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.

AOA Circlet Research

As the people of 10th century Gotland did not wear circlets and weaving metal to look like tablet weaving is waaaayyyyy beyond my skill level (for the moment); I have decided to look at other ring shaped jewelry and then use it as a base for my design. Here is what I have found so far:

In the category of allegedly of period origin, but with no specific extant piece listed we have:

From: http://www.urweg.com/


Gotland Bracelet
Lye, Gotland, Sweden - Viking Era

More to come as I figure out how to better incorporate images into a post