The Borgund Kaupang Project has officially started!
The NFR-funded part of the Borgund Kaupang Project started 5th of August 2019, and will last throughout 2023. But even if the official start was in August, several studies in the Borgund Kaupang Project have been ongoing for a while.
Published: (Updated: )
Heidi Haugene is studying which types of leather were used for the shoes in Borgund during the Viking Age. Through a study of hair follicle patterns and by analyzing peptides (ZooMs) from small samples of leather it is possible to determine which animals were used to make leather items. Was the leather from domesticated animals, or did they also use leather from wild animals? How many types of leather would one encounter on one shoe? In 2018 the study of hair follicle patterns was finished and is now supplemented with the ZooMs-analysis. We are collaborating with the University of York (external link), who will do the peptide-analysis.
This spring Monika Ravnanger and Marta Kløve Juul experimented with different weaving techniques to establish which technique was used to produce the “varafell”-type, a type of pile woven cloth. In June, they initiated a collaborative project with Elisabeth Johnston from Shetland, UK who is an expert in ancient spinning technologies. Together they are trying to determine which method was used to make the yarn and pile behind the production of a specific type of varafeld- or pile weave.
Michèle Hayeur Smith has studied and classified the textiles from Borgund. Michèle found that there are more textiles in the Borgund corpus than we knew from the old catalogues. In June, we took samples for Strontium (Sr) isotope analysis, and for AMS (Accelerated Mass Spectrometry) dating from some of the textiles. Through Sr isotope analysis it is possible to determine the provenance of the wool the textile is made of. Department of Earth, Environmental, and planetary Sciences at Brown University (external link) is analyzing the Sr-samples in collaboration with the Haffenreffer Museum (external link) of Anthropology at Brown University (external link), and with the help of Brown University students. Preparation was carried out in a PicoTrace clean lab.