Dr. Martin Rundkvist is a Swedish archaeologist, journal editor, public speaker, chairman of the Swedish Skeptics Society, atheist, lefty liberal, bookworm, and father of two.
One of the founding fathers of Norwegian archaeology and place-name scholarship was Oluf Rygh (1833-1899). In 1875, he became Scandinavia's first professor of archaeology. One of the most enduring parts of his legacy is his 1885 book Norske Oldsager, "Norwegian Antiquities" (re-issued in 1999). Not because many read either the Norwegian or the French text in the book any more: Norske Oldsager is used to this day for its illustrations. Hundreds of beautiful drawings of exquisite finds, all reproduced through the late 19th century's signature printing method, wood engraving.
If I want to talk about a certain type of Norwegian tortoise brooch from about AD 800, then people in the know understand me if I say "R643": figure 643 in Rygh's book.
A little-known archaeological resource on the web, hugely useful to anyone who works with Scandinavian small finds, is found at the following URL.
http://www.dokpro.uio.no/Rygh/R643.jpg
Except for a handful of missed pics, this site has all the illustrations in Norske Oldsager available by figure number. But no database interface, no search facilities, no thumbnails page. You simply have to type numbers into the URL. Or write a perl script to copy all the pics down to your local hard drive... The excellent Hans Persson has made a script available to allow anyone to browse Rygh's pictures easily. And Frans-Arne Stylegar points out that there's a clickable list in Norwegian by Espen Uleberg, allowing you to search for artefact types by name.
[More blog entries about archaeology, Norway; arkeologi, Norge.]
Comments
When I saw this picture, I immediately thought of the art of Native Americans in the northwest Pacific and Western Canadian areas. Interesting to me that there seems to be such a visual similarity produced by two groups of people, on either side of the globe, but both in the far north. Maybe a completely imaginary connection, but it was striking to me.
Posted by: martha | January 24, 2007 2:19 PM
Yeah, aesthetics is definitely part of the reason I'm an archaeologist. So many beautiful objects and structures! What little I've seen of NW American native art is awesome.
Posted by: Martin R | January 24, 2007 2:40 PM
Gah! I said I was going to make you an index for that and then I promptly forgot all about it. Oh well. Here it is.
I may tinker with the looks of it somewhat, but it'll stay at the same place. Let me know how it can be more useful.
Posted by: Hans Persson | January 25, 2007 3:53 AM
Hans, you star!!! Love you, man!
Posted by: Martin R | January 25, 2007 5:40 AM
What a lovely collection of images. Thanks for sharing!
Posted by: M | January 25, 2007 8:11 AM
Olmec-influenced city found in Mexico
Posted by: Mustafa Mond, FCD | January 26, 2007 11:47 AM
SUPERT!
just, plain FANTASTIC images/info.
Enough for MANY MANY hours of research.!
Thanks a lot!
Christian "kejser" B. Kau
www.detekt.dk
Posted by: Christian B. Kau | February 24, 2007 6:20 PM