Since a few years, I’ve been meaning to make a reproduction of the Tarsoly belt bag found in the Birka grave BJ 904. The fittings of this bag is one of the main reasons why I want to make this bag in particular. My name is RefR, the Old Norse word for “fox”, and there are fox-head shaped fittings on this bag. Clearly, it’s meant to be.
In my previous post on this topic, I discussed the bag in general, and talked briefly about my plans for its design. In this post, I will discuss the fittings themselves and the challenges that acquiring them pose in more depth.
Since I went to my first viking age market, I have been borrowing my girlfriend’s belt bag. Not only is this bag not very historically accurate, but it’s also not, well, mine. For a while, I’ve felt that it’s time I got my own bag, and since I am working on reconstructing the Birka grave BJ 886 I wanted to properly reconstruct a bag from Birka.
At the viking week at Foteviken’s museum in 2021, I spent some time playing tunes on my dear old violin. It was much appreciated, but I felt that my violin from the early 1900’s didn’t really fit the setting. I decided then to do something I’d been mulling over for a while, and build myself a talharpa.
A while back I decided to make an interpretation of the contents of the Birka grave BJ 886. In this post, I will share the background material that I have on the grave, which I will base my interpretation on.
The grave is a chamber grave from the 10th century, containing the remains of a wealthy man. There are remnants of a kaftan, a hat, a wallet, a sword and shield, and a game board.
I have spent the last few months (sporadically) looking into the fyddle, how it looked, how it was tuned, and of course what makes a fyddle a fyddle. Since I plan on getting started on actual construction soonish, I thought this would be a good opportunity to go over my findings.
The Society of the Golden Egg is a household that aims to encourages and promotes challenging oneself in the Arts and Sciences within the Society of Creative Anachronism (SCA). Being the kind of person who could not keep my hands off new crafts and projects if my life depended on it, I felt immediately drawn to taking on such a challenge when I learned of the existence of the Society of the Golden Egg. Now, a year later, I went ahead and formally took on the challenge of building a medieval fyddle.
