If you have come looking for information on medieval Korea, be sure to visit my website where things are hopefully grouped together coherently.

http://www.medieval-baltic.us/korea.html

If you're looking for information about medieval sign lexicons, and language, see:
http://medieval-baltic.us/msl.html

I just have to point out, that this is a 14th century saga that involves playing footsie...

From snerpa.is:Bósi leit oft hýrliga til hennar ok sté fæti sínum á rist henni, ok þetta bragð lék hún honum.

"Bosi kept cheerily looking at her, and touched his feet to her instep, and she played the same trick with him."

The racier-sounding translation is:
"Bosi kept eyeing [the attractive young daughter] suggestively and touching her foot with his toe, and she did the same to him."
(From: "Bosi and Herraud" in Two Viking Romances. Trans. Pálsson, Hermann and Edwards, Paul (1995). Harmondsworth, England: Penguin. ISBN 0146001567.)

Ah, so that why we don't know what the strap ends were doing in the Westness burial:
A farmer had accidentally dug up the grave, and buried a cow in it.

Page 136 of Vikings in Scotland: an archaeological survey, by James Graham-Campbell, and Colleen E. Batey. (Emphasis mine!)

...accidental discovery of the first grave in 1963. This was disturbed by a farmer burying a dead cow, so that little is known about the actual form of the grave. However, subsequent investigation, following the disinterment of the cow, revealed that it had contained a woman with a full term infant, who had presumably died in childbirth, buried with an exceptionally rich selection of ornaments and other objects...

Here's the 1963 mention of it page 42.

Gosh darn it!

á austrvega. Saga and East Scandinavia: Preprint papers of The 14th International Saga Conference. Uppsala 9th-15th August 2009
http://hig.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2:224754

Has both (huge!) volumes, but the contents page only mentions the author, not the title.

I haven't had a hard look at it, but there some are papers about(in no order) ...
( Read more... )

While trying to find out if anything new has happened with the Known World Handbook re-write, I found a 2006 Grand Council report discussing what they should put in it:

Motion: All articles in the new KWH should be written with the multi-kingdom and international aspects of the modern SCA in mind. Contributors should be encouraged to include references to the differences among Kingdoms as well as point out potential difficulties or differences that may impact SCA participants outside the US.

( Translation )

In short: I love the fact that it is only the US-Americans who are going to be traveling overseas (and apparently being easily confused by the existence of foreign countries, or even Canada), not the other way around.

Miss Margarethe Lehmann Filhés sends a communication about Two Icelandic Mittens.

If anyone can help with a possible specialized textile term for aufzug, as in Der Handschuh ist aus gewebtem Stoff mit feinem Aufzug, doch sehr dickem Einschlag, gefertigt, I'd love to know, it sounds like 'fabric with fine ribbing' to me... so a textured twill?

And I keep on finding typos, sorry.

This is me experimenting with what I can do with bobbins that isn't whipcording. :)

This is a 10-strand 'diagonal' fingerweaving pattern, that has two pink threads to show how the threads zig-zag. It is about 1.5cm wide, since I was aiming for something I could use as a belt.
Diagram 4 on that webpage illustrates the technique.



It was interesting to make, as most of the machine-made belts I'd seen were made from much stuffer material, and I suspect that is why my woollen piece looks a bit wavier. If you're using stiffer stuff, then you can also fold the 'threads' to make a neater and better-defined edge.
eg. weaving with blades of grass.

(Astute observers will note one end as three plaits and the other has four. The fourth plait comes from the... I have no idea what it's called, but I've seen it in sprang too... where I interlocked an extra piece at the end before I plaited the ends. Oh, and I lost about 45cm of string length in the weaving. It's now about 240cm long.)

Next on the list is the 'chevron' pattern, which seems to closely match up with what Hald describes and draws as the structure of some fragments from Mammen. I think I'll wait until I get better at the technique before I move from 10 threads to 24.

PS.
I'm really not sure I understand the theory here (.doc)/Google cache HTML about the fingerwoven fragments looking identical to sprang. But it seems to be one of the better descriptions of the Mammen fragments I've been thinking about.
Any textile people able to comment?

"Changes in Toilet Features"
Paleolithic Age to Jomon Period: Disposal of Excrement by Natural Dissolution
http://memorias.ioc.fiocruz.br/98sup/15pctf.html

Palaeoparasitology in Japan - Discovery of toilet features
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0074-02762003000900019&script=sci_arttext

And there is a new book out on the topic
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20091222a5.html

I admit, I knew of some articles on parasites found inside mid-Joseon period mummies, but there is an entire blog devoted to Korean paleopathology: http://shinpaleopathology.blogspot.com/

D. H. Shin, C. S. Oh, T. Chung, Y. S. Yi, J. Y. Chai, M. Seo "Detection of parasite eggs from a moat encircling the royal palace of Silla, the ancient Korean Kingdom" Journal of Archaeological Science 2009.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WH8-4WSHK80-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1155499321&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=28ab7bfa4ca387e6a699fafc7b6756b9

Found a double strap-end grave.
9th century, Westness, Rousay, Orkney Islands.
http://nms.scran.ac.uk/database/record.php?usi=000-000-099-764-C

Museum Collections of Silk Road Art: http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/museums/srmuseums.html