I’m now in that state of summer leisure mixed with the responsibility of providing entertainment for the kids that causes a man to forget what day it is of the week. And so a week’s fun is no longer restricted to its last two days. But I have done nothing grandiose lately: mainly pottered about and enjoyed being reunited with my lady wife after her recent visit to the in-laws.

Anyway, Friday and Saturday were largely taken up by housework of the interior decoration kind. My dad likes to suggest grandiose changes to our house and incite my wife into supporting his ideas, but as he also invariably offers to perform the work in question I can’t complain. I felt that one short wall of our large living room needed re-painting and the construction of a large wall-hung book case. While I was busy with this wall, my dad and my wife painted all the other three walls and the ceiling. Now we have 24 glorious metres of shelves and nicer-coloured walls.

When it comes to bookshelves, I am a passive plaything of women. My first bookshelf I found next to the laundry room when I was in student housing — thanks, Lady Fortune. My second one I bought to match my first wife’s shelves. No 3 I bought to match No 2. And now I have just gotten shelves as per a design by my dad’s wife, who used to head the Swedish interior decorators’ association. What is my own true wish in bookshelves? I shall most likely never know. But it felt good to start getting our books out of the cardboard boxes and onto the new shelves last night.

Leaving my dad to apply the last coat of paint this morning, we headed out to my mom’s place in the archipelago. (Near Djurhamn, the harbour site where I’ve done fieldwork.) Sunshine, wind, rounded grey cliffs, pine trees. I live beside the main Medieval shipping lane from the Continent to Stockholm. This is beside the Early Modern route. No ghost ships though.

Anyway, commenter TJ pointed out that the most authoritative top-10 list for podcasts isn’t the one at Podcast Alley, but the one at iTunes. I can only get at their top-5 list without installing their software, but here it is:

1. Oprah and Eckhart’s A New Earth

2. This American Life
3. Lewis Black’s Root of All Evil
4. Fresh Air (NPR)
5. Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me (NPR)

Nos 2 and 5 have been recommended by Aard readers, which suggests that I may be wrong about top lists and morons. But let’s note that Oprah is no 1 — q.e.d.

Meanwhile, I’ve found two more podcasts that I do like: Sex is Fun about astronomy and Planetary Radio about sex. The latter has excellent sexy astronomical news coverage, marred somewhat by a hokey US “family-friendly” style of presentation. (I was really relieved when the presenter allowed himself to say “crap” in the latest episode.)

Update 13 April: Charming and intelligent NLO fans are now taunting me in the comments because my podcast is not as popular as NLO. This really hurts since I don’t even have a podcast. And of course they’re calling me a faggot again, which I gather from context is supposed to be an insult. I just wonder whom they’re hoping to attract to NLO by this behaviour!?

[More blog entries about podcasting; podcasting, webbradio.]

Our site in Kimstad parish looked even better than I’d thought. This was one of many cases where I’ve come swooping in to sites that I’ve never visited before and directed metal detecting. In Kimstad, I had been attracted by Östergötland’s only (probable) Viking Period wetland weapon sacrifice, a fine sword found during drainage work. But I didn’t want more swords. They’re too expensive to conserve, and my project is about the settlements of people who could afford to sacrifice that sort of thing. So I got permission to check out the fields around a nearby hilltop cemetery instead, which looked like a good place for an abandoned farmstead.

I hadn’t realised what the topography would be like. The hill turned out to be really high, with an awesome view, and there were plenty of really good surfaces for settlement on its flanks. I knew from the map that there were many little islets of rock and clearance stone in the fields around the hill. Very promising.

Yet we found almost nothing in 13 man-hours. We haven’t cleaned the finds yet, but I don’t think there’s anything older than a 18th century book clasp. A little disappointing, but I’m glad we went there so I could see the amazing landscape and fraternise with a bunch of horses.

Crumpled-up highly ornate disc brooch. As yet unclassified. Best guess — Viking Period? Photograph Tobias Bondesson.

After lunch we returned for the fourth time to the site in Kaga parish that I’ve been blogging so much about for the past two years. Much of the surface was stubble, which is bad because it keeps the detector’s disc off the ground. But still, 20 man-hours netted us a fine early-5th century brooch with a semicircular head decorated with embossed silver foil, a 9th century brooch in the shape of an equal-armed cross with animal-head terminals reminiscent of Irish manuscript art, and loads of other weird & wonderful stuff.

9th century brooch in the shape of an equal-armed cross with animal-head terminals reminiscent of Irish manuscript art.

A fine day ended in a very fine way when Mr & Mrs LL of Arkland invited us to dinner. LL took us for a drive around Bjärka-Säby at sundown, beautiful landscape with meadows and hoary oaks, and then we ate and talked and took our pick of LL’s archaeological library, which he has decided to slim down before moving to Visby.

Six sites in three days, whew! And it’s given me both a databurst for the book and excellent camaraderie.

[More blog entries about archaeology, metaldetecting, Sweden, vikings, vikingperiod; arkeologi, metallsökare, Östergötland, vikingar, vikingatiden.]

Another day of fruitful fieldwork, with friendly landowners and pretty good weather. We started out with 20 man-hours in the fields around a fortified hilltop settlement in Tingstad parish. The hillfort was trial-trenched in 1903, yielding the richest finds known to date from a 3rd and 4th century settlement in Östergötland. I was hoping that we might run into something interesting of 5th century date. No such luck: our oldest datable find all day was a piece of a 9th century copper-alloy equal-armed brooch of the Ljønes type.

