The ‘Burgundian’ hat from Herjolfsnes, Greenland
new discoveries, new dates
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1080/21662282.2016.1151615Keywords:
Greenland, Norse settlements in the North Atlantic, Burgundian hat, Greenlandic textiles, Textiles from HerjolfsnesAbstract
In 1921, during Poul Nørlund’s excavation at the Norse farm Herjolfsnes, Greenland, a tall hat was recovered from the burial grounds surrounding the farm’s church, where a substantial collection of medieval garments had been recovered. This unusual hat came to symbolize not only the end of the Greenland Norse colony but also its enduring cultural links with continental European fashions, following a comment to this effect published by Nørlund himself. In 1996, the hat was dated to the early fourteenth century by Arneborg, a century earlier than Nørlund’s dating, based on stylistic comparisons with European examples. Recent research on North Atlantic textiles led to a reexamination of the hat, with different sections sampled and resubmitted for accelerated mass spectrometry dating. The results suggest that the body of the hat and its crown are of different periods with c. 100 years between them. This reanalysis of the Herjolfsnes ‘tall brimless hat’ or ‘Burgundian’ hat suggests that a considerable amount of cloth recycling took place in these North Atlantic colonies, that cloth was a valued and cherished commodity, and raises questions about the role this item of material culture role should play in discussions of identity and enduring links between Greenland and the continent.
References
Aitken, M.J., 1990. Science-based Dating in Archaeology. London: Longman.
Arneborg, J., 1993. Contact between Eskimos and Norsemen in Greenland - a review of the evidenced. In: E. Roesdahl and P.M. Sørensen, eds. Beretning fra tolvte tværfaglige vikingesymposium. Forlaget Hikuin og Afdeling for Middelalder-arkæologi. Aarhus Universitet, 23-35.
Arneborg, J., 1996. Burgunderhuer, baskere og døde nordboer i Herjolfsnes, Grønland. Nationalmuseets arbehjdsmark, 1996, 75-83.
Arneborg, J., Lynnerup, N., and Heinemeier, J., 2012b. Human diet and subsistence patterns in Norse Greenland AD c.980-AD c.1450: archaeological interpretations. In: Arneborg, J., Heinemeier, J., and Lynnerup, N., eds. Greenland Isotope Project: Diet in Norse Greenland AD 1000-AD 1450. Journal of the North Atlantic, Special Volume 3, 119-133. https://doi.org/10.3721/037.004.s309
Arneborg, J., Lynnerup, N., Heinemeier, J., Møhl, J., Rud, N. and Sveinbjörnsdóttir, Á.E. 2012a. Norse Greenland dietary economy ca. AD 980-ca. AD 1450: Introduction. Greenland isotope project: diet in Norse Greenland AD 1000-AD 1450. Journal of the North Atlantic, 3, 1-39. Bowman, S., 1995. Radiocarbon Dating. London: British Museum Press. https://doi.org/10.3721/037.004.s303
Bronk Ramsey, C., Scott, M., and Van Der Plicht, H., 2013, Calibration for archaeological and environmental terrestrial samples in the time range 26-50 kcal BP. Radiocarbon, 55 (4), 2021-2027. doi:10.2458/azu_js_rc.55.16935 https://doi.org/10.2458/azu_js_rc.55.16935
Cronin, T.M., 2010. Paleoclimates: Understanding climate change past and present. New York: Columbia University Press.
Eriksson Stenström, K., Skog, G., Georgiadou, E., Genberg, J. and Johansson, A. 2011. A guide to radiocarbon units and calculations. Lund: Lund University.
Fagan, B., 2006. Feasting, fasting and the discovery of the new world. New York: Basic Books.
Falk, H., 1919. Altwestnordische Kleiderkunde. Videnskapsselskapets skrifter II. Hist.-Filos. Klasse 1918(3). Oslo: Kristiania.
Gestsdóttir, H. and Gisladóttir, G.A., 2006. Fluorine Poioning in Victims of the 1783-84 eruption of the Laki Fissure, Iceland. Pilot Study Excavation Report, Reykjavik, Fornleifastofnun Islands.
Golding, K.A., Simpson, I.A., Schofield, J.E., Edwards, K.J. 2011. Norse-inuit interaction and landscape change in Southern Greenland? A geochronological, pedological, and palynological investigation. Geoarchaeology: An International Journal, 26 3, 315-345. Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.20351
Guðjónsson, E., 1978. The national costume of women in Iceland. Reykjavík: Litbrá-offset.
Hayeur Smith, M., 2014a. Dress, cloth and the farmer's wife: Textiles from Ø172 Tatsipataa, Greenland, with comparative data from Iceland. Journal of the North Atlantic, 6, 64-81. https://doi.org/10.3721/037.002.sp607
Hayeur Smith, M., 2014b. Thorir's Bargain: Gender, Vaðmál and the law. In: A. Reynolds and K.P. Smith, eds. Special Issue: Archaeology of Legal Culture. World Archaeology, 45 (5), 730-746. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2013.860272
Helgadóttir, S., 2013. Faldar og Skart Faldbúningurinn og aðrir íslenskir þjóðbúningar. Reykjavik: Miðstöð Íslenskra Bókmennta.
