Translation from Norwegian to English: John Hines.
In the 5th-7th centuries AD, members of the female population in Scandinavia frequently wore a costume adorned with conspicuous items of jewellery. Many of the items, such as brooches and clasps, were dress-accessories used to fasten these garments. Some of them, moreover, were popular over an extended area of Europe, and have been found in Scandinavia, Anglo-Saxon England and on the Continent alike. This book provides an analysis of more than 1,800 such items of jewellery from Scandinavia. It explores the contextual and geographical distribution through time of four major types of dress-accessory: cruciform brooches, relief brooches, wrist-clasps and conical brooches. Detailed analysis reveals distribution patterns and variations that provide new insights into the multifaceted reality of the Scandinavian pre-Viking period. The author argues that in a time characterized by social stress and upheaval, women played an important role in the negotiation of identities through the use of costume adorned with dress-accessories. These negotiations were part of a continuous, complex and ever-changing discourse of identity, in which different dimensions of multiple identities were generated, articulated and transformed. In some instances, a common identity is manifest even at a date which precedes by several centuries the unification of much the same areas into single medieval kingdoms, while social and political conditions could equally trigger either the material expression or the disappearance of shared identities at local, regional, and even pan-European levels. This book also offers a more nuanced view of ethnic groupings during the 5th-7th centuries by examining the inter-connectedness of the flexible and mobile 'warrior nations' of the Migration Period, and the territorially rooted, often historically documented 'peoples', who are reflected in the practices of female dress.
Author(s): Ingunn Marit Røstad
Series: Norske Oldfunn, 32
Publisher: Cappelen Damm Akademisk
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 392
City: Oslo
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Chapter 1. Costume and the display of identity in the Migration and early Merovingian Periods
1.1 Introduction: the background to the research
1.2 Costume and peoples in the European Early Middle Ages
1.3 Jewellery and group identity in the context of Scandinavia
1.4 Jewellery, costume and the manifestation of cultural and ethnic identity in Scandinavia: the key questions
1.5 The structure of the book
Chapter 2. Jewellery, visual communication and the manifestation of identity – theoretical perspectives
2.1 A practice theory of ethnicity
2.2 Jewellery, costume, and negotiations of identity: an ethnic explanatory model
2.3 Methodological implications
Chapter 3. Chronological Framework and Dating
3.1 The Migration Period
3.2 The Merovingian Period
3.3 Production, periods of use, and date of deposition
Chapter 4. A study of the distribution and contexts of the jewellery
4.1.1 Introduction
4.2 The Migration Period
4.2.1 Cruciform brooches
4.2.2 Relief brooches
4.2.3 Clasps
4.2.4 Other jewellery of the Migration Period
4.3 The Merovingian Period
4.3.1 Conical brooches
4.3.2 Other types of dress-accessory of phase 1 of the Merovingian Period
4.4 Summary of the study of the evidence
Chapter 5. The geographical, chronological and contextual distribution of the types of dress-accessory: a brief summary
5.1 The geographical, chronological and contextual distribution of the types
Chapter 6. Distribution patterns and the expression of costume
6.1 Expressions through costume and the (re)production of identities
6.2 The standardization of dress-accessories and systematic communication: the creation and dissemination of a language of symbols
6.3 Sets of dress-accessories, multidimensional identities, and ‘boundary-breaking’ finds of jewellery
6.4 The consolidation of regional group identities
6.5 The Merovingian Period – the reconfigurations of a new period?
6.6 The transition to the Merovingian Period: a breach or continuity in dress-TRADITION?
6.7 Gender and articulations of ethnic identity in the Migration and Merovingian Periods
Chapter 7. Jewellery and negotiations of identity in Scandinavia, c. AD 400–650/700
7.1 Distribution patterns and society
7.1.1 Jewellery and centralization: power, politics and cultural identity
7.1.2 Cultural Encounters in the north and in the interior: Norse and Saami
7.1.3 Cultural connections to the south and west: Scandinavia, England and the Continent
7.2 Summary: changing dialogues of identity
Chapter 8. Peoples, Kings, Warriors and Women: Cultural and Ethnic Discourses In the Migration Period and Early Merovingian Period
8.1 Costume and peoples in the European Early Middle Ages: from jewellery-types to confederate groups
8.2 From retinues to peoples?
8.3 Warriors, ethnogenesis and women: a new perspective on historical peoples
8.4 Conclusion
Bibliography
Abbreviations used in the Catalogue
Catalogue