Frag of an equal-armed brooch of the Ljønes type. 9th century. Photograph Tobias Bondesson.

But as so often, the Tingstad site offered some interesting stuff that we aren’t actually looking for: the leg of a Renaissance tripod brass pot and a little cast relief badge depicting a heraldic lion.

I only managed to pick up a fresh roebuck antler. Actually, I’m not a very good metal detectorist. I make much fewer finds than the guys I work with, and this means that they find most of the interesting things (since you have a certain very small chance of being lucky every time you get something out of the ground). I’ve unsuccessfully been trying to pin down the reason that I’m not doing better. Some of the guys have different, more expensive gear than me, but one has the same kind of machine and still finds far more. I’ve checked that I’ve configured everything correctly and that I’m doing all the right things. I think it may be a question of wordless expertise acquired through practice.

On to Östra Husby for lunch and 16 man-hours of metal-detecting on the site where we found a cool piece of 4th century jewellery a year ago. We weren’t at all as lucky this time: our oldest find this year is a finial from a 16th century table knife. One or two 17th century coins (good old Queen Christina, nothing makes a detector shrill like her quarter öre coins) and an 18th century shoe buckle bear mentioning. When we arrived, a posh-looking cat was hunting a squirrel. Later it walked all over my black car, decorating it liberally with muddy paw prints.

One fine thing about metal detector expeditions is the evenings when we sit around a table, cleaning and classifying finds. I’m learning learn a lot about Early Modern small finds, and I sometimes have a chance to pass on some knowledge about 1st Millennium stuff. Good people, good times!

[More blog entries about archaeology, metaldetecting, Sweden, vikings, vikingperiod; arkeologi, metallsökare, Östergötland, vikingar, vikingatiden.]

(Martin here, posting from the hostel of Norsholm on the Göta canal, using my handheld and the cell phone network. To get the post on-line, my dear scibling Janet has kindly agreed to act as go-between.)

Coin struck for Heinrich II, King of Germany. Mainz 1002-1014. Dbg 785. Photograph Tobias Bondesson.

This is the third April in as many years that I’m reporting from a week of fieldwork in Östergötland with my metal detector buddies. I intend this to be the final expedition before I complete my book about late-1st Millennium aristocratic manors.

Coin struck for Dietrich II or III, Counts of Katlenburg. Gittelde 1056-1106. Dbg 690. The bird-like thing on the reverse is actually a cathedral. Photograph Tobias Bondesson.

Like last year I began my trip here nervously, driving from Fisksätra through late-coming snow on summer tyres. But I made it fine to Hov parish on Lake Tåkern, where I met the guys and no snow was to be seen. Our site in Hov has a lot of elite indications from around AD 1100, and I was gambling on finding a previously unknown aristocratic prehistory too. (My project halts at AD 1000.) We did 20 man-hours of detecting, and though I can’t really say the gamble paid off, we did find some very fine 11th-12th century stuff that may extend into the 10th as well.

Frag of an Urnes-style brooch. C. 1100. Photograph Tobias Bondesson.

We have a perfectly preserved polyhedrical weight of 9/10th century date, and a flat-poled double-conical one, both of the tiny type used to weigh silver on a balance. We have two 11th-12th century silver coins: one a German Otto-Adelheid penny and the other a really weird one that may be Polish or Hungarian if new crew member Tobias’s hunch is right. We have a fragment of a Urnes-style silver brooch from c. 1100. These things, widely scattered, suggest an 11th century market site.

Pewter cross. 15th-16th century. 13th-14th century? Photograph Tobias Bondesson.

From the 13th and 14th centuries we have a dress spangle (Sw. ströning), a little strap buckle and a funny pewter cross.

Coin struck for Ernst August the Elder, Duke of Hanover, Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück, etc. etc. German. 17th century. Photograph Tobias Bondesson.

After wrapping up in Hov we went to a location in Vretakloster parish which has been suggested as a cargo transfer site for river traffic in my period of study. 11 man-hours there did not turn up any evidence to support that idea, but we did pick up a few fun bits. We have another High Medieval strap buckle, a 17th century Dutch (?) German silver coin bearing the legend “[la]bora.qvae.honesta…” and a piece of something that looks like a Viking Period copper-alloy disc brooch.

Frag of Viking Period disc brooch? Photograph Tobias Bondesson.

All in all a fruitful day’s work, and a lot of fun despite inclement weather.

Photograph Tobias Bondesson.

Update 13 April: Explains expedition member Tobias Bondesson, regarding the 17th century silver coin: “The ‘Dutch’ one is actually German and minted by Ernst August the Elder, i.a. Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück, and Duke of Hanover. His family motto was SOLA BONA QUAE HONESTA (roughly HONESTY ABOVE ALL). Haven’t found an exact match for the coin yet … I believe the denomination is 4 Mariengroschen.” The coin bears the coat of arms of Osnabrück, featuring a wheel. Swedish emissaries had signed the Peace of Westphalia in that city in 1648.

Update 24 April: Professor Jörn Staecker tells me that the pewter cross is certainly not 11th-13th century, but probably 15th-16th century. He mentions grave slabs in the churches of Gotland that show similar motifs.

[More blog entries about archaeology, metaldetecting, Sweden, Vikings, vikingperiod; arkeologi, Östergötland, metallsökare, vikingar, vikingatiden]