Thinking of Suds

So I have been doing research into soap and soap making... It seems that the Vikings may have been one of the first groups of people to make and use soap consistently for cleaning themselves and their clothing. There is some speculative evidence suggesting that they did both in the same time, and that this fact may have been due in small part the the presence of hot springs in a majority of the locations where these people settled. If you didn't have to spend half the day waiting to prep the bath water, you were more likely to bath. Which makes sense actually...
So, to this end, the AoA circlet project has been abandon due to lack of funding... and I am moving on to soap making. In the next day or two I intend to start with the extraction of lye from wood ash. I will be posting pictures of my progress as soon as I start; and I will try an chronicle the whole process as much as I can. The chemistry of this process is somewhat shaky and involves things like tasting the solution, floating eggs, and melting feathers... it feels so much like alchemy it is spine tingling.

Thoughts on Connectivity

I have been talking to my father a lot recently. He has been exploring the depths of Buddhism, and has some especially profound things to say. This has come at a time when I have been doing a lot of thinking on connectivity in general, but specifically how it relates to experimental archeology and my intentions for study.

I have begun to feel very connected to the people I am studying. I dream of misty hills that dive into the clear cold Baltic sea. My thoughts are filled with images of a life not lived in this existence. And I wonder about the connectivity in the world. I feel tied to these North People; not just the Norse people of Gotland, but of all the people living so close to the Arctic Circle. There is frost in my veins....

As I look over the simple objects found in the graves of these people, I wonder about their lives... their conversations... their dreams.

I see a simple expression present in all of the artifacts of the Gautar, the Sevar, the Curonian, the Inuit, the Lapps, and the Sami. They shared an understanding of each other... they shared the ocean, the rock of ages, and the cold.

The similarity of the objects is uncanny. Yes, they differed in small ways only barely visible to experts; and yes, each culture had some major art or craft that the others didn't... but they shared so much. In the picture I have posted... Can you tell if these tools were made by the modern Inuit people, or ancient Norse people... ?

A connection between the ages seems to be evident as well. These people carried the tools of ages past as sacred objects meaningful on the deepest levels. They lived with the past in a way that our modern mind full of living not in the now, but in the next can not begin to comprehend.

It is these connections, these fuzzy edges between cultures, generations, and belief that have me captivated.

It is wondrous, it is beautiful, it is sacred...

It is magic!

AOA Circlet Research - Part 2

Here are two more images of circular jewerly from Gotland.

This one is from the same reproduction supplier as the first one posted

And this one is from an actual grave find... From the Polotsk National Historical Cultural Museum and Reserve (http://polotsk.museum.by/en/node/129)

Twisted ring from island of Gotland. 11th century. Gold 900*, filegreed. D-25,0.
Excavations by V. Bulkhin.
Upper Castle, Polotsk, 1978.

All of what I am finding looks like a large gauge metal wire with a smaller wire or multiple wires twisted with it. More specifically two small gauge wires twisted with one another, and then that new created twist then twisted with a larger gauge wire. The terminals all seem to either be animal head or tendril like scrolls… More research on actual grave finds is needed, but I think this has me going the right direction