my time as an archaeologist, but never seen neither toothmarks nor thought about the knots, so as a professional I saw something new. And something new and unexpected is always welcome for a researcher! Perhaps it triggers ‘the hunt’ for patterns and new insights?

It may also be that these small details gave me a feeling of ‘no filter’ between me and the person(s) who tied a knot or dug teeth into the leather in Borgund so many years ago? So maybe an encounter between humans 1000 years apart?

Shoes can in a very direct tell us about the age of the wearer, is it a child’s shoe? Or a grown-up’s shoe? Of course there are a lot of questions regarding preservation, shrinkage, size of medieval people compared to modern people and so on. These many questions will have to be discussed, but still I hope the new dataset on leather finds will be useful and give us new insight into the identity of people in Borgund.