Posted on 09/23/2023 9:53:51 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
Analysis of hair combs made from deer antler has shed new light on the trade routes of Vikings - revealing connections between northern Scandinavia and the edges of continental Europe.
Led by researchers from the University of York, the findings provide evidence of trade connections between the town of Hedeby (modern Schleswig-Holstein, Germany), the largest urban settlement in Viking Age Europe, and upland Scandinavia, hundreds of kilometres to the north...
Hedeby was a major centre of antler-working, with 288,000 antler finds recorded, most of which was waste material from the production of hair combs: a major urban craft in the Viking Age...
The findings revealed that 85-90% of the combs were made from reindeer antler. Reindeer herds were only located in northern Scandinavia, indicating that either the combs themselves or the antlers from which they were made were imported.
A previous study of waste from the production of antler artefacts at the site found that only 0.5% of the waste was from reindeer, and no manufacturing evidence from this early phase is known. Therefore, these combs were almost certainly produced elsewhere. This demonstrates the existence of large-scale, frequent long-range maritime contact between Hedeby and the north as early as AD 800.
(Excerpt) Read more at york.ac.uk ...
No problem.. I spent a number of years in a Scandinavian country at an impressionable age and became a viking, well, enthusiast may be too strong.
When someone says, vikings (more likely, generic Norsemen) could not have been “there,” I take out a globe. Turn it so Norway and Sweden are in the center as you look at it. Look at all the places we know the Norse went: Kiev, Constatinople, Southern Italy, “Normandy” of course, England, Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Vinland. That makes a huge circle with only a few areas within it not named.
When someone says, surely they could not have gone there, I say, they went everywhere else, why would they NOT go there? The Alexandria, Minnesota runestone? There are definitely technical problems, but it’s well within where I expect some Norse would have gone.
Thanks I saw a documentary on it amazing how they had the ability to do so many things.
That’s nothing, they traveled nearly 3000 miles (more than 2000 as the crow flies) to trade with the Arabs.
Even Iceland — which the Vikings colonized — is 750 miles away (across open ocean), and its northern tip touches the Arctic Circle.
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