Jones, G., 1986. The Norse Atlantic saga: being the Norse voyages of discovery and settlement to Iceland, Greenland and North America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Krogh, K.J., 1982. Erik den Rødes Grønland. København: Nationalmuseets Forlag.
Libby, W.F., 1952. Radiocarbon Dating. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
Lynnerup, N., 1998. The Greenland Norse, A biologicalanthropological study. Copenhagen: Meddelelser Om Grønland, Man and Society, 24-1998.
Martensen-Larsen, B., 1987. Herjolfsnæs-dragterne på Grønland. Vdnesbyrd om et Europa udenfor periferien. Konsthistorisk tidsrift/Journal of Art History, 56 (3), 87-95. (Oxford, Taylor and Francis). https://doi.org/10.1080/00233608708604148
McGhee, R. 2003. Epilogue: Was there continuity from Norse to post-medieval explorations of the New World? In: J.H. Barrett, ed. Contact, continuity, and collapse, The Norse colonization of the North Atlantic. Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, Vol. 5, 239-248. https://doi.org/10.1484/M.SEM-EB.3.3838
McGovern, T., 1985. Contributions to the paleoeconomy of Norse Greenland. Acta Archaeologica, 54, 73-122.
Mook, W.G. and Waterbolk, H.T., 1985. Handbooks for Archaeologists: No. 3: radiocarbon dating. Strasbourg: European Science Foundation.
Nelson, D.E., Heinemeier, J., Møhl, J., Arneborg, J. 2012. Isotopic analyses of the domestic animals of Norse Greenland. Greenland isotope project: diet in Norse Greenland AD 1000-AD 1450. Journal of the North Atlantic, 3, 77-92. https://doi.org/10.3721/037.004.s307
Nørlund, P., 1923. Unpublished diary. Antikvarisk- Topografisk Arkiv, National Museum of Denmark. Nørlund, P., 2010. Buried Norsemen at Herjolfsnes. University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
Østergård, E., 1998. The Textiles - a preliminary report. In: J. Arneborg and H.C. Gulløv, eds. Man culture and environment in ancient Greenland report on a research programme. Copenhagen: Dansk Polar Center, 58-65.
Østergård, E., 2004. Woven into the earth, textiles from Norse Greenland. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
Østergård, E., 2005. The Greenlandic Vaðmál, in: F. Pritchard and J. P. Wild (eds), Northern Archaeological Textiles, NESAT VII. Oxford, Oxbow Books, 80-83. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvh1dpt9.18
Reimer, P.J., Bard, E., Bayliss, A., Beck, J.W., Blackwell, P.G., Bronk Ramsey, C., Buck, C.E., Cheng, H., Edwards, R.L., Friedrich, M., Grootes, P.M., Guilderson, T.P., Hafliðason, H., Hajdas, I., Hatté, C., Heaton, T.J., Hoffman, D.L., Hogg, A.G., Hughen, K.A., Kaiser, K.F., Kromer, B., Manning, S.W., Niu, M., Reimer, R.W., Richards, D.A., Scott, E.M., Southon, J.R., Staff, R.A., Turney, C.S.M. and van der Plicht, J. 2013. IntCal13 and Marine13 radiocarbon age calibration curves 0-50,000 years cal BP. Radiocarbon, 55 (4). https://doi.org/10.2458/azu_js_rc.55.16947
Roberstdóttir, H. 2008. Wool and Economy, Manufacturing Policy, Economic Thought and Local Production in 18thöcentury Iceland, Göteborg, Makadam.
Seaver, K., 1996. The frozen echo, Greenland and the exploration of North American ca. A.D 1000-1500. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Suess, H.E., 1970. Bristlecone-pine calibration of the radiocarbon time-scale 5200 B.C. to the present. In: I.U. Olsson, ed. Radiocarbon variations and absolute chronology. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 303-311.
Taylor, R.E., 1987. Radiocarbon dating. London: Academic Press.
Taylor, R.E. and Bar-Yosef, O., 2014. Radiocarbon dating. Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Counting from volume 11 (2022), articles published in DJA are licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). The editorial board may accept other Creative Commons licenses for individual articles, if required by funding bodies e.g. the European Research Council. With the publication of volume 11, authors retain copyright to their articles and give DJA the right to the first publication. The authors retain copyright to earlier versions of the articles, such as the submitted and the accepted manuscript.
Articles in volume 1-8 are not licensed under Creative Commons. In these volumes, all rights are reserved to DJA. This implies that readers can download, read, and link to the articles, but they cannot republish the articles. Authors can upload their articles in an institutional repository as a part of a green open access policy.
Articles in volume 9-10 are not licensed under Creative Commons. In these volumes, all rights are reserved to the authors of the articles respectively. This implies that readers can download, read, and link to the articles, but they cannot republish the articles. Authors can upload their articles in an institutional repository.
