Fornvännen 2013:1, last spring's issue, is now on-line in its entirety on Open Access.
- Joy Boutrup et al. on openwork braids of silk and metal thread that decorated 15th century elite fashion garments.
- Påvel Nicklasson on zoologist and archaeological trailblazer Sven Nilsson's travels in England and France in 1836.
- Nils Harnesk on High Medieval log canoes from a farming frontier site in Norrbotten.
- Soon-to-be-Doctor Ny Björn Gustafsson on Viking Period bronze and silver craft sites on Gotland (in English).
- Mats G. Larsson on geophys in the Meadow of Mora where Medieval Swedish royal elections took place.
- Noel Broadbent responds to his critics regarding Iron Age Saami on the Baltic coast (in English).
- Majvor Östergren on metal detectors and the rules for using them.
- Plus book reviews.
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OT. Beheaded slaves? "Isotope analysis of Flakstad skeletons" http://phys.org/news/2013-12-isotope-analysis-flakstad-skeletons.html
A pity this did not appear in time to be included.
"Travels in England".... I will give you "travels in England"! http://satwcomic.com/sour-and-sweet
(OT) The Chinese have successfully landed on the Moon, today 13 GMT. "The Rabbit has Landed!" http://phys.org/news/2013-12-china-lunar-rover-moon.html
I'll have to brush up a bit on my archaeological swedish to study this logboat article in detail. We got one here at the local museum that has been dredged out of the riverbed, it has a very similar "box-like" form.
Murmel, a more comprehensive paper on log boats all across Sweden is slated for publication in issue 2014:1 (April).
not really logboats, rather parts of some kind of medieval pontoon ferries. And apparently quite common all over medieval Europe:
https://www.academia.edu/917213/Einbaume_des_Maingebietes_-_Fahren_als_…
The Skatamark finds illustrated above are also interpreted as having been joined together. Pontoon ferry may be a good description. But Harnesk believes they were used to gather reeds for winter fodder.
Really liked the article about Skatamark, where many generations of people on my father's side of the family comes from (except that it has not actually been called Skatamark for ages...). Anyway, always nice to learn more about the early history of my original home region, which is much less investigated than my current home (Uppsala).
The article even claims that my childhood home village Heden is "the oldest in Lule river valley and one of the oldest in Norrbotten" with evidence of farming going back to the 11th century. I'm not in a position to judge how well supported that claim is, but still really proud of my old home.
What I don't understand is how the author can make any claims about what language the people in the Heden-Boden-Skatamark area were speaking 1000 years ago. To my knowledge, neither boats nor bows nor axes can speak any language whatsoever (regardless of where they were made) and I don't see any mentions of preserved texts written by the locals at the time.
I think Harnesk is making the assumption that the coastal farming communities mainly spoke Swedish. This to my knowledge tallies well with the written sources of the time. But I'm sure individual Saami and Finnish speakers married into those families, and a knowledge of many languages was of course an asset there as everywhere.
Erika
Finns or Swedes (with probably a lot of Sami intermarriage) living there ? Absolutely no way to know for sure. Even DNA would be futile.
( OT) Martin, here is another Chinese story: Humans were domesticated* by cats in China at least 5300 years ago http://phys.org/news/2013-12-cat-domestication-chinese-farmers-years.ht…
*If you ask the cats.
(OT) Yangtze River's ancient origins revealed http://phys.org/news194845886.html#nRlv
Happy 45 millionth birthday, Yangtze. This makes the Three Gorges feature much older than those Norwegian fjords.
I once saw a report on a horrendous tsunami in a Norwegian fjord caused by a coastal rock fall (it was horrendous in size when it reached the opposite side of the fjord - I don't know if it caused casualties or damage). Like tsunamis caused by large seabed slides, and unlike tsunamis caused by seabed thrust fault earthquakes of Magnitude >8, which are cyclic movements with periods of hundreds or thousands of years, such tsunamis are not cyclic and therefore not predictable/avoidable.
Whether people predict and avoid them is another thing.